Plum blossom and the moon (around 1803) by Katsushika Hokusai, Art Institute of Chicago.
It is good sometimes to see, especially when one feels sad, that nothing is better than observing a painting, or reading a book of poems. This happened to me when I’ve come across Plum blossom and the moon by K. Hokusai.
This is about a figure, from the picture book entitled Mount Fuji in the spring (Haru no Fuji), in which subtly and fancifully printed colors give rise to the refined play of a neutral turtledove-grey-to-pink shading, at last rather prone to assume an evenly milky white appearance. The moonlight allows a branch outline to be focused along with a delicately colored five-petal, as is customary, blossom. A few petals are still closed, the rest are partially or completely opened up. The branch odd shape contrasts with the smoothed roundness of the moon, whose chiaroscuro is a true innovative rendering in the Japanese painting.
In the Japanese culture, the plum blossom (ume) is loved because of the early blossoming, when the land is still covered in snow. For its feature to face bravely the severity of the winter weather, this flower turns out to be a metaphor for all those humans who withstand the difficulties in life or set out on a Zen-type spiritual path. It’s not accidental that the symbol of a circle, present in the painting through the features of a full moon, is rather intended to evoke enlightenment.
Beyond the symbolic meaning of the figured subjects, the artistic work at hand shows, as in other examples such as this, the contemplative attitude of the Japanese spirit for nature. This spirit is able to see, in nature, multifaceted charming graces: sea power, mountain timelessness, waterfall gravitas and the sidereal flare of the heavenly bodies. Even the short-lived delicate flowers and the miracle of their blossoming over the bare, wrinkly branches are accommodated in a wide range of different potential emotions.
Therefore, beauty is intended not only as magnificent splendor and divine perfection, but also as levity, frailty, tenderness. These qualities get almost to talk to each other just like the moon looks as though can talk to and surround with its glow a reaching out plum blossom, the sweet smell of which rises as if it were a prayer.
In the face of the Moon’s lasting majesty, the observer’s mind turns to the delicate blossom and in turn, by analogy, to the short-term human life, often defending itself in a not flashing heroic manner.
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The picture is from http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/188987