“Art is like a seasoning when you cook; without it life is tasteless and boring,” said Yuji Hiratsuka, professor of fine arts at Oregon State University.
Hiratsuka currently has his work on display alongside artists such as Suzuki Harunobu and Katsushika Hokusai in the Portland Art Museum’s newest exhibit, The Artist’s Touch, The Craftsman’s Hand: Three Centuries of Japanese Prints, which opened to the public Saturday.
“Art is like a seasoning when you cook; without it life is tasteless and boring,” said Yuji Hiratsuka, professor of fine arts at Oregon State University.
Hiratsuka currently has his work on display alongside artists such as Suzuki Harunobu and Katsushika Hokusai in the Portland Art Museum’s newest exhibit, The Artist’s Touch, The Craftsman’s Hand: Three Centuries of Japanese Prints, which opened to the public Saturday.
The exhibit includes 250 commercial Japanese pieces dating from 1672 to 2010. Of those, 150 are being exhibited for the first time.
“I feel very honored to have become a part of art history,” Hiratsuka said. “I’m particularly intrigued with Meiji-era woodcuts when Western culture collided with the traditional Japanese way of life.”
The show begins with a timeline of the Japanese time periods: Edo, Meiji, Taisho, Showa and Heisei. Each period has distinct and evolving printing techniques and subject matter, from primarily grayscale samurai, farmers and courtesans to WWII, earthquakes and modern Tokyo depicted in full color.
The pieces are alike in their simple, clean lines and delicate state—most are created on rice paper—and many are stamped with the artist’s original signature. Beautiful traditional women and schoolgirls are a significant topic throughout the collection. A few of the pieces, including a new museum purchase of work by artist Asai Chu, are fully illustrated books.
“That one is one of my favorites,” stated Maribeth Graybill, the exhibit’s curator, in passing. “It displays the contrast of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Japan, which was a very impressionistic ideal.”
Graybill has been working day and night on bringing together the exhibit for nearly three years, and writing and editing excerpts for the accompanying catalog for almost as long.
“I lived in Japan for eight years, so I was certainly qualified to curate this,” she said, chuckling. “If it was, say, Chinese snuff boxes, I would have been the wrong one for
the job.”
The original collection of 750 traditional woodblock prints was a gift to the Portland Art Museum in 1932 from the Ladd family, and other owners gifted about 700 more contemporary pieces later. Only 250 were chosen from the nearly 2,500 total pieces stockpiled.
“We already had so many pieces that hadn’t been seen before, and we wanted to show them,” Graybill said. “The way we designed the space was trying to evoke Japanese-style architecture. We used a color that is almost like mud plastered walls, which also beautifully compliments many of the prints.”
After receiving these pieces, the museum then proceeded to purchase prints to fill in the missing time periods and then began to put together the entire exhibition. The largest section, casually referred to as “The Kabuki Room,” is filled with prints displaying samurai warriors, women drinking tea, actors in rugged outfits and elegant courtesans. All of the subjects are men in costume.
Kabuki is a type of traditional, over-exaggerated Japanese theater that included dancing, miming and singing, and was performed only by males, as shown in the pieces. Prints depicting Onnagata (dressing as women) and Aragato (“rough stuff”) stars of Kabuki were highly sought after in Japan.
“Kabuki fans were like Star Wars fans are today,” said Graybill at the press preview on Friday. “They would buy prints of their favorite star, dress up like them and reenact scenes. People would get into it.”
Further into the gallery, new pieces come into view. These prints have a slightly less playful feeling. Many are landscapes of cities after disasters—namely the Great Kant? Earthquake of 1923—and devastating wars, and soon after come stunning optical art and abstract designs. Simplicity remains a link in the 300-year jump, but colors play a much greater role in the process.
Large, bright swirls and parallel lines fill the final walls, but still look consistent with and complementary to the earlier works. The concluding print, “Corpse Princess,” depicts a young woman being held with skeleton arms and flowers, and it ties the whole exhibit together.
While Japanese art prints are meant to be consistent and perfected, each piece in the Portland Art Museum’s collection this season gives its own unique touch.
The exhibit runs from Oct. 1, 2011, to Jan. 22, 2012. Annual college student passes are available to PSU students for $12 with student ID.
