squares 1~5

squares 1~5

Friday, December 18, 2015

[Who is Sharaku?] Every line in artwork can be divided into arcs

"(from Wikipedia)  Toshusai Sharaku was a Japanese ukiyo-e print artist, known for his portraits of Kabuki actors....Little is known of him....Neither his true name nor the dates of his birth or death are known. His active career as a woodblock artist spanned ten months....And his output came to an end as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun."
"A poet from western Japan? A Noh actor? Hokusai avoiding the censors? Tracking down Sharaku's identity has occupied reseachers."
The arc-circle model can be applied for this problem.
Almost perfect arc-circle model can be made for any refined artwork as most of established folk music can be notated.
For the new readers I picked some examples I made before.
     (Okamoto Shinjiro/ Takahashi Shu/ Paul Klee/ Amedio Modigliani/ Hans Arp/ Pablo Picasso)


It seems that there is universal law for all artworks, which every great artist eventually find.
Now it is time to apply the grammar to traditional Japanese art.
Ukiyo-e was once very popular as reproduction art for the public.
Consequently the design became stylish, forming clear network.
I found this image of high resolution.
The lines are either separated or connected.
Each line which meets at points is a curved line( a straight line is a curved line of an infinitlly large circle).
The parts of any curves look like arcs.
The curved line is a sequence of arcs.
Firstly I prepared many concentric circles aside.
And extending each arc in the image to make a circle, find out the nearest circle in the concentric circle diagram to fit each arc.
Almost every curve can be replaced for the arc in the diagram.
I call this arc-circle model.


Arc model can be made, elasing the circles.
Even the detail is well structured.


The model shows the network has very architectonic strucure.
It is obvious that Sharaku made intricate plan for the engraver.
Sharaku had 'geometrical spirit': the same type which Giotto, Leonardo, Durer and Picasso had.
It is well documented that even Picasso mastered how to draw with perfect arcs in his late forties after long Cubist experiments.
As Shakespeare cannot be the uneducated local actor called 'Shakespeare', Sharaku cannot be amateur.
We can exclude the popular theory: Sharaku is the Noh actor.
(to be continued)







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