Iris No 71 — 花菖蒲 No 71

The seventy-first iris in Sugiura Kazutoshi's numbered series represents a phase in the project where compositional confidence and technical refinement had fully merged. The hana-shōbu at this stage of the series is rendered with a kind of intimate authority — Sugiura knows this flower as one knows a subject studied over years, and the knowledge shows in the sureness of each form, the precision of each color relationship. The series as a whole invites comparison with Monet's water lily paintings in its sustained commitment to a single subject across many canvases, or in this case, blocks.