The Freer and Sackler Feature Japanese Art - Three Times Over
The Freer Gallery and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution have three new exhibits featuring Japanese and other Asian art.
"Facing East: Portraits from Asia" is on display from July 1–September 4, 2006. This exhibition explores how portraits expressed cultural identities in Asia and the Ancient Near East over the millennia. Paintings and sculptures of Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese empresses, Japanese actors, Indian rajas and a host of other subjects reveal how the identities, importance and power of historical subjects were diversely constructed, understood and represented. The exhibition raises questions not only about visual culture in Asia, but also, more broadly, about practices of representing the self the world over.
"Freer and Tea: Raku, Hagi, Karatsu," on display from July 1, 2006–January 1, 2007, features the tea ceremony ceramics that Charles Freer collected by 1906.
"Freer—A Taste for Japanese Art," on display from July 1, 2006–January 1, 2007, celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of Charles Lang Freer's gift of his collection and museum to the United States. It features a selection of 31 paintings, calligraphy, wood sculpture, lacquer, and ceramics from Freer's Japanese art collection.
For two decades from 1887, when Freer bought his first Japanese painting, his interest in Japanese art grew deeper, as he sought to increase his knowledge of Japanese and Asian art and to understand the aesthetic harmonies between art of different historical periods and cultures.
Although he was encouraged in these interests by his friends -- the artist James McNeill Whistler and the scholar Ernest Fenollosa -- Freer relied on his own judgment and consciously resisted the decorative porcelain and gold lacquerware popular among Western collectors. Instead, he focused on painting, ceramics, Buddhist sculpture, and lacquerware from earlier periods, forming a collection of some 1100 Japanese works of art dating from the eighth through the nineteenth centuries.
Highlights of this exhibition include a Heian period (794–1185 Buddhist sculpture, a thirteenth-century Buddhist narrative handscroll, Miracles of the Bodhisattva Jizō, Moonlight Revelry at Dozō Sagami, by Kitagawa Utamaro, Fisherman and Woodcutter by Katsushika Hokusai, calligraphy by Hon'ami Kōetsu, paintings by Ogata Kōrin and ceramics by his brother, Kenzan.
"Facing East: Portraits from Asia" is on display from July 1–September 4, 2006. This exhibition explores how portraits expressed cultural identities in Asia and the Ancient Near East over the millennia. Paintings and sculptures of Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese empresses, Japanese actors, Indian rajas and a host of other subjects reveal how the identities, importance and power of historical subjects were diversely constructed, understood and represented. The exhibition raises questions not only about visual culture in Asia, but also, more broadly, about practices of representing the self the world over.
"Freer and Tea: Raku, Hagi, Karatsu," on display from July 1, 2006–January 1, 2007, features the tea ceremony ceramics that Charles Freer collected by 1906.
"Freer—A Taste for Japanese Art," on display from July 1, 2006–January 1, 2007, celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of Charles Lang Freer's gift of his collection and museum to the United States. It features a selection of 31 paintings, calligraphy, wood sculpture, lacquer, and ceramics from Freer's Japanese art collection.
For two decades from 1887, when Freer bought his first Japanese painting, his interest in Japanese art grew deeper, as he sought to increase his knowledge of Japanese and Asian art and to understand the aesthetic harmonies between art of different historical periods and cultures.
Although he was encouraged in these interests by his friends -- the artist James McNeill Whistler and the scholar Ernest Fenollosa -- Freer relied on his own judgment and consciously resisted the decorative porcelain and gold lacquerware popular among Western collectors. Instead, he focused on painting, ceramics, Buddhist sculpture, and lacquerware from earlier periods, forming a collection of some 1100 Japanese works of art dating from the eighth through the nineteenth centuries.
Highlights of this exhibition include a Heian period (794–1185 Buddhist sculpture, a thirteenth-century Buddhist narrative handscroll, Miracles of the Bodhisattva Jizō, Moonlight Revelry at Dozō Sagami, by Kitagawa Utamaro, Fisherman and Woodcutter by Katsushika Hokusai, calligraphy by Hon'ami Kōetsu, paintings by Ogata Kōrin and ceramics by his brother, Kenzan.
posted by Blogmaster | 7:50 AM
<< Home