Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/34

Rh most successful when he was most true. To him, as with the other great artists of Hast or West, the beauties only occurred—and Kenzan's beauties occurred when his simple art was most decorative; in his decorativeness he found his own artistic emotion. It was his greatness that he made a perfect union of emotion and intellect in his work; to say shortly, he was the expression of personality."

"What a personality was Kenzan's! Again what a personality!" I exclaimed. I proceeded, as I wished to take up the talk where my friend poet had left off, "It is his personality by whose virtue even a little weed or insignificant spray of a willow-tree turns to a real art; he had that personality, because he had such a love and sympathy. Indeed the main question of the artist is in his love and sympathy ; the external technique is altogether secondary. When you commune with the inner meaning, that is the beginning and also the ending. We see here the picture of a cherry-tree covered by the red blossoms, which might happen to be criticised as a bad drawing; but since it does appear as nothing but a cherry-tree, proud and lovely, I think that Kenzan's artistic desire was fully answered. He was an artist, not merely either an illustrator or a designer. He was a true artist, therefore his work is ever so new like the moon and flowers; and again old, like the flowers and moon."