Word: shrike
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wrote a famous text on swordplay (A Book of Five Rings) and reputedly killed 60 swordsmen before his 30th birthday; he then gave up killing in favor of painting and calligraphy. One of his ink paintings is in the show, a swiftly brushed image of a shrike balanced on a branch above a caterpillar that is crawling upward, presumably to its doom. It is a graphic masterpiece. You feel the tension in the body of the bird as it balances before striking, and every flick of the brush bespeaks alertness...