Modern East Asian Exhibition at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Cambridge, MA (October 12, 2001) — More than 75 objects from China, Korea, and Japan are on display at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum as part of Tradition and Synthesis: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Works from East Asia, which will remain open through June 9, 2002.

Tradition and Synthesis focuses on a period of history that saw an end to China’s Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Korea’s Choson dynasty (1392-1910), and Japan’s prosperous Edo period (1615-1868) and the subsequent opening of these societies to the outside world. Every aspect of East Asian society —including the visual arts—underwent extreme change as this new openness brought with it social and political upheaval, technological modernization, and Western thought and learning. These forces pulled the artists in each society in a variety of often-contradictory directions, leading some to continue the revered artistic traditions of their past and others to ignore their cultural roots and embrace newly introduced Western styles, media, formats, and subject matter. Still others sought synthesis, seamlessly blending their historical legacies with other non-Asian influences to achieve a truly international style.

"After Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into what is now Tokyo Bay and opened Japan to the West in 1853-54, Japanese woodblock prints and gloriously hand-colored photographs captured the Western imagination," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "This fascination contributed to the development of impressionism, Japonisme, and art noveau."

Among the artistic forms on display in Tradition and Synthesis are Japanese printmaking and photography. With Perry came the newly developed technology of photography and the ensuing decline of the Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print, until then the country’s most popular art form. Ukiyo-e prints (or "pictures of the floating world") were ephemeral glimpses of popular culture. The prints usually depicted such things as fashions, famous actors, and beautiful women. Some European photographers, worried that the essence of traditional Japan would be obliterated by the new Western influence, tried to emphasize in their work some of the same qualities of line, composition, and subject matter found in the ukiyo-e prints. They also took full advantage of the availability of skilled colorists, since many traditional print artists and textile designers were out of work as a result of the collapse of the feudal system.

Tradition and Synthesis is divided into three galleries. The first features Chinese painting and ceramics, Korean painting and ceramics, and Japanese painting and photography of the 19th-century. At the entrance to the exhibition is the majestic hanging scroll The Great Tree by the Shanghai-school painter Ren Yi (also known as Ren Bonian; 1840–1895). In its subject matter, this painting is unique among the artist’s more than 3,000 surviving works. The gnarled tree trunks are like sculpted forces, twisting and turning as they soar. The knots, plentiful though merely decorative in Ren’s earlier works, now become an integral part of that aged robustness.

The second and third galleries feature East Asian art of the 20th-century. The second room is dominated by a large unmounted "inkflow painting" entitled Innerscape: Manifestation by the Japanese artist Utsumi Nobuhiko (born 1953), and also contains a wide array of modern Japanese ceramics. Also shown in the second gallery are two contemporary Chinese paintings –– Early Spring Landscape and Shouldering –– by the Taiwanese artist Liu Guosong (also known as Liu Kuo-sung; born 1932). Liu was the founder of the Fifth Moon Group, a coterie of painters active in Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s that forged a synthesis of Western expressionistic styles with traditional Chinese materials, subjects, and formats. To create a new and interestingly textured ground for his paintings, Liu used a special variety of handmade paper, the preparation of which he oversaw, deeming it ready before all of the long wood fibers had dissolved and been absorbed into the matrix. After applying ink and pigments to this specially prepared paper, Liu pulled away selected paper fibers, creating startling effects that could not be achieved with brush alone.

The third and final room features Japanese woodblock prints of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th-centuries. Three traditions emerge: first, prints of the Meiji period (1868–1912) –– exemplified by a brightly colored triptych designed by the artist Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847–1915) depicting Emperor Meiji with court ladies wearing fashionable Western attire; second, the so-called new print (Shin hanga) tradition of the Taisho (1912-26) and early Showa (1926–89) periods, in which early 20th-century artists sought to update the earlier woodblock genres of flower-and-bird, landscape, beautiful woman, and Kabuki actor prints –– typified by the portrait of Actor Nakamura Ganjiro by Yamamura Toyonari (1885–1942); and third, the so-called creative print (Sosaku hanga) movement, in which 20th-century Japanese printmakers took inspiration from Western artists who not only designed their own prints but actively cut their own blocks, inked them, and did the actual printing.

Also on display in the final gallery is a group of objects that show the influence of Japanese design on the art of the West. Although Japan was officially closed to the Western world for most of the Edo period, Japanese objects trickled into European collections through the limited trade Japan allowed with Dutch merchants in the southern port of Nagasaki. Upon the island nation’s opening in 1854, however, there was a veritable explosion of European interest in things Japanese. Especially in France, Japan’s ukiyo-e woodblock prints were held in the highest esteem, and many European artists looked to this foreign graphic tradition for new direction in their own art.

Anne Rose Kitigawa, assistant curator of Japanese art, drew upon the permanent collections of the Harvard University Art Museums for this exhibition, along with a few select loans. In addition to Japanese prints and photographs, she has assembled East Asian paintings, sculptures, ceramics, lacquers, textiles, and other decorative arts from the past two centuries. She has also selected a few Western works that reflect the influence of East Asian styles and techniques upon Western art.

"I am confident that our museum visitors will find many of the works currently on exhibition to be unlike those usually seen in our Asian galleries," says Kitagawa. "I’m hopeful that viewers will come away with new insights into the relationships between the various arts of modern China, Korea, and Japan as well as the cross-currents of influence between East Asian aesthetics and those of the West."

The Japanese prints and photographs on view during the first half of Tradition and Synthesis will be rotated sometime during the early months of 2002, allowing a glimpse of twenty more of these light-sensitive works.

About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are among the world’s leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, the Straus Center for Conservation, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey.

The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is encouraged to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum is located at 32 Quincy St., Cambridge, and the Sert Gallery is next door at 24 Quincy St. They are a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA subway station.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and the museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $5; $4 for seniors and $3 for students; The museums are free to those under 18 and to everyone all day on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. until noon. More detailed information is available on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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