NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

as well as intact hand scrolls. He is especially a
ppealing in a Kamakura-period hand scroll fragment
about the history of the Jin’oji Temple. It shows
him in a garden with low-flying clouds conversing
with a local deity, while a visiting Korean god a
lights on the top of a pine tree, causing one of E
n No Gyoja’s loyal servant-demons to fall to his knees.
From there the show traces the pictorial life of v
arious cherished narratives from medium to medium.
Sacred tales about building temples or the spirit
ual evolution of semidivine beings give way to cel
ebrations of rulers’ lives, epic military battles
or endlessly triangulating romances whose female p
articipants usually pay the price. In the late-16t
h-century hand scroll "The Tale of Gio" the title
character, a dancer, generously allows another wom
an to perform for her patron in a green-carpeted p
avilion, and of course her life ends up in ruins.
Here, as in later works throughout the show, freehand
ink painting gives way to stiffer figuration
and bright opaque colors, and open landscapes are
more and more punctuated by steeply tilted buildin
gs whose sumptuous interiors become central.
Partly because of the exhibition’s placement in th
e permanent-collection galleries, Ms. Watanabe has
supplemented the scrolls, books and screens with
works in other mediums. A lacquer box and a kimono
decorated with images of books suggest the high v
alue placed on literature, and lacquer stirrups an
d saddles are placed near several screens recounti
ng historic battles that had assumed mythic status
in Japanese culture. They teem with mounted soldi
ers and archers and, according to the label, can d
epict up to 80 separate episodes.
If you wonder what a six-legged red-lacquer storag
e case is doing in the show, look no farther than
the pair of painted screens next to it. On one a n
early identical case is boldly outlined in ink. Ac
cording to the label a brave samurai cut off the a