Dancing in the Flames

In the summer of 1925, Gyoshû and his family spent three months in Karuizawa. Every night there were bonfires, and Gyoshû would watch the moths attracted by the flames. His carefully sketched images of the moths remain today. While he painted each of the moths from above he blurred the backs of their wings to create an illusion of them dancing. The expression of the flames traces back to the flame depiction seen in Buddhist paintings and handscrolls, but his depiction of the tips of the flames as spiraling forms is based on his observation of actual flames. The deep darkness of the background, of which he himself said, "If asked to paint it again, it is a color I could not achieve a second time," is clearly a subtle tone that he achieved after much trial and error. For Gyoshû, this work was a fusion of classical style and actual observation, all melded in a higher dimension, and thus representative of the Taishô period's trends and awareness of both realism and symbolism. Beautiful, isn't it?