Self-portrait

At one point in his life, the young painter Murayama Kaita seems to have decided that the color red, or more specifically the dark reddish pigment known as garance, was the color that best described his own fate. Perhaps his love for this color predated his determination to become an artist. One reason he seemed to like it so much was because red is too aggressive to allow one to relax or feel secure. It signifies blood and the sun, and it also suggests sin and the purification that washes it away. Red is, in other words, a fateful color that represents polar opposites. In the painting Nude Monk Urinating (1915), the entire canvas burns with red as if Kaita is trying to burn away the impurities of his ego and the unclean world. This self-portrait, however, is dominated not by red but by a color that is closer in hue to purple. Even though the fire burning in Kaita’s heart is not immediately obvious, one still gets a sense of it in his choice of colors. It is as if Kaita has called out to the darkness of night, and from it, these colors appear to greet him. The purple is the color of the last rays of sunlight lingering over Lake Biwa and the old city of Kyoto where he spent his youth. Because this color embodies the feeling of mystery he loved so dearly, it also appears frequently in his poetry.