Simply Haiku: An E-Journal of Haiku and Related Forms
September-October 2004, vol. 2, no. 5

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Reprint: Jim Kacian, "Looking and Seeing: How Haiga Works."
Previously Published in Haigaonline

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Page 8: The Balance Between Looking and Seeing

The second, the non-representational strategy, walks the tricky ground that we encountered when we played with the Rothko painting. It needs to be visually interesting, but not closed. And it needs to be sufficiently closed so as not to admit unlimited numbers of poems to accompany.

Look at this unusual painting [right], and try not to read the poem before figuring out what the image is.

Even after reading the poem--"no color or scent / when flower viewing / stuffy nose"--it's not absolutely certain what we're looking at. Is it a nose? If it is, I would agree it's a stuffy one.

But it might be something else, and the title, Self Portrait, would tend to make us think the artist had something else in mind (or at least an interest in making us look for more).

It is the non-representational aspect of this image that pulls us in, and makes us seek out the poem.

At the same time, there is nothing else in the painting other than the poem and the poet's signature, so it certainly is not closed: we can imagine all sorts of things, we can enjoy the humor of the poet's predicament, and we are left with a bit of a puzzle and a sufficiently open juxtaposition to allow us to feel both a participant and an observer. Looking and seeing.

This is how haiga works: besides possessing sufficient technical skills in both art forms, the artists control them so as to permit the audience opportunities to participate in the work, and at the same time limit the number of possible satisfactory juxtaposition s.