Skeleton Father and Son Doing the Bon Dance

Paintings by the Confucian scholar Doi Gōga can be mistaken for the work of no other artist, yet he is little known today. As well as calligraphy and paintings of bamboo, his oeuvre included ghosts, skeletons, and other figures of the imagination and folklore. These were painted in an idiosyncratic style that was perhaps inspired by the simplicity of Zen painting and sometimes inscribed with biting Confucian admonishments. Characteristic of Gōga’s works are blunt, velvety black brushstrokes that bleed into the surrounding paper; exaggerated incidences of “flying white” (smudgy lines that reveal white streaks); paler strokes conveying depth; and, perhaps most unusually, the incorporation of his seals into the pictorial space.