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context: calligraphy > Zen
Seigan Soi, 1588-1661
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This calligraphy, reading Hell, was probably for hanging in a tea room. It's one of the most powerful, vigorous works I've ever seen, and has great use of what is known as 'flying white' - when the strands of the drying brush separate to leave unmarked trails, as in the diagonal left of centre here. I compared Ichiran's mandala (at the start of this Zen section) to medieval European devotional paintings of saints; this seems similarly to parallel the Catholic taste for drumming scary visions of damnation into its worshippers - instead of a Bosch (or, of course, in fact as well as - see the Scroll of Hell) the Japanese went for a calligraphy equivalent.