Last weekend we attended an exhibit at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. The show was about the six month apprenticeship Isamu Noguchi, the American sculptor and designer, served with Qi Baishi, an eminent painter in the Chinese style, in 1930. Apparently Noguchi was so taken with Qi Baishi's work that he convinced the older master to work with him even though neither spoke a word of the other's language. Qi Baishi didn't attempt to school Noguchi in the traditional forms, but allowed him to work with live models in the Western way, using Chinese brushes and materials. The results are just exquisite. I have always loved gestural drawings in any media because they are so expressive and energetic. That energy combined with the spare immediacy of Chinese and Japanese brush paintings...the deft evocation of the subject's essence....makes these paintings particularly powerful to me. I am so glad I had the chance to see them. (These pictures are from the Frye's promotional materials. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the galleries.)
The figure in the picture above is Noguchi's and the flowers are the work of Qi Baishi. The paintings of the two were hung together in the exhibit so we had the chance to compare and contrast at length. At the end of the day I felt suddenly optimistic about our human ability to combine divergent ideas into something new. I'm hoping that we can do that in the larger world as well, coming together and building on individual patterns and insights to make something better than any one could have produced alone.