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Transformation in Bird and Flower Painting from the Eighth to Eleventh Centuries
Get PDF“Bird-and-flower” and “landscape” subject matter had both already appeared in Chinese painting during the Tang dynasty. Despite differences from the perspective of discourse with landscape painting, which had developed its own, no specialized terminology for bird-and-flower painting had appeared at that time. Nevertheless, the history of bird-andflower painting from the Tang to Song dynasties is of great importance. This study analyzes significant results in the development of bird-and-flower painting between the Tang and Song dynasties (eighth to eleventh centuries). In doing so, the author has discovered that changes and developments in the idea of “landscaping” led to a process of incubation, formation, and development for bird-and-flower painting during the Tang to Song period.
Several essential points in the study include the following. First, archaeological evidence from wall paintings reveals that, in the period between the eighth and ninth centuries, bird-and-flower subject matter developed out of the different categories of figure painting and decorative design. Second, the study shows the maturation of “natural landscaping” around the ninth and tenth centuries, in which refined scenery was arranged in a painting according to the nature of the things depicted therein, representing the beginnings for the foundation of an independent bird-andflower painting category. And third, with the achievements of such painters as Huang Quan and Huang Jucai in the latter half of the tenth century, the results originally in “natural landscaping” went through a period of change, leading to the pursuit of a further developments for a “fusion of feeling and setting” seen in the paintings of Cui Bo later in the eleventh century. This study points out that the construct of “painting surface” in bird-and-flower painting of the eleventh century differed from that of the previous generations. Not only did “units” develop according to the nature of things on the “painting surface,” an emphasis was placed on the relationship between these “units” to form a “fusion” of unity, thereby expressing further meaning and implication beyond the view of nature in the painting. The probe in this study of a series of developments explains the “transformations in bird-and-flower painting” in terms of trajectories, influences, and art-historical significance.journal articl
Exhibition Reviews: Exhibitions Held on the 70th Anniversary of the End of World War II – As considered in terms of an awareness of the period designations “pre-war” and “post-war”
Get PDFThe year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and there has never before been such a concentration of exhibitions held in Japan that are so strongly aware of those two periods known as the prewar and postwar years. In this article I consider four exhibitions in which I was interested, discussing them in terms of their awareness of these two timeframes.
Restart of Japanese Painting in the Post-World War II Period
This exhibition was arranged in four sections, presenting 65 works by 19 painters, predominantly Western style painters. Section 1 introduced the members of the Shinjin Gakai such as Matsumoto Shunsuke; Section 2 focused on the semi-abstract expression of such Jiyû Bijutsuka Kyôkai members as Murai Masanari; Section 3 presented Surrealist painters such as Fukuzawa Ichirô of the Bijutsu Bunka Kyôkai and the Nihon Avant-Garde Artists’ Club, and Section 4 displayed Maruki Iri & Toshi’s Hiroshima Panels and the reportage style paintings of Yamashita Kikuji and others of the same group.
This exhibition made an effort to divide the complex structure and characteristics of postwar painting into comprehensible groupings, and thus we can credit them for their gallery arrangement and positioning of works. The organizers’ opinions of the chosen artists and works outside of their positioning within history cannot be found in the exhibition. Further, the fact that they took on the first postwar decade as their subject in order to grasp the beginnings of postwar art, reveals a fixed viewpoint on the prewar and the postwar.
1940s - Rediscovery of 20th Century Japanese Art IV
The decisive difference between this exhibition, which took as its subject the same decade as Restart of Japanese Painting in the Post-World War II Period, arose because of the five-year difference in starting point, 1940 rather than 1945. The 1940s are divided into two five-year periods pre and post the 1945 ending of the war. Given the normal tendency to divide the pre and postwar periods into two opposing periods, this exhibition clearly was arranged from a different stance, as seen in the trends in other fields of research in which there was a determination to see a point of connectivity and continuity between these two.
Cutting across various media including painting, the six sections of the exhibition reconsidered the various aspects and characteristics of Japanese art during this decade shaken by war. The appointment of guest curators for the history of photography and history of decorative arts meant particular results in both of those areas. Conversely, issues with the exhibition arose, such as the organizers’ attitude towards the question of how much the artists cooperated with the war effort and the limitations of display methods seen in the concentration of the explanatory panels in each section.
Japanese Painters under World War II: How did they survive war?
While unusual in its setting of three time periods, the war years sandwiched between the pre and postwar periods, the exhibition’s lack of divisions between pre and postwar was a feature shared with 1940s. This exhibition of 14 painters focused on such Western style painters as Foujita Tsuguharu, with some additional Nihonga painters and a printmaker, as it considered how their works developed and changed over the three periods. It examined how these painters, forced to live in the war years, sought to live as artists.
And yet, the galleries revealed the exhibition planning background in which loan negotiation difficulties arose regarding who was displayed, what works were displayed and for what time periods. Thus the exhibition did not necessarily follow the original vision set out by its organizers. Like 1940s, the organizers’ interpretations and evaluations were concentrated on panels in each section (here, each artist’s section), and the fact that they have gone further than other exhibitions can be commended, while more work remains to be done on fully conveying their aims.
Special Exhibit from the MOMAT Collection
Foujita Tsuguharu: Complete Works from the Museum Collection
Like Japanese Painters under World War II, this exhibition divided the painters’ creative phases into three parts, prewar, war and postwar, and took up Foujita Tsuguharu, one of the artists also featured in that show. This exhibition differed from the above three in that it comprised works from the museum’s own collection and was a solo exhibition. This exhibition was also unusual in that 14 of the 25 works displayed were war paintings, and thus new discoveries about the artist were made thanks to this tight focus on the war period. The gift of this first experiment at displaying all of Foujita’s war paintings can be said to have been thanks to all that has taken place in the long time period of seventy years since the war.
And yet, regarding the phenomenon of the exhibitions held this year 70 years after the war, given the ongoing change in generations among museum curators, it is hard to imagine that there will be another occasion in the future when such a selection of exhibitions will be planned with the same sense of postwar period awareness and sensibility.journal articl
Investigation of Izu-no-Chohachi’s Works of Art by X-ray Radiography
Get PDFIzu-no-Chohachi was an artist who was active from the late Edo period to the early Meiji period.He left a large number of statues and kote-e works,which are paintings drawn in plaster using a trowel, a tool used by plasterers to paint a wall.
For research on the techniques for producing these works,a structural investigation by X-ray radiography was conducted at the Izu-no-Chohachi Art Museum in the town of Matsuzaki, Kamo-gun, Shizuoka Prefecture, on May 19 and 20, 2015.
From the X-ray images of kote-e works,a layered structure was identified.For almost all of the works, the substrates were found to be composed of several wooden plates on which plaster had been applied with a trowel.
From the X-ray images of the statues, their inner structure was revealed. In the statues, core materials such as wood,metal or fibrous object were selected appropriately depending on the part where they were used.journal articl
Project for Investigation of Damage Situation of Cultural Heritage in Nepal: Survey of Historic Settlment 2015 Project for International Contribution to Cultural Heritage Protection
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The Relationship between Accent in the Muromachi Era and the Melody of Noh Chant as Verified in the Process of Reproducing “Matsukaze”
Get PDFThe theme of the 10th Open Lecture of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage was the relationship between the accent of the lyrics and the melody of traditional Japanese songs. In the lecture, the present author reproduced the melody of a noh chant in the Momoyama era and requested a noh player to sing the old melody in order to verify to what extent the melody of the chant reflects the accent of the Muromachi era.
There are many music scores of “Matsukaze” dating to the Momoyama era that remain today. In Jinkaisho , a writing of the Momoyama era that was used as reference in making the reproduction, the melody of a noh chant is expressed by means of scale terminology used in gagaku in addition to the usual goma (sesame)-shaped marks placed on the side of the lyrics. A study of this example indicated that the direction of the goma and the transition in the scale correspond, that when the goma mark falls to the right the melody also falls. So, in order to reproduce “Matsukaze,” the marks found in music scores of noh chants were studied.
As a result, it was found that in comparatively many cases the melody follows the accent to a great extent. It was also found that in the case of homonyms, the melody is changed according to the accent so that it is possible to distinguish the meaning. For example, the word for “night” and that for “to approach” both have the same sound “yoru,” but their accents differ. This difference in meaning was expressed by following the difference in accent. Such distinction, however, is not made today.
The progression of notes in noh chant of the Momoyama era is also different from that of today. According to HIROSE Masaji, the supplementary mark イ attached to the goma mark indicates intermediary notes on a scale which were chanted then but are not today. But that theory, too, has been proven not correct in the process of reproducing “Matsukaze.” The progression of notes in the reproduced melody became more detailed than that of noh chant today which do not necessarily follow the accent of spoken Japanese. However, the author thinks that by being released from the restrictions of the accent of a given time, noh has become a more universally accepted genre of performing arts.departmental bulletin pape
Letters by Fujishima Takeji Addressed to Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichirô: Facsimiles, Transcriptions and Explanatory Notes (III, cont.) – Focusing on Conditions in his Pre and Post Overseas Study Years
Get PDFBijutsu Kenkyû No. 417 presented 16 letters and postcards written by Fujishima Takeji to Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichirô from July 4, 1898 onwards. This issue continues this process, presenting facsimiles and transcriptions of four letters and three postcards written during the Taishô period and relevant explanatory notes. For the explanation of the correspondence overall, please see issue No. 417.journal articl
Twenty-Five Bodhisattvas Descending from Heaven : restoration report : the cooperative program for the conservation of Japanese art objects overseas : No.2012-1
Get PDFキンベル美術館（アメリカ合衆国） 所蔵 Kimbell Art Museum, United States of America絹本着色 掛幅装 2 幅 Color on silk, hanging scroll (two scrolls)平成 24 年度修復事業 2012 Japanese Fiscal Yearboo