What we have is less a union than a kind of free-form encounter. But mine alone it is to know The wind in the mountain pines. Koetsu's calligraphy here, with alternating thick and thin elements, feels like rain drifting downward against the fuller, upward-flowing forms of clouds and cherry blossoms. Koetsu responds to a painting, disposing his calligraphy in one way or another, but text and image have their own stories to tell. In the poem cards, the confrontations feel odd yet succinct.
Space here is fluid, uncharted and unchartable.
And that fluidity is like a blast of naturalistic uncertainty that shakes up these stylized, formalized inventions. In the scrolls, the balance between image and text generally develops in a more relaxed way, as if two great plots are unfolding side by side. In the Koetsu-Sotatsu collaboration known as the Deer scroll, calligrapher and painter seem to wander by one another, and although there are no poems about deer, these animals are traditionally associated with autumn and loneliness, which are themes in many of the poems. Here the cranes are a surging, anti-gravitational presence, pressing now at the top edge of the scroll, now at the bottom edge. They seem restless even when, from time to time, they alight.