Muromachi art

Muromachi art

During the Muromachi period (13381573), also called the Ashikaga period, a profound change took place in Japanese culture. The Ashikaga clan took control of the shogunate and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the Muromachi district of the city. With the return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a more aristocratic, elitist character. Zen Buddhism, the Ch'an sect traditionally thought to have been founded in China in the 6th century, was introduced for a second time into Japan and took root.

Painting: Because of secular ventures and trading missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings and objects of art were imported into Japan and profoundly influenced Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the shogunate. Not only did these imports change the subject matter of painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright colors of Yamato-e yielded to the monochromes of painting in the Chinese manner, where paintings generally only have black and white or different tones of a single color.

Typical of early Muromachi painting is the depiction by the priest-painter Kao (active early 15th century) of the legendary monk Kensu (Hsien-tzu in Chinese) at the moment he achieved enlightenment. This type of painting was executed with quick brush strokes and a minimum of detail. Catching a Catfish with a Gourd (early 15th century, Taiz-in, Myshin-ji, Kyoto), by the priest-painter Josetsu (active c. 1400), marks a turning point in Muromachi painting. Executed originally for a low-standing screen, it has been remounted as a hanging scroll with inscriptions by contemporary figures above, one of which refers to the painting as being in the "new style". In the foreground a man is depicted on the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background mountains appear to be far in the distance. It is generally assumed that the "new style" of the painting, executed about 1413, refers to a more Chinese sense of deep space within the picture plane.

The foremost artists of the Muromachi period are the priest-painters Shbun and Sessh. Shbun, a monk at the Kyoto temple of Shkoku-ji, created in the painting Reading in a Bamboo Grove (1446) a realistic landscape with deep recession into space. Sessh, unlike most artists of the period, was able to journey to China and study Chinese painting at its source. Landscape of the Four Seasons (Sansui Chokan; c. 1486) is one of Sesshu's most accomplished works, depicting a continuing landscape through the four seasons.

Sources

• This article was originally based on material from WebMuseum Paris - Famous Artworks exhibition [1].
• Japan - This article incorporatespublic domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/.
• Boardman, John, "The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity", Princeton University Press, 1994, ISBN0-691-03680-2
• Earle, Joe (1999). Splendors of Meiji: treasures of imperial Japan: masterpieces from the Khalili Collection. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Broughton International Inc. ISBN1874780137. OCLC42476594.
• Impey, Oliver, in Battie, David, ed., Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain, 71-74, 1990, Conran Octopus. ISBN1850292515
• Kaempfer, H. M. and W. O. G. Sickinghe The Fascinating World of the Japanese Artist. A Collection of Essays on Japanese Art by Members of the Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, The Hague, Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1971. ISBN0-87093-156-3
• Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0674984424.
• "Alexander the Great: East-West Cultural contacts from Greece to Japan" (NHK and Tokyo National Museum, 2003)
• "De l'Indus l'Oxus, Archologie de l'Asie Centrale", Osmund Bopearachchi, Christine Sachs, ISBN2-9516679-2-2
• "The Crossroads of Asia, Transformation in image and symbols", 1992, ISBN0-9518399-1-8

Further reading

• Momoyama, Japanese art in the age of grandeur. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1975. ISBN9780870991257.
• Murase, Miyeko (2000). Bridge of dreams: the Mary Griggs Burke collection of Japanese art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN978-0870999413.
• (in Spanish and Japanese) Kato, Kauro [sic] ( Kat Kaoru) (Kanagawa University), translator: Saeko Yanagisawa. "Acercamiento a la influencia del movimiento muralista mexicano en el arte contemporneo de Japn." (, Archive) Crnicas. El Muralismo, Producto de la Revolucin Mexicana, en Amrica. National Autonomous University of Mexico. December 2008, No. 13, p.237264. Spanish: p.237255, Japanese: p.256264.

External links

• Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, online version
• Japanese Prints by John Gould Fletcher
• e-Museum High definition images of national treasures and important cultural properties owned by four national museums in Japan
• Ukiyo-e in the "A World History of Art"
• Japan Cultural Profile - national cultural portal for Japan created by Visiting Arts/Japan Foundation
• Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art Collection, online collection of images from the Online Archive of California/University of California Merced
• The Herbert Offen Research Collection of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum
• The Art of Bonsai Project
• The Vision and Art of Shinjo Ito: Sculptures, calligraphy, photographs of a buddhist Great Master (Grand Acharya)
• "History of Japanese Art" Lecture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts by Okakura Kakuzo (English Translation)
• Japanese Art of the Meiji Period (1868 1912) The Khalili Collections