In praise of the painted word - the dying art of calligraphy

"Brush Writing in the Arts of Japan", at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the perfect place to mourn the lost art of handwriting. Here, among the medieval Zen monks, the 11th-century literati and the courtesans of the Edo-era "floating world", it's impossible to separate language from gesture and composition from performance.

Among the most illuminating works is a one-page letter from the Heian period (794-1185), written by courtier-poet Fujiwara Akisuke. The message itself is a cursory invitation to a banquet. It reads: "Reception for the newly appointed minister. Twenty-seventh day. The date is now officially designated. Though I should have contacted you in person, because it is too late now, I am sending this note."

John Carpenter, curator of Asian art for the Met, who organised the show, compares the tone of the letter to that of an e-mail. The supple brush work, careful spacing and fine paper remind us that even a casual, pragmatic missive took some effort. Many years later, the letter was mounted as a hanging scroll; it's impossible to imagine anyone taking the trouble to preserve an electronic communication in this manner, or collageing a whole bunch of them onto a folding screen, as one late-19th-century gentleman did with small cards and other inscribed papers from his literary friends.

The show begins with Buddhist scriptures set among the permanent displays of Buddhist and Shinto sculptures, and moves on to Chinese-influenced ink paintings, decorative objects, large screens and woodblock prints.

Some of the transitions are difficult to navigate. Viewers unfamiliar with ancient East Asian languages may not know, for instance, whether they are looking at kanji (Chinese characters) or the Japanese phonetic characters known as kana.

They will, at least, be able to latch onto a couple of strong motifs that demonstrate the importance of brush writing through the centuries. One is the "Four Accomplishments", a sort of glorification of the well-rounded gentleman usually represented by four figures engaged in calligraphy, painting, music and games of strategy. Early in the exhibition, this theme appears on a pair of mid-16th-century folding screens by Kano Motonobu.