ARTH-212 – History of World Art II
Instructor: Ann Porter
Office: 303A
Hours: MW 10:00-11:00; TTh 3:00- 4:00
Arts of Japan, pages 850-871
Ink Painting—Muromachi Period
Landscape, Bunsei (active c. 1450-1460), page 852
Winter Landscape, Sesshu (1420-1506), page page 855
Zen Dry Garden—Muromachii Period
Ryoan-ji, page 856
Architecture—Momoyama Period
Himeji Castle (1601-09), page 857
Ceramics—Edo Period
Mt Fuji Teabowl, Hon’ami Koetsu (1558-1637), page 859
Japanese artist, poet, calligrapher, tea master, and landscape gardener. Considered one of the greatest and most influential
artists of the 17th cent., his painting, calligraphy, and related arts used a stylized version of the yamato-e style of traditional
Japanese art. His career flourished during the brilliant Momoyama period (1573-1615), which served as a historical bridge
between medieval and early modern Japan. Together with Sotatsu , Koetsu is credited with founding the Rimpa school,
which promoted a decorative style that included the use of bright colors, gold or figured grounds for paintings, and liquid
washes. With Suminokura Soan, he published the Sagabon, for which he did the calligraphy accompanying the plates. In
the late 1590s, he became interested in ceramics, especially raku tea bowls of a thin, delicate nature. He also founded an
artistic community at Takagamine that produced countless objects of great beauty and refinement. One of his most famous
works is the Deer Scroll (Seattle Art Museum), in which his calligraphy accompanies Sotatsu's graceful ink drawings.—
encyclopedia.com
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/stern/stern9-13-4.asp
Printmaking—Edo Period
The Great Wave, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
Hokusai, full name Katsushika Hokusai Japanese painter and wood engraver, born in Edo (now Tokyo). He is considered
one of the outstanding figures of the Ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world" (everyday life), school of printmaking.
Hokusai entered the studio of his countryman Katsukawa Shunsho in 1775 and there learned the new, popular technique of
woodcut printmaking. Between 1796 and 1802 he produced a vast number of book illustrations and color prints, perhaps as
many as 30,000, that drew their inspiration from the traditions, legends, and lives of the Japanese people. Hokusai's most
typical wood-block prints, silkscreens, and landscape paintings were done between 1830 and 1840. The free curved lines
characteristic of his style gradually developed into a series of spirals that imparted the utmost freedom and grace to his
work, as in Raiden, the Spirit of Thunder. In his late works Hokusai used large, broken strokes and a method of coloring
that imparted a more somber mood to his work, as in his massive Group of Workmen Building a Boat. Among his bestknown works are the 13-volume sketchbook Hokusai manga (begun 1814) and the series of block prints known as the
Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (circa 1826-33). –ibiblio.org
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/ukiyo-e/images/8702s.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/uttamkumar44/kirifuri_hokusai.jpg&imgrefurl=http://
www.geocities.com/uttamkumar44/hokusai1.html&h=480&w=320&sz=31&tbnid=onXBIcEgpTcJ:&tbnh=126&tbnw=84
&start=32&prev=/images%3Fq%3DKatsushika%2BHokusai%2B%26start%3D20%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN
Geisha as Daruma Crossing the Sea, Suzuki Harunobu (1724-1770)
Contemporary Works
Chuichi Fugii (b. 1941) Untitled 90
Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture
Your country lies in radioactive ruins; your rapacious military has been castrated; hated barbarians
write your new constitution. Naturally, you rebel, and eventually unleash upon the world . . . lifesize plushies.
A bipedal persimmon greets visitors to "Little Boy," its doe-eyed visage typical of the cuddly civic
mascots that represent many Japanese municipalities. Descended from cinematic actors in monster
costumes trampling miniature cities, these hybrids embody curator Takashi Murakami's thesis that
catastrophic defeat in World War II turned the Japanese into "bloated little children." And children
must have toys—just beyond the ranks of Hello Kitty merchandise, 14 Godzilla models snarl
before an enlarged excerpt from Japan's 1946 constitution (promulgated by the American
occupiers): "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right." Officially pacifist
amid Cold War anxieties, Japan crouched beneath the U.S.'s protective nuclear umbrella. Is the
exhibit's phalanx of Jurassic reptiles (in the original movie, Godzilla is awakened from hibernation
by an H-bomb test) raging against the victor's paternalism?—
www.villagevoice.com/ art/0516,baker,63125,13.html
Chiho Aoshima – City Glow and Paradise http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/littleboy/23.html
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/littleboy/large/26.jpg
Chinatsu Ban – V W X Yellow Elephant Underwear/H I J Kiddy Elephant
http://www.exhibit5a.com/images/blog/elephants.jpg
Yasumasa Morimura (b.1951) Self Portrait
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/catayasu/imag3.jpg&imgrefu
rl=http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/catayasu/yasumasa01.html&h=500&w=335&sz=13&tbnid=wnW1A
ETAbFAJ:&tbnh=127&tbnw=85&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3DYasumasa%2Bmorimura%26hl%3Den%2
6lr%3D
Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) Page 870
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/upload/2006/06/murakami1.jpg
http://www.highsnobiety.com/uploads/pics/murakami_moca_6.jpg
http://www.blindangle.co.uk/blind_angle/artist_pages/takashi_murakami/takashi_murakami_jellyfish_eyes_black4.jpg
Art to remember for Exam:
The Great Wave, 25-1
Mt Fuji Teabowl, 25-9
Magic Ball (Positive), 25-19
Vocabulary to remember for Exam:
Raku, Japonisme, Ukiyo-e
Bibliography:
Text
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/stern/stern9-13-00.asp
Fahr-Becker, Japanese Prints; Tashen, 2000
On Zen Aesthetics:
Hisamatsu presents the Zen aesthetics as an integrated complex of cultural forms, which are described
through seven interdependent characteristics. The order of these characteristics does not at all indicate their
degree of importance; each of them is of equal importance, Hisamatsu writes. The Seven Characteristics are
Asymmetry, Simplicity, Austere Sublimity or Lofty Dryness, Naturalness, Subtle Profundity or Deep
Reserve, Freedom from Attachment, and Tranquillity. Typically to Zen philosophy, these characteristics are
defined both positive and negated (or more precisely expressed: trans-dualistic - it is the dualism, which is
negated or transcended). For instance the first characteristic, Asymmetry, simultaneously is No Rule. So
after defining the Seven Characteristics, Hisamatsu in Zen and the Fine Arts goes through the seven
negated characteristics, which in his terminology correspond to seven expressions of the Formless Self.
Thus the Seven Characteristics are not separate or independent of each other; they rather make up seven
aspects of an undivided whole. Though, if these seven pairs of characteristics seem a little difficult to
separate from each other, it doesn't matter too much. For, as Hisamatsu states, an object with properties of
only one of these characteristics, possesses properties of all seven characteristics, which in their
indivisibility makes up an entire whole.
http://www.htokai.ac.jp/DA/hvass/seminar99/zen_aesthetics/zen_hisamatsu.html