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An Exhibition of Modern Japanese Paintings Source: Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, Vol. 17, No. 69 (Oct., 1921), pp. 18-21 Published by: Philadelphia Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3793841 . Accessed: 16/05/2014 13:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Philadelphia Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.29.185.189 on Fri, 16 May 2014 13:43:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

An Exhibition of Modern Japanese Paintings

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An Exhibition of Modern Japanese PaintingsSource: Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, Vol. 17, No. 69 (Oct., 1921), pp. 18-21Published by: Philadelphia Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3793841 .

Accessed: 16/05/2014 13:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Philadelphia Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin ofthe Pennsylvania Museum.

http://www.jstor.org

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An Exhibition of Modern Japanese Paintings

THE

Japanese Academy, founded by the great Okakura twenty- four years ago, is now having its second American Exhibition.

It is more than fifteen years since their work has been seen in

this country and critics are much interested to compare the first im-

pressions with those of today.

Among the exhibitors of the paintings now on view at the

Museum only four of the sixteen names were on the original list of

members, but these four are among the best known and most repre- sentative. Twenty-five years ago, when Japanese art seemed in the

doldrums and the Government Art School was demanding European

teachers, a little group of loyal painters was formed for the express

purpose of combating the senseless imitation of Western mannerisms.

They declared that the traditions of their own country were the only

proper ones for Japanese artists and that if a change in Japanese art

must come it ought to come logically and slowly by real understanding.

Try as they might to fight it off, the change has come and the work of the year 1920 shows Western influence, and Indian, and

strange almost archaeological harking back to antiquity. Every one of the paintings, with perhaps three or four exceptions, shows the Oriental mastery of color as we should expect, but what has happened to those marvelous brush-strokes of Japan? Where is that supple power and inevitable certainty of line in which we believed Oriental art to excel?

It is interesting to note that only two from the whole series are

sumi-e, ink paintings pure and simple. A dozen years ago a similar exhibition would undoubtedly have contained at least half in pure ink.

Further, Buddhist subjects are scarce. One, a sketch for a makimono, shows torture scenes from Hell, but one suspects that grim humor and consciousness of his own ability to sketch crowded figures and contorted semi-bestial shapes was the impulse that drove the artist to his subject, rather than any genuine religious fervor.

Yokoyama Taikwan has sent three paintings, characteristic enough of his old imaginative styles, but instinctively one feels the lack in them of the anxious and humble craftsman striving to express the inexpressible. Perhaps they are too easy and accomplished. It may be that things were truer when he and Hishida and Shimomura and Kimura worked in poverty together, when Okakura's praise and blame was their only light.

Maeda Seison's "Catfish," in ink, with a touch of gold for the eye, is in a way as extraordinary a piece of craftsmanship as any among them all. In subject, and even somewhat in manner, there is a hint of the delicate Chinese album pictures from late Sung through the whole range of Ming. But it could have been painted by no one but a Japanese, and a modern Japanese. It is smooth and supple as you will, invisible water supports the fat, white body, and the three pop-

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Hill Temple After the Rain By Yokpyama Taikwan

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The Catfish By Maeda Seison

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eyed flat fish among the impalpable streamers. It is pretty and almost

incredibly skillful, but it is not Chinese. Our own Chase making his

dead fish on copper pans was almost more Chinese.

In "The Catfish," then, and in Yokoyama Taikwan's "After the

Rain," where one almost hears the pagoda bells tinkling from their

hollow in the muffled hills, we can see the best of new Japan. Much

may be done by Japanese students in Paris, and something may be

conceivably accomplished by the archaeologizing painters, but one

cannot help thinking that progress lies in the native school which

knows its China better than its Europe; their paintings will never be

true Chinese, nor ought they to be, but they will stand on a f oundation

which has never failed any earnest seeker and which is peculiarly their own.

This Museum desires to express its gratitude to the gentlemen in this country and in Japan who made it possible for us to examine modern Oriental tendencies and it is hoped we shall have a similar

opportunity each succeeding year.

Study Collection of Laces

A collection of representative laces of the period covered by the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries has recently been put on exhibition. This series is lent to the Museum by the Needle and Bobbin Club of New York, and comprises about sixty cards upon which are mounted small pieces of every sort of lace made in Europe during this period. While the collection is in no way remarkable for individual pieces, as a whole it is of immense value as a study series since here may be seen not only the development of lace making through the centuries, but also the methods employed in each particular technique. The

reticello, matting and tapestry stitches of the filet laces are first shown in chronological order, followed by examples of needle-point and bobbin laces of England, Italy, France and Scandinavia.

The exhibition should be of interest not alone to collectors and the public in general but also to manufacturers of laces and workers in arts and crafts.

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