Art historians tend to specialize in tangible objects. However, they also consider objects in terms of the intangible concept of "value"; therefore they cannot neglect the significance of "people" - i.e. those who assign certain values to the objects. "People," by nature, represent a subjective, ever-changing and unpreserved being. How can we analyze them to achieve a truly empirical study?
  This report will take up an image of an artist that art historians have developed through their analyses of tangible objects. The author has chosen the artist Sesshu (1420-1502/06?) as the subject of this paper, given that a relatively rich array of works and historical documents remain in the case of this ink painter, and many aspects of Sesshu the man are known today, including his own personal appearance. Therefore, the interests of many researchers, including the speaker myself, have concentrated on Sesshu as a "person," while the study of his paintings has made only minor progress. Thus the established artist's image has a reverse effect on interpretations on his paintings and historical texts concerning him. This means that we are in a vicious cycle that props up the artist's image essentially based on thin evidence.
  For example, there is the case of the Landscape in the Gyokkan Style (commonly known as Haboku Landscape, Tokyo National Museum). This work has been variously "interpreted" over the years. However, each one of these interpretations has been based on each interpreter's own image of Sesshu. In other words, it is hard to come up with any interpretation without such an image. Further, it is hard to have a direct scholarly debate on which is the most appropriate image of the artist. All we can do is to analyze the scarce and fragmentary information remaining. In order to make such a debate effective, scholars must have a basic interpretation that actively avoids all secondary information about each case, rendering the artist's image as almost a blank slate. Such a process is the accumulation of sensible judgments based on detailed confirmation of facts, and it is by no means a unique method. However, given the previously immensely swollen image of Sesshu, art historians are faced with a complex situation in which it is often hard to determine what is a sensible judgment regarding him.
  At the very least, in the case of the Haboku Landscape, we can assume four different epochs for the work, namely when Sesshu gave it to Soen as a painting model and a farewell address in 1495; in 1497 when Soen received colophons from six famous Zen priests and poets in Kyoto on the work and made it his own personal resume; the Edo period when the painting, along with the painter's own words, was recognized as representing the great master's painting style, and the modern era when the work was designated a National Treasure thanks to its accompanying writings by subsequent famous Japanese artists. Such various factors associated with this work of art spanning a more than 500-year period may neither be interpreted within the framework of the single painter nor be explained as the original achievement of the unique genius artist.
  People live within their relationships to other people, and objects are valued and handed on within their relationships to people. Thus, the construction of an artist's image is all the more complex. Aiming for the unattainable overall image, it is necessary to continuously confirm detailed facts and dig out memories from the surrounding state of affairs. Such a process cannot be exhausted simply by the search for the individual artist. Moreover, it can probably be further stated that the importance of Sesshu in the history of Japanese art has surpassed the intentions of Sesshu himself. We might overlook the importance of this fact in individual object debates or individual artist debates.