Young Woman Reading Tanzaku Tied to a Cherry Tree c. 1741

Curator: Oh, let’s lose ourselves for a moment in Ishikawa Toyonobu's "Young Woman Reading Tanzaku Tied to a Cherry Tree," a print from around 1741. It hangs here at The Art Institute of Chicago. Editor: It's incredibly serene! I am struck by how graceful and calm the figure appears amidst the cherry blossoms. She seems totally lost in her thoughts or, maybe, in whatever she’s reading. What catches your eye in this image? Curator: Hmm, that reminds me of an afternoon I once spent under a blossoming dogwood tree, a silly collection of poems scattered around me. Back to the artwork: I keep coming back to her placement beneath the cherry tree. Notice how the artist uses the branches and blossoms to almost frame her, inviting you into her private world? The whole piece hums with a subtle, yearning quality, a beautiful moment of quiet introspection captured in ink and color. Don't you feel drawn to that? Editor: Definitely. The tanzaku adds a layer of mystery—who wrote it, what does it say? Also, Ukiyo-e prints tend to emphasize this floating world— ephemeral beauties or fleeting pleasures. Is the woman a kind of ideal or a more realistic depiction? Curator: Ah, excellent question! Is she an ideal? Well, perhaps she embodies an aspiration for cultivated beauty and contemplation. The print's flatness and decorative elements distance her from true reality, allowing her to embody something… other than pure lived experience, maybe something dreamlike and out of reach. The viewer isn't quite brought to reality, either, and in its place lives a deep reverence for art and for the joy of a shared artistic vision between observer and observed. What's more is the implied reverence from the artwork’s cultural traditions; the poem tied to the cherry tree becomes a part of her experience and lends itself to further questions from us as observers. A story within a story! Editor: That makes me think about the different ways we all interact with beauty and poetry, how it's not just about what's there but what we bring to it, too. Curator: Exactly. And the dance between the artwork, the subject, and us, the viewers. Beautiful, isn't it?