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平成30年度 第5回コレクション展

Collection Gallery

5th Collection Gallery Exhibition 2018–2019

2018.12.19 wed. - 02.24 sun.

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William Kentridge: I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine William Kentridge, I am not me, the horse is not mine, 2008

After studying political science at university, William Kentridge (born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955) produced stage dramas and films. In the late '80s, he began garnering attention for his stop-motion animated films composed of charcoal and pastel drawings. The acclaim for Kentridge's work, which grew out of South Africa's apartheid system and social conditions, reflects post-colonial views that emerged in the '90s as well as public sympathy and support for universal themes such as individual suffering in the face of absurd realities, human dignity, and the divided self. Eschewing storyboards, Kentridge repeatedly draws and erases his pictures, and in the process of shooting them frame by frame over an extended period, a story begins to emerge. These unique animated films have had a tremendous influence on younger artists working with moving images.

I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine is Kentridge's first exhibition at the museum since his large-scale solo show in 2009. It features an eight-screen installation that was made as part of the preparations for the artist's production of Shostakovich's opera The Nose (1930), based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol. The exhibition title is a common phrase used by Russian peasants to deny their guilt. It is derived from the minutes of a meeting held by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that dealt with the politician Nikolai Bukharin, who was a victim of Stalin's Great Purge. While employing the visual vocabulary of Russian Constructivism, Kentridge incorporates a host of elements into the work, including paper cutouts, film collages, dancing shadows, Soviet archive footage from the '20s and '30s, and quotations from political documents. Kentridge's eponymous lecture/performance, featuring an appearance and narration by the artist himself, shares themes with the absurd drama of Kovalyov and his nose. Among these are the divided self, the role reversal of ruler and ruled, and the collapse of the world order.


Winter Scenes in Japanese-style Paintings

As Japan is blessed with four distinct seasons, Japanese people have long celebrated their love for the special beauty of each season in poetry, literature, and art. In the Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) section of this edition of the collection exhibition, we present a number of works depicting winter scenes.

The word "winter" calls to mind snow. Asada Benji was known for his bird-and-flower paintings, which deftly combined seasonal vegetation with small birds. His work Snow in the Evening depicts a single male pheasant in a thicket of snow-covered of low, striped bamboo, conveying the loneliness of winter. On the other hand, Matsumoto Michio notably revived the Kasuga mandala in the modern era by imbuing the form with realism. In Kasuga Shrine after Snowing, he enhanced the pure, sacred atmosphere by covering the shrine's precincts and surrounding mountains with snow. As you view these works, you may get a sense of the various sentiments Japanese people have for snow.

Scenes that combine plum blossoms with snow are another favorite of Japanese people (however, in seasonal terms, these are categorized as spring). Plum blossoms hold their own against snow and cold winds, and start blooming at the beginning of the new year before any other flower. The plum's charm lies in its purity and tenacity, the shape and fragrance of the pretty red-and-white flower, and the way that even an older tree's branches stretch vigorously upward. We hope that you will enjoy this friendly rivalry between snow and plum blossoms, both of which have long fascinated Nihonga painters.


Ueno Isaburo and the International Architectural Association of Japan INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION OF JAPAN (pub.), International Kenchiku, vol. 1, no. 1, 1929

The Weimar Republic, as the German state was known following World War I, faced various social problems such as a severe housing shortage and the development of slums. Not limited to Germany, these were global issues as reflected, for example, in the preeminent fin de siècle architect Adolf Loos' (1870–1933) involvement in supplying housing in the city of Vienna. (See also Loos' furniture designs in the "Graphics in Vienna around 1900 – New Design for a New Way of Life" exhibition)

These circumstances also led to the establishment of the International Housing Association in Paris in July of 1928 at a time when exchanges between architects in various countries were gaining momentum. Hans Kampffmeyer (1876-1932), who like Loos was employed by the city of Vienna as an engineer, served as the group's secretary-general. Not only were the members based in Frankfurt and Austria, but in many other countries around the world, including Italy, Holland, Norway, and Spain. As a result, the association published a newsletter called Housing and Building with a distinctive trilingual format (Germany, English, and French).

The association also counted a Japanese member among its ranks: the Kyoto-born architect Ueno Isaburo (1892-1972). After graduating from Waseda University, Ueno went to Germany to study at the Technical University of Berlin. He later moved to Vienna and in 1924, Ueno began working at the office of Josef Hoffmann (1876–1957), one of the founders of the Vienna Workshop. After a year and several months at the firm, Ueno met Felice ("Lizzi") Rix (1893-1967), also a member of the workshop, and the two married and went back to Japan. Shimazu House, which Ueno designed not long after returning, clearly exhibits Hoffman's influence. While continuing his architectural practice in Kyoto, Ueno helped form the Nihon International Kenchiku-kai (International Architecture Association of Japan) with Motono Seigo (1882–1944) and other Kansai-based architects in July 1927.

Alongside the members' own texts, the group's newsletter, International kenchiku (International Architecture) included Japanese translations of articles from Housing and Building. These personal networks were closely linked to Japan and provided realtime information on new movements abroad. In this exhibit, we introduce some of the trends in international architecture that began to emerge in fin de siècle Vienna with a focus on Ueno Isaburo.


Lucie Rie and European Ceramics

Lucie Rie said that she "got a new surprise every time [she opened] the kiln," and to the end of her 93 years she was always full of curiosity, producing works with a freshness and delight in discovery that never faded. Rie incorporated undulations into even forms shaped on a potter's wheel, and added scratched lines and colored glazes, wedding a sense of tension with a gentle benevolence and elegance.

Rie was born in 1902 into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. This was the time when figures such as the painter Gustav Klimt and the architect Josef Hoffmann were engaged in the groundbreaking activities of the Vienna Secession movement. Rie grew up in contact with this art, and in 1921 enrolled at the Vienna School of Art and Crafts where Hofmann was a teacher, and was enchanted by the potter's wheel, deciding to become a ceramicist. In Vienna, Rie won many awards, including at public open-call exhibitions, but being Jewish, she was forced to flee to the UK in 1938 as World War II approached. After this she remained based in the UK and gained international renown, and was invited to participate in exhibitions in Japan, including at this museum, such as International Exhibition of Contemporary Ceramic Art (1964) and Contemporary Ceramic Art - Europe and Japan (1970).

In this section we present British contemporary ceramics from the museum's collection with a focus on Lucie Rie, showing a cross-section of postwar European ceramics including pieces by Hans Coper who worked together with Rie at the studio, Lucio Fontana and Berndt Friberg's works shown at the 1964 exhibition, and works by Inger Persson and others exhibited in 1970.


Selected Works of Kawai Kanjiro KAWAI, Kanjiro, Square Jar with Circle Design with Cinnabar Glaze, c.1938

Kawai Kanjiro, one of modern Japan's most renowned ceramic artists, was born in 1890 in Yasugi, Shimane. After graduating from Technical Teacher Training School (present day Tokyo Institute of Technology), he worked at the Kyoto Research Institute for Ceramics as a technician and devoted himself to research on tens of thousands of glaze types. After resigning from the institute in 1917 and becoming an independent ceramicist, in 1921 he held his first solo exhibition of works in a style inspired by Chinese and Korean ceramics, a spectacular debut that saw him hailed as "a genius suddenly appearing like a comet." Afterwards, however, Kawai significantly shifted his creative course and participated in the Mingei (Folk Art) movement, pursuing ceramics in a manner that emphasized close relationships between daily life and art. Kawai's work became increasingly formally ambitious in his later years, and brimmed with the irrepressible joy of life.

This museum's holdings of works by Kawai Kanjiro consist primarily of ceramics from the Kawakatsu Collection, acquired by longtime patron Kawakatsu Kenichi. The Kawakatsu Collection is the largest and highest-quality public collection of Kawai's works, including the Grand Prix winner of the 1937 Paris Exposition and important pieces representing every phase of his career, making it indispensable in tracing the arc of his creative evolution. In addition to the Kawakatsu Collection, other works by Kawai have been gifted to the museum over the years. In this exhibition, we invite you to explore the world of Kawai Kanjiro not only through works from the Kawakatsu Collection, but also through others that have seldom been shown before.


Marking 30 Years Since the Death of Mizuki Shinichi MIZUKI, Shinichi, Yoko, 3 Years Old, c.1920

Mizuki Shinichi (1892–1988) was born in Matsuyama, Ehime, moved to Tokyo and studied Western painting under Nakamura Fusetsu at the Taiheiyo Art Association, and was discovered by Kosugi Hoan in 1914 and enrolled in the Western-style painting department of the Saiko Nihon Bijutsu-in (New Japan Art Institute). During this time he lived at the Kosugi family home along with Murayama Kaita, and is known for spending wild youthful years. In addition to the Nihon Bijutsu-in Exhibition (Inten), he showed at the Nika Art Exhibition and Kofukai Art Association Exhibition, but he eventually drifted away from the mainstream art world and began studying under fellow Matsuyama native Kawahigashi Hekigoto and associating with a circle of haiku poets and other poets and literary figures. Mizuki was a painter unconcerned with art world trends, who continued to work on his own terms, primarily holding solo exhibitions.

In the history of modern Japanese art, Mizuki's name is usually mentioned in conjunction with Taisho-era (1912–1926) painters Kosugi Hoan and Murayama Kaita, and Yanase Masamu, also from Matsuyama. However, if we look instead at the history of literature, we also connections between Mizuki and the students of renowned haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, including Kawahigashi Hekigoto. Mizuki's writings on Murayama Kaita pay tribute to the vitality of his friend's work and his widely recognized genius, but also portray an introspective figure single-mindedly dedicated to his own original expression.

The year 2018 was widely celebrated as marking 60 years since the death of Yokoyama Taikan and 50 years since the death of Foujita Tsuguharu, but it was also the 30th anniversary of Mizuki's death. Here, we are pleased to present works by Mizuki from the museum's collection, and mark the milestone of 30 years since the passing of an independent spirit who moved freely in both artistic and literary circles.


Manière Noire by Hasegawa Kiyoshi

The printmaker Hasegawa Kiyoshi was born in Yokohama in 1891 and active in France. His art career began around the age of 20, when he started studying drawing under Kuroda Seiki and oil painting under Okada Saburosuke and Fujishima Takeji, and receiving commissions for literary magazine covers and illustrations, he began producing woodcuts and copperplate prints. In 1919, at the age of 28, he moved to Paris, where he exhibited in salons such as the Salon d'Automne and devoted the remainder of his life to printmaking.

Hasegawa worked with a range of techniques such as woodcut, drypoint, etching, aquatint, and engraving, but his reputation as a printmaker was firmly established with his revival of the manière noire technique. Manière noire is another word for mezzotint, a type of copperplate printmaking, invented in 17th-century Germany and popularized in Europe, but it declined after the invention of photography in the 19th century. With technical manuals as his guide, Hasegawa conducted research aimed at reviving this "forgotten art" in France, and succeeded in creating his own original version of the technique and restoring it as a form of printmaking.

Hasegawa invested his still-life subjects with symbolic meaning. For example, a small bird represented the artist himself observing the world, a ball the world, the universe, harmony, and unity, and a rose beauty, love, silence, and secrets. We invite you to enjoy the artist's serene, intellectual world of deep, rich, beautiful blacks, compositions based on the golden ratio, and constructions of motif and meaning.


Exhibition in remembrance of Iwakura Hisashi IWAKURA, hisashi, Space with Trees, 2009

In memory of the Nihonga (Japanese-style) painter Iwakura Hisashi, who passed away on October 11, 2018, we exhibit all of his works in our collection as well as works by Inohara Taika, a painter that Iwakura deeply respected and admired.

Iwakura Hisashi was born in 1936 in Kagawa Prefecture. In the sixth year of elementary school he took an interest in painting, and he started oil painting during his first year of junior high school, engaging in it fully as a student Kagawa Prefectural Kan'onji Daiichi High School. In 1955 he enrolled in the Nihonga painting department of Kyoto City University of Fine Arts now Kyoto City University of Arts). Influenced by Inohara Taika, then a teacher at the university, Iwakura decided to pursue a career as a Nihonga painter and submitted the painting Basho to the first edition of the revived Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition) in 1958, for which it was selected. After graduating from the university the following year, he became a member of Shinchosha, an art school led by Yamaguchi Kayo, to which Taika also belonged, and thereafter primarily exhibited work in the Nitten and the Shinchosha Exhibition. Iwakura also taught at his alma mater from 1963 to 2002, and guided new generations of artists at both the art school and the university. In 2003 he received an award from the Nihon Geijutsuin (The Japan Art Academy), he became a member of the Academy in 2006, and in 2010 a retrospective exhibition, which he had firmly declined for many years, was held at the Chikkyo Art Museum, Kasaoka, cementing his reputation as one of Kyoto's most prominent current painters. From his earliest years he consistently depicted landscapes, and around 1975 he developed a style of indistinct rendering as if seen through frosted glass, using vivid intermediate hues and richly textured brushwork, and from the late 1980s onward his paintings featured softly framed compositions with a sense of transparency, filled with moisture and luminosity, as if filled with large and small particles of light, water vapor, and air. Although it is dry and cold outside, we sincerely hope you enjoy these dewy, sun-bathed works. (In addition, in the "Winter Scenes in Japanese-style Paintings" section, we present paintings by Asada Benji, and Nishiuchi Toshio, Iwakura's seniors at Shinchosha, as well as by Nakaji Yujin, who together with Iwakura led the school following their seniors' death, and who himself passed away last year.)

List of Works 5th Collection Gallery Exhibition 2018–2019 (165 works)(PDF)

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