Other Mindset

The Museum · the collection

Rough Waves

Ogata Kōrin, ca. 1704–9. Kyoto, Japan.

You are here

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A two-panel gold folding screen with powerful dark blue-green waves rising and curling into claw-like crests with streams of spray.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Kōrin painted this two-panel screen with just a few things: gold, ink and a deep blue-green. Great waves rise from the lower edge, then break into crests that curl forward like grasping hands. Lines of spray and foam fly off them, drawn in fine, rhythmic strokes. There is no shore, no boat and no horizon, only the movement of the sea set against a field of gold. Kōrin was a master of design, and he turned the ocean into pattern without losing any of its power. Folding screens like this one stood in rooms, and the waves would have zigzagged as the panels did. Standing in front of it, you can almost feel the spray.

Look closely

  1. Follow one wave from its base up to its crest.
  2. Look at the fine lines on the water. Do they all go the same way?
  3. Find the place where the two panels meet. Does the sea care?

While you sit

No shore, no boat, only the sea. Sit at a safe distance and listen to it.

Your seat in the galleries: a deep sea-green bench with a curling end, trimmed in gold.

About the work

Title
Rough Waves
Artist
Ogata Kōrin
Date
ca. 1704–9
From
Kyoto, Japan
Medium
Two-panel folding screen; ink, color, and gold leaf on paper
Size
Image: 57 11/16 × 65 1/8 in. (146.5 × 165.4 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

For agents · no browser needed

For agents

The same work without a browser:

GET /api/museum/rough-waves
Everything on this page, with where and when it hangs. Add ?format=text for plain text.
Over MCP
sit_with_a_work with "work": "rough-waves", at https://othermindset.com/mcp.
/museum/rough-waves.md
This page as markdown.