Haiga, Ki Baitei

Exhibition Label:
“Transformations,” Feb-2006, Mary Dusenbury and Alison Miller
The poem and painting allude to Ono no Komachi, (flourished circa 833-857 CE), a renowned poetess known for the emotional intensity of her elegant brief verses (waka), her wide circle of literary acquaintances, her passionate love affairs, and her striking beauty. But she is said to have spent the last years of her life in poverty, wandering the countryside, as ugly in old age as she had been beautiful in her youth. For a thousand years, Komachi’s life has served as a metaphor for the transience of life and beauty, a familiar Buddhist theme and one she herself often addressed in her poetry.

Archive Label date unknown:
Baitei here brushes a combination of painting and haiku poem. The images all suggest Ono no Komachi, a famous beauty who lived long enough to become an old hag, and whose skull is sometimes painted with empty eyes to suggest the transitory nature of earthly values such as beauty and pleasure. Thus the charcoal (a brand named ono), the old woman, and the stove itself all suggest the poetess Komachi:

Ono no sumi
niuo hioke no
aname kana

Charcoal called Ono
Fragrant in the little stove
Which has empty eyes

Archive Label date unknown:
This informal work by Ki Baitei is a fine example of a very abbreviated style of Japanese painting called haiga. A combination of the term hai, referring to the poetic form haiku, and ga, meaning painting, haiga is a work in which painting and poetry merge to form a single image.

Both poem and painting allude to Ono no Komachi, the Heian era poetess and beauty who became as ugly in old age as she had been beautiful in her youth. In this haiga, Baitei expresses the age-old theme of the transience of life and beauty with sympathetic humor.

Ono no sumi
Niou hioke no
Aname kana

Charcoal called Ono
Fragment in the little stove
Which has empty eyes