Having come across the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures through the library it runs, I also discovered that it puts on Monthly lectures on differing topics. The November lecture was given by Emura Tomoko who is Head of the Archives Section at the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (Tobunken). She was introduced a specialist in history of pre-modern Japanese art with a particular interest in paintings by Rinpa artists.

She started by describing how the expression of the seasons took different forms, for example folding screens and hanging scrolls. The images frequently incorporated Waka poems; “The word waka means ‘Japanese poem,’ and it is a form so basic to Japanese literature that Japanese still study and write it today” (What Is a Waka? s.d.). The form of poetry, the Haiku, with which we are probably more familiar, derives from the Waka.

Around the 10^th century poems and calligraphy were greatly enjoyed, people would compose poems while looking at paintings on folding screens. The poems were then attached to the screen. These folding screens provided a convenient format for paintings, there could be several panels and would be looked at when sitting on the floor as opposed to the western tradition of hanging paintings on a wall at eye level when standing.

Hanging scrolls were also used for paintings, these were usually displayed in alcoves in a house to be admired by viewers. They were generally displayed for special events and, when the event was over, were taken down, rolled up, and stored in a box. Owners were encouraged to keep the scrolls on display only for the duration of the specific event.

One of the most significant art schools in Japan is the Kano school. “The Kano school was the longest lived and most influential school of painting in Japanese history; its more than 300-year prominence is unique in world art history”. (Department of Asian Art s.d.).

We heard how different flowers represent the seasons in traditional Japanese art:

• Plum and Cherry                                              –              Spring
• Peony                                                                      –              Summer
• Chrysanthemum and Maple leaf            –              Autumn
• Camellia                                                                 –              Winter

Kano Eitoku was described as one of the most remarkable artists of the Kano School. A six-panel screen of his was used as an illustration. Titled Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons it illustrates how the progression of the seasons can be shown across a single scene, through the inclusion of birds and flowers from different seasons on the same screen.

The talk moved on to the combination of painting and poetry, mention was made of an album of Waka poems drawn onto paintings. The album was of poems on pictures of flowersand grasses of the four seasons; the painting was by Tawaraya Sotatsu and the calligraphy by Hon’ami Koetsu. This led to discussion of the Rimpa (or Rinpa) school. “Rimpa refers to the school and style of images developed by Hon’ami Kōetsu and Tawaraya Sōtatsu in the early Edo period (1615-1868). Promoting its distinct decorative style made in response to past works, Rimpa school created its own unique aesthetics through decades of reiterations” (Yoko 2015).

“Central to the Rinpa aesthetic is the evocation of nature as well as eye-catching compositions that cleverly integrate text and image” (Carpenter 2012 p11). The Rinpa style continues to the present day, but the next Rinpa artist mentioned in the lecture was Ogata Korin. He too painted Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons, originally as a handscroll then as a folding screen. He used the conventional technique of showing different seasonal flowers on the same screen to illustrate the passage of time.

One of Korin’s best known works is Irises.

“Using only green and blue on a gold background, he vividly depicts stylized clumps of irises in a composition that is simple, clear and rhythmical, foreshadowing a modern graphic style” (Tamashige 2015).

What was interesting from the lecture was that studies have revealed that some of the Irises have been stencilled on to the screen, rather than them all having been freely hand painted. However, because the screens, in normal use, present the flowers in a zig-zag pattern, this is not at all obvious. I thought that this was a good example of the need to present works of art in the way that they were initially designed. Some galleries might present such a screen flat against a wall, but this is not the original intention of the artist, and the viewer might get more from seeing the work as originally intended.

This work is also a good example of how Japanese art (in this style) focuses on short-lived beauty – most flowers bloom and last for just a few days. The lecturer stated that, traditionally, Japanese people felt affection for transient images. What the artist is doing is preserving that moment. Traditional Japanese flower painting captures ephemeral moments in transient scenes and makes them permanent in the painting.

 

REFERENCES

Carpenter, J.T. (2012) Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Department of Asian Art (s.d.) The Kano School of Painting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kano/hd_kano.htm (Accessed on 26 November 2019)

Kōrin, O. (s.d.) Irises. At: http://www.nezu-muse.or.jp/en/ (Accessed on 22 August 2019)

Tamashige, S. (2015) Korin: the late bloomer with innovative in style | The Japan Times. At: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/05/05/arts/korin-late-bloomer-innovative-style/ (Accessed on 27 November 2019)

Yoko, K. (2015) ‘Museums in Japan‘ In: e-Magazine, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures Summer (12) [online] At: https://sainsbury-institute.org/e-mag/issue-12-summer-2015/museums-in-japan/ (Accessed on 27 November 2019)

I read a very positive review in The Guardian of the exhibition Hogarth: Place and Progress which is at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. This was the first I had heard of the exhibition, but reading that it brought together in one place all of Hogarth’s ‘series’ – paintings and engravings – it seemed too great an opportunity to miss.

I admire Hogarth’s work and the narratives that he tells within his work, his comments on the morality of his time. In a previous photography module (Photography 1 Context and Narrative) for this course I had produced a contemporary version of Hogarth engraving The Politician.

So this was an exceptional opportunity to see all of his series together in the one place.

I had not visited the Sir John Soane’s Museum before. It is in three neighbouring houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The first originally purchased by Sir John Soane as his residence and the other two purchased at a later date to house his growing art collection.

For a museum or gallery, the rooms are really quite small and the exhibition is arranged over three floors. The layout of the museum and exhibition feels somewhat cramped and some of the Hogarth images have a room to themselves whereas others are in with works from the museum’s permanent collection.  As the exhibition is spread over a number of rooms on three floors, it can sometimes feel confusing ti find the next section of the exhibition. Normally this lack of continuity might lessen the impact of an exhibition, but somehow it felt very appropriate for this one. Hogarth’s series are teeming with life, at times seemingly confused, but always with a strong narrative linking the scenes. It seemed a positive bonus to be looking at them in rather cramped rooms with less than optimal lighting and lots of other visitors, it added to the experiencing of London as Hogarth saw it.

It was a superb opportunity to see all of the series together, I had seen Marriage a la Mode at the National Gallery and Gin Lane and Beer Street elsewhere, but there were many others that I had only seen in books or online before.

One point of interest was in ‘The Four Steps of Cruelty’ – all 4 scenes were shown in the original engraving, but a different version of scenes 3 and 4 were exhibited in a later woodcut version. Apparently Hogarth requested this to produce plates that were larger, simpler and cheaper  in order to reach a wider audience. While the original was more refined in the lines and drawing, the woodcut gave a rougher, more aggressive feel to what were already very strong and violent images.

In most of the images that Hogarth produced , there was  a complex story of morality and vice, but the narrative of the individual series was usually quite simple – the consequences of following the path of righteousness or not.

The series were very powerful and compelling to see, especially in the unique setting of the Sir John Soane Museum.

This was the first major exhibition of Krasner’s work in 50 years. I was interested to see it and to consider the influences on her work and the context under which it was produced.

Some of her influences were shown in the very first exhibition room. It contained a few, very vibrant and colourful, quite small abstract paintings. But one wall of the room simply showed a series of very large scale photos of flowers. The gallery notes explained how, in 1945, Krasner moved to Springs (near East Hampton, NY). Her father’s death, the year before, had ‘left her unable to paint anything but what she affectionately called her grey slabs‘.

Now, surrounded by nature, a ‘new kind of imagery was coming through, she worked on her ‘Little Images – vibrant, jewel-like abstractions, pulsing with an even rhythm’.

The photos on the wall were taken by her friend, Ray Eames who ‘documented the wildlife in Springs that inspire this work’.

 

The curator had, very effectively, displayed the paintings and photos together to express the way  surroundings had influenced the images produced.

A couple of examples of the society in which Krasner operated, were shown later in the exhibition. At the age of 19 she was due to study at the National Academy of Design. She was obviously extremely talented and, in later interviews, would talk of how ‘the Academy had refused to believe her capable’ of a plein-air portrait she had submitted.

She protested about this and was promoted to the life-drawing class, but she did not like the traditional approach of the Academy, which she described as ‘a sterile atmosphere of …. congealed mediocrity’.

Another example of the times in which she was working came after the Wall Street Crash. The depression that followed forced her to leave the National Academy. In 1937 she was awarded a scholarship to attend classes at the Hans Hoffman School. The images in the ‘Life Drawing’ room showed how Krasner made her first venture into abstraction attracting the comment from Hoffman that her work was so good ‘you would not know it was done by a woman’.

Seeing the exhibition and the paintings themselves was a great opportunity, but the curator had also effectively introduced many descriptions of the  influences and contexts under which Krasner produced her work.

Taking advantage of my membership of the British Museum, I made a couple of visits to the Munch exhibition there and also attended two lectures that had been arranged to complement the exhibition. The first talk was by Andrew Graham Dixon, who spoke about The Scream while the second lecture was by Janina Ramirez who spoke about Emotion in Munch’s Art. I then made a second visit to the exhibition which helped to consolidate what I had heard in the talks.

Dixon gave some interesting background to Munch’s influences, how a lack of teaching in Scandinavia resulted in Munch being drawn into the German Circle and tradition.

He said that Munch’s described ambition was “to paint the soul” and he described how The Scream developed. Munch was walking with friends one evening when the sky turned blood red. Munch stopped, feeling exhausted, while his friends walked on. In 1892 Munch wrote “I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature”. Dixon described this as “suddenly the hostility of the universe is engulfing him”. He stated that “The Scream doesn’t seem to grow old”. This he attributed to what the image was portraying

• Alienation
• Life in the city where you hardly know anyone

And that as that describes how many people live today can be quite shocking and that may be why The Scream still resonates.

Janina Ramirez spoke about emotion in Munch’s work, and how this tended to get deeper and more despairing as time went on. She spoke particularly about the death of Munch’s sister and how deeply this affected him and his work.

One point she made gave cause for thought, she said that the “need for art to be hyper-realistic ended with the advent of photography. Art moved on to picture the imagined, what is in our dreams, something that photography cannot do”.  I think the important phrase here is that art does not need to be hyper-realistic any more, photorealism as an art form has not disappeared, Richard Estes is a good example of a practitioner in this field. So maybe photography stimulated artists away from realism to a more emotional response.

Munch was clearly a troubled individual, and the intensity of his emotions clearly emerged from the images that he produced. None more so than his portrayal of a dying child. He was, apparently, greatly affected by the death, as a child, of his sister from tuberculosis. The images on display show raw emotion in how they convey the scene.

The exhibition is of Munch’s prints, although some paintings have been borrowed for the duration to complement the display. Prints can sometimes be considered inferior to original paintings. I’m not sure why, perhaps it is something to do with the uniqueness of the painting compared to the fact that a number of copies of the print can be produced. This is certainly the case when considering the value of an image from a monetary rather than an aesthetic point of view. The exhibition, however, t showed to me how prints, in the hands of someone hugely skilled, can still have the same emotional effect as paintings. There was an oil painting of The Sick Child alongside prints he produced of the same subject. To me all three had the same intensity and raw emotional power.

It would be impossible to write about the exhibition without mentioning The Scream. I have mentioned above how the image developed. In fact Munch produced several versions, in paint and pastels , as well as a lithograph stone.

Most people are familiar with the paint or pastel version of the image, but I think that the lithograph displayed in the exhibition has more intensity. The monochrome nature of the print and the way the sky and background has been reproduced with clear, distinct lines, focuses the viewers attention on the face of the subject and what he is experiencing. The paint and pastel versions perhaps leave a different impression, one of the emotional impact of the overall scene rather than the individual experiencing it.

One aspect that was not so enjoyable was exiting the exhibition via the museum shop. The number of objects displayed for sale that featured an image of The Scream was bewildering. There were so many that I started to list down what you could buy that featured the image:

• Nail files
• Tee shirts
• Tea towels
• Tote bags
• Sticky note pads
• Finger puppets
• Magnets
• Travelcard holders
• Key rings
• Pencil cases
• Kaleidoscope
• Mugs
• Plates
• Vases
• Spatula
• Notebook
• Erasers

There were so many I may have missed a few. I know that museums/galleries have these shops after an exhibition to maximise sales and produce income for the institution, but I did find that it detracted somewhat. But then I needn’t have stayed and counted, I could have just walked straight out – but I do think that you can have too much of a good thing!