Korin

"Korin" — a work honoring or inspired by Ogata Korin (1658–1716), the great Rimpa school painter and designer — represents one of Munakata's engagements with the Japanese artistic tradition that had formed his visual imagination. Korin's bold, pattern-focused decorative painting, with its emphasis on the abstract beauty of natural forms and its willingness to push pattern to the edge of complete abstraction, had obvious affinities with Munakata's own aesthetic. A Munakata "Korin" would be less a representation of the historical artist than a meditation on the creative principle he embodied.