Met Museum: Discovering Japanese Art

The current exhibit at the Met Museum, Discovering Japanese Art, is a tribute to those individuals whose collections of Japanese art form the basis of the museum's holdings.  Accordingly, the exhibit is divided into several sections which are classified, not by genre or period, but by the collections from which their contents were acquired.  Among the more interesting of these American collectors were Henry O. Havemeyer, the sugar baron whose refineries once lined the waterfront in Brooklyn's Williamsburg, and Harry G. C. Packard who served with the Marines in World War II and then relocated to Japan in 1946.

For Western viewers, the most accessible form of Japanese art has always been the polychrome ukiyo-e woodblock print that came into fashion during the Edo period.  Ironically, these inexpensive prints were never intended as high art but only as colorful illustrations to be sold to the poorer classes. Nevertheless, once the country was first opened to outsiders in the nineteenth century, these works were avidly collected by foreigners almost to the exclusion of all other genres.  They directly inspired the movement known as Japonisme that exerted a tremendous influence on European artists as diverse as Whistler, Monet and Van Gogh.  Although most visitors to this exhibit will head directly to Hokusai's famous Under the Wave off Kanagawa (1829-1832), there are a great many other pieces that are well worth viewing,  Some of the most striking are depictions of Kabuki actors created by the mysterious artist Tōshūsai Sharaku whose career lasted only ten months in the years 1794-1795.  There is also a section devoted to scenes of what could be called, for lack of a better term, Americana.  These are more interesting for the insight they provide into the manner in which the Japanese viewed the barbarians now circulating among them than for any intrinsic artistic merit.  The best examples of this somewhat bizarre subgenre are "America": A Steamship in Transit (1861) by Utagawa Yoshikazu and "America": Enjoying Hot Air Balloons (1867) by Utagawa Yoshitora.

Even if only for their sheer size, some of the most impressive works on display are the huge folding screens, many of them measuring more than ten feet across, that transported their viewers from the castles and temples in which they were installed into the historical and bucolic settings they depicted.  Some of the most diverting scenes of nature here are Autumn Trees and Grasses by a Stream, Spring Trees and Grasses by a Stream and Kano Sansetsu's Old Plum (all from the Edo period).  Viewing the last is almost an exercise Zen meditation.  Much more playful is a set of six panel screens by Hanabusa Itchō, only recently returned from exile, that shows Chinese lions frolicking against a gold background.

Although an entire gallery was given over to contemporary 20th and 21st century works under the title Continuing the Legacy, I was surprised to find mixed in among the older works a pressure-slip-cast porcelain sculpture by Fukami Sueharu entitled Upright (Kitsu) completed in 2012.  I actually had the opportunity to meet Mr. Sueharu last fall at a reception at the Erik Thomsen gallery.  After having earlier seen examples of his thoroughly modernist abstract sculpture, I had not expected to find the artist so unassuming and approachable an individual.  He was a true craftsman whose only concern was with the quality of his work.

My personal favorite at the show was a 16th century (Muromachi period) hanging scroll by Maejima Sōyū that was simply entitled Landscape.   In the background of the painting were the highly stylized depictions of Chinese mountains favored by Japanese artists known as "literati" who attempted to emulate Chinese treatment of these subjects without ever having seen them first hand.  The museum's website notes that "Sōyū may have studied directly under Kano Motonobu," the founder of the Kano school.  The influence of this school in its evocation of Chinese painting can still be seen a century later in a triptych of ink-on-silk hanging scrolls from the early Edo period by the artist Kano Tan'yū. All three share the same title, Landscape in Moonlight. As in Sōyū's work, the landscape here seems to emerge only briefly in unearthly beauty from the mists surrounding it.  By showing only small amounts of detail and leaving the greatest portion of the image unpainted as though obscured by mist, all these paintings hearken back to the "one corner" style of Chinese painting practiced by Ma Yuan in the 12th century.

The exhibit continues through September 27, 2015.