Word: tanka
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...canvas that hangs, like a banner, on the wall: an orange-gold cone hovering in a void of purplish red; an exhilarating surge of scrolling ocherous waves, speckled with jade and malachite green. Johnson is an exceptional colorist, both astringent and opulent, and his work-like many a Tibetan tanka or Indonesian temple door-makes no bones about its decorative aspect. Yet behind this seduction of the eye is a strange impersonality, as though Johnson's role in painting them had at a certain point become mediumistic-notes transmitted from outside. "The choice of a particular image," Johnson remarked...