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Japan Sculpture
Japanese sculpture derived from Shinto funerary and
Buddhist
religious arts. Portrait sculpture was developed only as a
memorial
to a shrine patron or temple founder. Materials
traditionally used
were metal--especially bronze--and, more commonly, wood,
often
lacquered, gilded, or brightly painted. By the end of the
Tokugawa
period, such traditional sculpture--except for
miniaturized works--
had largely disappeared because of the loss of patronage
by
Buddhist temples and the nobility.
The stimulus of Western art forms returned sculpture to
the
Japanese art scene and introduced the plaster cast,
outdoor heroic
sculpture, and the school of Paris concept of sculpture as
an "art
form." Such ideas adapted in Japan during the late
nineteenth
century, together with the return of state patronage,
rejuvenated
sculpture. After World War II, sculptors turned away from
the
figurative French school of Rodin and Maillol toward
aggressive
modern and avant-garde forms and materials, sometimes on
an
enormous scale. A profusion of materials and techniques
characterized these new experimental sculptures, which also
absorbed the
ideas of international "op" (optical illusion) and "pop"
(popular
motif) art. A number of innovative artists were both
sculptors and
painters or printmakers, their new theories cutting across
material
boundaries.
In the 1970s, the ideas of contextual placement of
natural
objects of stone, wood, bamboo, and paper into
relationships with
people and their environment were embodied in the
mono-ha
school. The mono-ha rtists emphasized materiality
as the
most important aspect of art and brought to an end the
antiformalism that had dominated the avant-garde in the
preceding
two decades. This focus on the relationships between
objects and
people was ubiquitous throughout the arts world and led to
a rising
appreciation of "Japanese" qualities in the environment
and a
return to native artistic principles and forms. Among
these
precepts were a reverence for nature and various Buddhist
concepts,
which were brought into play by architects to treat time
and space
problems. Western ideology was carefully reexamined, and
much was
rejected as artists turned to their own environment--both
inward
and outward--for sustenance and inspiration. From the late
1970s
through the late 1980s, artists began to create a vital
new art,
which was both contemporary and Asian in sources and
expression but
still very much a part of the international scene. These
artists
focused on projecting their own individualism and national
styles
rather than on adapting or synthesizing Western ideas
exclusively.
Outdoor sculpture, which came to the fore with the
advent of
the Hakone Open-Air Museum in 1969, was widely used in the
1980s.
Cities supported enormous outdoor sculptures for parks and
plazas,
and major architects planned for sculpture in their
buildings and
urban layouts. Outdoor museums and exhibitions burgeoned,
stressing
the natural placement of sculpture in the environment.
Because hard
sculpture stone is not native to Japan, most outdoor
pieces were
created from stainless steel, plastic, or aluminum for
"tension and
compression" machine constructions of mirror-surfaced
steel or for
elegant, polished-aluminum, ultramodern shapes. The strong
influence of modern high technology on the artists
resulted in
experimentation with kinetic, tensile forms, such as
flexible arcs
and "info-environmental" sculptures using lights. Video
components
and video art developed rapidly from the late 1970s
throughout the
1980s. The new Japanese experimental sculptors could be
understood
as working with Buddhist ideas of permeability and
regeneration in
structuring their forms, in contrast to the general
Western
conception of sculpture as something with finite and
permanent
contours.
In the 1980s, wood and natural materials were used
prominently
by many sculptors, who now began to place their works in
inner
courtyards and enclosed spaces. Also, a Japanese feeling
for
rhythmic motion, captured in recurring forms as a
"systematic
gestural motion," was used by both long-established
artists like
Kiyomizu Kyubei and Nagasawa Hidetoshi and the younger
generation
led by Toya Shigeo. The 1970s search for a national
identity led to
a renewed understanding of Japanese forms, spatial
perceptions,
rhythms, and philosophical conceptions, which
reinvigorated
Japanese sculpture in the 1980s.
Data as of January 1994
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