|
Japan Painting
Painting is one of the oldest and most highly refined
of the
Japanese arts, stemming from classic continental
traditions of the
early historical period (sixth-seventh centuries A.D.).
Native
Japanese traditions reached their apex in the Heian period
(A.D
794-1185), producing many artistic devices still in use.
During
periods of strong Chinese influence, new art forms were
adapted,
such as Buddhist works in Nara, ink painting in the
Muromachi
period, and landscape painting by literati in the Tokugawa
era. When Western painting theories were introduced in the
Meiji
period, Japan already had a long history of adaptation of
imported
ideas and had established a copying process ranging from
emulation
to synthesis. But it was not until well into the twentieth
century
that the Japanese were able to assimilate the new medium
of oil
paints with new ideas of three-dimensional projections on
flat
surfaces.
Most contemporary Japanese artists could be divided
into those
who worked in a broadly international style and those who
maintained Japanese artistic traditions, though usually
within a
modern idiom. After World War II, painters, calligraphers,
and
printmakers flourished in the big cities, particularly
Tokyo, and
became preoccupied with the mechanisms of urban life,
reflected in
the flickering lights, neon colors, and frenetic pace of
their
abstractions. All the "isms" of the New York-Paris art
world were
fervently embraced. After the abstractions of the 1960s,
the 1970s
saw a return to realism strongly flavored by the "op" and
"pop" art
movements, embodied in the 1980s in the explosive works of
Shinohara Ushio. Many such outstanding avant-garde artists
worked
both in Japan and abroad, winning international prizes.
These
artists felt that there was "nothing Japanese" about their
works,
and indeed they belonged to the international school. By
the late
1970s, the search for Japanese qualities and a national
style
caused many artists to reevaluate their artistic ideology
and turn
away from what some felt were the empty formulas of the
West. Contemporary paintings within the modern idiom began
to make
conscious use of traditional Japanese art forms, devices,
and
ideologies. A number of mono-ha artists turned to
painting
to recapture traditional nuances in spatial arrangements,
color
harmonies, and lyricism.
Japanese-style painting (nihonga) had continued
in a
modern fashion, updating traditional expressions while
retaining
their intrinsic character. Some artists within this style
still
painted on silk or paper with traditional colors and ink,
while
others used new materials, such as acrylics. Many of the
older
schools of art, most notably those of the Tokugawa period,
were
still practiced. For example, the decorative naturalism of
the
rimpa school, characterized by brilliant, pure
colors and
bleeding washes, was reflected in the work of many postwar
artists
and in the 1980s art of Hikosaka Naoyoshi. The realism of
the
Maruyama-Okyo school and the calligraphic and spontaneous
Japanese
style of the gentlemen-scholars were both widely practiced
in the
1980s. Sometimes all of these schools, as well as older
ones, such
as the Kano ink traditions, were drawn on by contemporary
artists
in the Japanese style and in the modern idiom. Many
Japanese-style
painters were honored with awards and prizes as a result
of renewed
popular demand for Japanese-style art beginning in the
1970s. More
and more, the international modern painters also drew on
the
Japanese schools as they turned away from Western styles
in the
1980s. The tendency had been to synthesize East and West.
But new
artistic approaches were less in favor of a conscious
blending than
of recapturing the Japanese spirit within a modern idiom.
Thus, the
100-year split between Japanese-style and Western-style
art began
to heal. Some artists had already leapt the gap between
the two, as
did the outstanding painter Shinoda Toko. Her bold
sumi ink
abstractions were inspired by traditional calligraphy but
realized
as lyrical expressions of modern abstraction.
Data as of January 1994
|
