Bird with Lotus Stem

This head of a mynah bird looking up toward a lotus, only the stem of which is visible here, is a reworking of a passage from Bada Shanren’s short handscroll, Birds in a Lotus Pond. Yet it is also difficult to dissociate this image of a mynah bird and its curiously human-like gaze from the dozens of small portraits of men, women, and boys that Araki was creating from late summer 1977 to spring 1978, during which time he also created this painting. Portraits from these series can be seen in this gallery and the adjacent gallery.