Enter the exquisite exhibition, An Enduring Vision: 17th to 20th Century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection, in the Main Gallery of the Japan Society from 9 March to 20 June 2004, and you enter the serene realm of scholar-poets, ascetics, geishas, calligraphers, Zen monks and eccentrics of all sorts. One of two major exhibits held each year at the Society, Enduring Vision showcases nearly 100 works from the internationally acclaimed collection of Americans Kurt Gitter, a doctor, and Alice Rae Yelen, a curator-educator. This particular cache of paintings is regarded as one of the choicest and most extensive private collections of Japanese art in the West.
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| Courtesan Robes with Calligraphic Motifs, 1720s. Photo courtesy of the Japan Society |
Says Alexandra Munroe, Japan Society Gallery Director: "This exhibition is the first major survey of Japanese painting in more than two decades in New York City and confirms the brilliant achievements and vitality of individual artists in pre-modern Japan. This exhibition is especially timely now that Japan Society is approaching its 100th anniversary, perfectly complementing our ongoing mission to illuminate Japan's rich artistic, historical and cultural legacy for international audiences in New York."
The show—the first time the Gitter-Yelen Collection has come to the City#151;trumpets the works of independent artists, those not part of the official painting schools that serviced court and shogun elites. These are the paintings of experimental artists, whose works were commissioned by private patrons, many of them wealthy urban dwellers; some even painted for themselves. The focus is on individual schools and styles of Japanese painting, from the isolationist Edo period (1615-1868) to the Meiji period (1868-1912) and beyond.
A first-time visitor to the small, darkened gallery rooms is impressed by the variety and range of artistic styles on display, six altogether. There's the Nanga artists, who worshipped nature and derived their inspiration from the Chinese literati painters who idealized scholar-poets living in secluded bliss beside quiet streams and mountains. Pay careful note of Satake Kaikai's eighteenth-century fan-painting, Peach Blossom Landscape, with its calligraphic line that translates, "the banks are lined with flowering peach—embroidered ripples rise" and the artist's signature, "sake-loving Kaikai".
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| Cranes. Photo courtesy of the Japan Society |
The Maruyama-Shijo school prized realism and painted from life. Don't miss Watanabe Nangaku's bold Cranes (1796) or my personal favorite, Takeuchi Seiho's spare landscape-screen, White Heron on Willow and Crows and Persimmon (c. 1904), with an inky-black crow eating a persimmon in gorgeous, gilded isolation. But the sections devoted to Zenga and the Eccentric painters are perhaps the most enchanting, if idiosyncratic, parts of the show. Zenga, literally Zen paintings, were the creations of Zen monks in the Edo period and were frequently used to educate people about Buddhism. Nakahara Nantenbo's Procession of Monks (1925), the monochromatic ink-brushed depiction of two long lines of Zen supplicants, exudes vitality and charm; Hakuin Ekaku's Mount Fuji and Eggplant (1700s), with its evocation of the mountain via a single brushstroke, is pure poetry.
It's no surprise that the Zenga are in close proximity to the Eccentric paintings of three eighteenth-century Kyoto artists: Ito Jakuchu, Soga Shohaku and Nagasawa Rosetsu. The Eccentrics, or "individualists" as they also came to be known, defied classification, refusing to conform to the major painting traditions. We see here a refreshing humour, playfulness and Zen simplicity in Jakuchu's flowing outline of an elephant or his solitary, puffy crane.
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| Dancing Figures, 1828. Photo courtesy of the Japan Society |
The last area of the exhibit is devoted to the rather familiar Ukiyo-e genre, so-called "pictures of the floating world", that portray idealized geishas, prostitutes, Kabuki actors and the like in their respective realms, plying their respective trades. There's Kawamata Tsuneyuki's extraordinary painting, Male Prostitute Leaving a Brothel (1740s), extraordinary because the central figure is sporting high-heeled geta (wooden sandals) and a woman's hairstyle, and gives every appearance of being a courtesan until you read the very helpful label.
But the exhibit is a sensuous excursion with surprises, large and small. Picking your way through the vast array of screens, scrolls, fans and other dreamscapes is rather like discovering buried treasure. Emerging from the dim, cave-like rooms, one feels better for having made the journey. |
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