The turn taken by 20th-century European modern art away from the established principles of the western tradition can reveal some surprising correspondences with other, quite different, art practices, including those of Japan. So far, such investigations concerning Japan have centered on western art that has consciously adopted aspects of a Japanese visual sense -- Vincent Van Gogh, Matisse, the Japonisme movement, and so on. Now an exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum is focusing on the French-American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). more...
If Stones Could Talk: The Buddhas of Usuki
Susan Rogers Chikuba
Last spring around the time of Vesak, an observance marking the birth, enlightenment and death of the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, I found myself in the eastern Oita port city of Usuki, a place known for its dozens of ancient Buddha, bodhisattva, and deva figures carved from tuff-stone cliffs. Though it's uncertain who commissioned them from whom for what reasons, the 61 statues, each a designated National Treasure, are believed to date from around the early 12th to the 13th century. more...
Looking for the Rimpa Legacy in Present-day Nihonga at the Sato Sakura Museum
Alan Gleason
Say "Rimpa" and most art enthusiasts think of Ogata Korin's celebrated Irises or the iconic Fujin-Raijin screen paintings of the Wind and Thunder Gods by Korin (1658-1716) and his predecessor Tawaraya Sotatsu (ca. 1570-1640). Rimpa is not really a school, but a style developed in the Azuchi-Momoyama and early Edo periods, not so much passed down as picked up by sympatico artists of succeeding generations. It did not even have a name until Rin-pa, an abbreviation for "Korin school" after its most famous practitioner, caught on after it appeared as the title of a major Tokyo National Museum exhibition in 1972. more...
