The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an unprecedented exhibition of
Japanese art drawn from the renowned Mary Griggs Burke Collection, the
largest and most encompassing private collection of Japanese art outside
Japan, beginning March 28. Bringing together some 200 masterpieces —
including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy, lacquerware, and
ukiyo-e prints — Masterpieces of Japanese Art from the Mary
Griggs Burke Collection will reveal the remarkable range and quality of
Mrs. Burke's activities as a collector over the past 37 years.
Organized chronologically — from the earliest Japanese cultures of around
3000 B.C. to the Edo period (1615-1868) — the exhibition will provide an
overview of the development of Japanese art as well as explore the use of
divergent artistic traditions, including those adapted from other cultures and
those that reflect native Japanese tastes. This is the first major exhibition of
Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum since 1975. Many works in the
exhibition, including the luminous, early-17th-century screen, Women
Contemplating Floating Fans, have never before been seen by the public.
The collection of Mary Griggs Burke has long been recognized as one of the
finest assemblages of Japanese art in private hands, commented Philippe de
Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. It is the only American
collection ever to be shown at the Tokyo National Museum, a testament to
Mrs. Burke's sensitivity to and appreciation of Japanese aesthetics. From the
astonishing early ceramics to painted 17th-century ukiyo-e evocations of
urban life, these works span vividly the remarkable history of one of the
world's great cultures.
Early Works
A ceramic vessel from the middle Jomon period (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.) —
with a flamboyant rim and decorative markings made by impressing parts of
a rope into the clay body — opens the exhibition. Other early ceramics
include a Haniwa Figure of a Young Woman with a Large Chignon and a
barrel-shaped bottle (yokobe), both from the sixth century.
Ties to China and Korea are most evident in the introduction of Buddhism to
Japan from the Korean kingdom of Paekche in 538. Building temples and
commissioning painting and sculptures were important activities for the
members of the imperial family and other privileged individuals during the
Nara (710-784), Heian (794-1185), and Kamakura (1185-1333)
periods.
Highlights in the exhibition include several sculptures created using the
yosegi or joined-wood technique, such as an image of Bishamonten, the
guardian of the North, and that of Fudo, a fierce protector. A representation of
the Bodhisattva Jizo is the work of Kaikei (active 1185-1223), a member
of the prominent Kei school noted for his tempering of the powerful realism
of the Kamakura period with the courtly elegance of an earlier style. The
blending of the imported religion of Buddhism with such older native
traditions as Shinto is illustrated by rare examples of male and female Shinto
gods from the 10th century, and an evocative 14th-century moonlit
landscape housing the Shinto Kasuga shrine in Nara.
In the ninth century, the creation of the kana script — which abbreviates
selected Chinese characters to represent syllables in Japanese — led to a
flowering of literature, painting, and calligraphy that reflected native
interests and aesthetics. Examples such as the 14th-century Painting
Competition and the contemporaneous Portrait of Fujiwara Teika
(1162-1241) illustrate the importance of poets and their oeuvres. Famous
collaborative works, such as One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets,
Selected at Mount Ogura, for which Hon'ami Koetsu (1558-1637) wrote
the calligraphy and Tawaraya Sotatsu (died ca. 1640) designed the writing
paper, continue this tradition. The Japanese genius for dramatic narratives
is exemplified by 17th- and 18th-century album leaves, handscrolls,
folding screens, and a lacquer box depicting scenes from the Tale of Genji —
often considered the world's first novel — written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu
around 1000.
Introduced from China in the 13th century, Zen Buddhism brought the
concept and technique of ink painting to Japan. At first used exclusively in
temples associated with this branch of the religion, ink paintings and Zen
themes soon moved to the secular world. Recently acquired, a charmingly
painted handscroll depicting the Ten Oxherding Songs, and dated 1278,
provides an early example of this Zen theme in which the actions of the young
herdsman and the powerful ox he tends serve as metaphors for the quest for
enlightenment.
14th-18th Century
An area of particular strength within the collection, Muromachi-period
(1391-1573) ink paintings include the diptych Orchids by Bonpo and a
depiction of the Chinese Zen masters Bukan, Kanzan, and Jittoku by Reisai,
both active in the 15th century. Sesson Shukei, a master of the 16th century,
is represented by two landscapes and by the Seven Sages of the Bamboo
Grove, a parody of a traditional Chinese theme of individualism and
eremetism that resonated in Zen circles.
The bold graphic forms of the green willows and gold bridges in the
16th-century Willows and Bridges exemplify the taste of the ruling elite
during the short-lived Momoyama period (1573-1615). This pair of folding
screens is often thought to represent the bridge over the Uji River, in
southeast Kyoto, a famous Japanese site celebrated in Japanese literature as
early as the eighth century. Powerful, simplified designs and striking
contrasts in shape and color are also evident in the seven examples of lacquer
in the Kodaiji style, such as the set of shelves decorated with a grapevine
motif. Named after the small Kodaiji, built as a mortuary temple by the
widow of the powerful warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, lacquers in this style
illustrate a novel and simplified use of the Japanese maki-e technique, in
which designs are created by sprinkling pieces of gold onto a black lacquer
background. The vibrant presence and tactile surfaces of ceramics produced
for use in the tea ceremony, first codified in the 16th century, also illustrate
the aesthetics of this period. Extraordinary examples include a water jar
from the Iga kilns, a black Seto tea bowl, and a white Shino example sketchily
painted with a design of a bridge and a house.
A comparison between two pairs of screens depicting cranes — one by Ishida
Yutei (1721-1780) and the other by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799) —
attests to the liveliness and diversity that characterize Japanese art during
the prosperous and stable Edo period. Set against a gold background, Yutei's
cranes are drawn with clean black outlines and painted in shades of white,
black, and gray, with touches of color around the heads. Rosetsu's birds, on
the other hand, are created with bold, black slashes of ink placed against
empty areas of white paper. The use of this technique, and the somewhat
eccentric personalities of the birds, explain his position as one of the three
great individualist masters of 18th-century painting, along with Ito Jakuchu
(1716-1800) and Soga Shohaku (1730-1781), who are also represented
in the exhibition.
The development of the Nanga School provides another example of the
Japanese openness to new themes, techniques, and ways of seeing during the
Edo period. Artists in this school based their work on the art of Chinese
literati masters who painted as an act of self-cultivation and
self-expression. Ike Taiga's (1723-1776) Gathering at the Orchard
Pavilion — a depiction of a famous Chinese poetry party said to have been
held on March 3, 353 — will pay homage to this tradition while illustrating a
distinctly Japanese flavor in its narrative quality, abundant use of pastel
colors, and dense, decorative brushwork.
A recently acquired, six-fold screen entitled Women Contemplating Floating
Fans provides a rare and important example of the rise of genre painting in
the late 16th and early 17th century. Eighteen stately women and their four
young attendants stand or sit along the railings of a bridge casting their fans
into the water and watching them float away, a possible reference to the
tradition of discarding used fans at the end of each summer. The women's
simple hairstyles and the stripes and small patterns in their clothing help
date the painting to the early 17th century. The elaborate hairstyle and
brilliant designs on the robe of the late-17th-century Kanbun Beauty, on
the other hand, illustrates changes in fashion during this period. This
painting belongs to the tradition known as ukiyo-e, or images of the
floating world, which celebrates the pleasures and cultural heroes of urban
dwellers in Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Paintings of this genre were
among the first objects acquired by Mrs. Burke and her late husband Jackson
Burke when they began collecting seriously in 1963 — the start of their
journey through Japanese history, culture, and art that will be recorded in
this exhibition.
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