I include below the following article
from the Colorful
Realm link because it soon may be taken off line by the National
Galery of Art. The pictures below might also be taken down but the
text is local and will remain.
Colorful Realm:
Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū
(1716–1800)
March 30–April 29, 2012
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
Please follow the links below for related online resources or visit our current
exhibitions schedule.
Celebrating
the centennial of Japan's gift of cherry trees to the nation's capital,
this exhibition features one of Japan's most renowned cultural
treasures, the 30-scroll set of bird-and-flower paintings by Itō
Jakuchū. Titled Colorful Realm of Living Beings (J. Dōshoku
sai-e; c. 1757–1766), these extraordinary scrolls are being lent
to the National Gallery of Art by the Imperial Household. Their
exhibition here—for one month only—provides a unique,
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: not only is it the first time all 30
paintings will be on view in the United States, but it is also the first
time any of the works will be seen here after their six-year-long
restoration.
Colorful Realm stands as the
most dynamic and comprehensive—yet meditative and
distilled—expression of the natural world in all of Japanese art.
Synthesizing numerous East Asian traditions of bird-and-flower painting,
the set depicts each of its 30 subjects in wondrously meticulous detail,
but in such a way as to transcend surface appearances and capture the
otherwise ineffable, vital essence of the cosmos, the Buddha nature
itself. To present the full significance of Colorful Realm, the
exhibition and its catalogue reunite this masterpiece with Jakuchū's
triptych of the Buddha Śākyamuni from the Zen monastery Shōkokuji
in Kyoto. Jakuchū had donated both works to the monastery, which
displayed them in a large temple room during Buddhist rituals.
Recent conservation of Colorful
Realm has generated an entirely new awareness of the material
profile of the set and the technical means by which Jakuchū created
each scroll. Drawing upon these findings as well as the most recent
research on Jakuchū's life and cultural environment, this
exhibition offers a multifaceted understanding of the artist's
virtuosity and experimentalism as a painter—one who not only applied
sophisticated chromatic effects but also masterfully rendered the richly
symbolic world in which he moved.
The earliest of the 30 scrolls, Peonies
and Butterflies, combines two subjects that enjoyed great
popularity in East Asian pictorial traditions. On the one hand, the
peony flower was likened to both feminine beauty and prosperity. It
became the preferred garden flower of the imperial and aristocratic
elite during China's Tang dynasty (618–907) and at the court of
Emperor Xuanzong in particular; in East Asian literary traditions Li
Bai's verse likening the beauty of Xuanzong's favorite consort Yang
Guifei (719–756) to a peony cemented the flower's association with
feminine beauty. Meanwhile, its full and gorgeous appearance lent itself
to uncomplicated associations with affluence and good fortune. The
butterfly also served as an auspicious symbol, though its popularity was
equally attributable to its appearance in one of the most famous
parables in early Chinese thought: Zhuangzi's dream of a butterfly.
According to this parable, the legendary sage Zhuangzi dreams that he is
a carefree yellow butterfly. Upon awakening, however, "he didn't
know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a
butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi." Paintings of butterflies
inevitably invoked the oneiric setting and queried selfhood of the
Zhuangzi anecdote in most East Asian contexts and particularly in Jakuchū's
circle of erudite Sinophile monks, scholars, and merchants. While
visually opulent, Peonies and Butterflies also suggests the
uncertainty of a just-awoken dreamer who momentarily confuses reverie
with reality.
Careful study of the painting's
pigmentation points to Jakuchū's remarkable distillation and
intensification of traditional East Asian coloration techniques.
Different grades of opacity and transparency are achieved in the
butterflies, flowers, stems, and leaves by varying the use of mineral
and vegetal pigments, occasionally layering them one on top of another
and adding a sublayer of color on the back of the silk. This complex
stratigraphy of colors results in a convincing imbrication of the motifs
in their surroundings. Indeed, when Jakuchū's cultural and
spiritual mentor Daiten (1719–1801) encountered the painting in 1760,
he titled it "Beautiful Mist and Fragrant Wind" (Enka kōfū),
suggesting that the real subject here was not the peonies and
butterflies, but the conceptual atmosphere that enveloped them, the
invisible ether within which they swayed and glided.
Sponsor: The
exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, The Imperial
Household Agency, and Nikkei Inc., in association with the Embassy of
Japan.
It has been made possible through the
generous support of Toyota, Nikkei Inc., Airbus, the E. Rhodes and Leona
B. Carpenter Foundation, and The Exhibition Circle of the National
Gallery of Art. Additional sponsorship from Japan has been provided by
Daikin Industries, Ltd., Ito En, Ltd., Mitsubishi Corporation, and
Panasonic Corporation.
The exhibition is supported by an
indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Schedule: National
Gallery of Art, March
30–April 29, 2012 |