Exhibitions ASIAN ART 27 FLOWER POWER


If you have two pennies, spend one on a loaf and one on a flower. Te bread will give you life and the flower a reason for living - traditional Chinese proverb


THIS YEAR marks the 50th anniversary of the ‘Summer of Love’ in San Francisco. In 1966, 8 December was the very beginning of the Age of Aquarius, as the whole period was later called, gentle at first, with freedom of expression, with peace, love and all of its associated paraphernalia. Te ‘flower children’ were all raised in post-War affluence, but were somehow dissatisfied with the status quo and themselves. Raised in one of the constitutionally freest nations on earth, they felt somehow unfree, oppressed by the stultifying rules of society, parental rules, and the ‘control’ of the Man and the military- industrial complex. Flower power was later to produce the musical Hair, Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Timothy Leary, psychedelic fashion and any other trend that symbolised protest, but this soon disintegrated into the violence of the Vietnam era. Te Asian Art Museum of


San Francisco has a long tradition of creating exhibitions of profound importance and strong public appeal. Most are of a specific subject, but this unique exhibition is a celebration of a


time. It was a time of individual ‘liberation’ and angry reaction against life in general – the status quo. Flowers, of which there are approximately 400,000 varieties, became almost the botanical equivalent of Mahatma Gandhi’s spinning wheel. With over 18,000 Asian


works of art in its collection spanning some six millennia from throughout Asia, the Museum had a trove from which to create this celebratory exhibition of flowers. Flower Power is intended to be a pan-Asian view that involves the imperial


courts of China, the gardens of Persia, as well as the young, 1960s proto-Buddhists of San Francisco. Drawing from their collections of Asian art from China, Japan, Korea, Tailand and India, mainly paintings, textiles, ceramics, screens, sculptures and lacquer, the curators have carefully chosen works of art from different media – paintings, textiles, pottery, porcelain, sculpture, screens and lacquer to display the numerous representations which flowers can take, whether as subject or as background. Colours have very specific meanings in Chinese culture and there are three that pertain to flower symbolism: white is the colour of death and white chrysanthemums tend to be restricted to mourning and funerals, exactly as they are in Italy. Pink and red, however, represent celebration and life, hence the great popularity of red for weddings and other auspicious occasions. Flowers themselves are strongly symbolises magical powers to dispel evil spirits.


A Mughal prince, approx. 1675-1710. Northern India, Mughal period (1526-1857). Opaque watercolours and gold on paper. Asian Art Museum, Gift of Dr and Mrs David Buchanan, 2007 Photograph © Asian Art Museum


Te most complex painting is a Japanese mandara of the Womb World where flowers are part of the extremely complex composition. It is one of the mandara employed by the esoteric Shingon sect, very much in contrast to an early Qing-dynasty painting of Yun Shouping (1633-1690), where lotuses are the only subject.


A girl offers a flower to a soldier during the anti-war demonstrations at the Pentagon in 1967


Among the ceramics are several of great quality and beauty, including an imperial Qianlong millefleur bottle vase with massed flowers rendered in famille-rose enamels. A much more subtle example is an 18th-century Nabeshima footed dish decorated in underglaze blue, over glaze enamels and iron-red with baskets by a stream with cherry blossoms slowly falling from above. Tere are two different and outstanding examples of stoneware, a Korean, circa 1100,maebyong painted in iron-black with


FROM THE FIRE Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Robert and Lisa Kessler Collection


BEGINNING about 10,000 years ago when semi- permanent settlements first appeared, on-site cooking required containers for food preparation and storage. Regardless of culture, clay was the common denominator. Sun-dried clay proved far too fragile, but clay fired in hearths proved durable, but still somewhat fragile. Enclosed kilns soon followed and clay could be fired to the level of stoneware and controlled heat, whether for pottery or porcelain, has been the process ever since. In Japan, high-fired pottery was the norm, almost always for food storage, preparation and serving. Te clays in Japan varied from region to region and several styles of utilitarian potting began to appear such as Shigaraki, Bizen, and Tamba. Shigaraki and Bizen are the easiest to distinguish, simply by the clay utilised. Bizen clay was an even, fine-grained deep brown while Shigaraki clay was a rougher, medium brown, filled with small grains of feldspar, a quartz-like mineral, known in potting terms as feldspathic inclusions. Pottery production in Japan was a local, utilitarian matter for peasant use, but all of that


changed with the advent of the tea master Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591). Before him tea was a formal and elegant gathering practised by the shogun, the feudal lords and aristocracy. Rikyu changed all of that with his appreciation of nature and the natural, not the man-made and unnatural. From this sprang the Tea Ceremony as we know it today. Tis widespread conversion of appreciation of tea led to the search for ‘natural’ items for use. Eyes quickly fell to the pottery peasant wares which the tea aficionados considered free of any applied design or affectation, therefore, in their coarseness were considered incarnations of nature. Most vessels sought out were those that could be converted to water jars (mizusashi) and large jars to store tea (chatsubo). At this time, an accident occurred at the kilns at Iga which proved to be famous. A cylindrical water jar (mizusashi) cracked at the bottom during firing. Rather than being consigned it to the waste heap, it was snatched up for its Tea Ceremony potential. Given the name yabure-bukuro (burst bag), it is probably the best known of all famous tea articles known


today. Te affection for Nature and the natural has remained within the Way of Tea (chado) ever since, but not so in the general public use. In 1868, modernisation and


Westernisation began in Japan and was so successful that many felt that traditional Japanese culture was in danger of being swamped. Reaction surfaced in 1926 when Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961) founded the Mingei Movement, dedicated to the resurrection and admiration of the simple and traditional in Japanese culture, much the same approach taken by the Arts and Crafts Movement in the West. Te two earliest adherents to this new movement were Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) and Kitao Rosanjin (1883- 1959.) Interestingly enough, Rosanjin was a restaurateur, who made stoneware dishes and vessels for his restaurant as well as for sale. His styles were far-reaching including blue and white porcelain, colourful dishes and bowls in mixed styles, but he is best known for his recreations of Shigaraki and Bizen. Tey are the two kilns known for their strong forms and lack of decoration, relying instead on streaked, ash-type glaze.


Hamada, however, tended to simple shapes and overglaze decoration, often of geometric configuration. Two of his works are in this exhibition. It was Hamada himself who is responsible for spreading the Mingei movement beyond Japan’s shore through his long friendship with Bernard Leach (1889-1979,) the famed English potter whose works sparked potting adherents in England, the United States and elsewhere. Te Kesslers have


concentrated their collecting efforts of the contemporary generation of Japanese potters, of which there are many. Some of them are of such talent that they have been officially designated Living National Treasures, an indication of the very high level of artistic appreciation that the Japanese for the art. Tere are 35 potters


represented here with 65 examples of their work. Tere seem to be two different approaches, plus their variants, in the exhibition – the styles of the traditional kilns and that of those artist-potters breaking into new, experimental styles, shapes and techniques. Te traditional styles of potting hark back to Shigaraki with


scrolling foliage and flowerheads in Cizhou style. Tis contrasts with a late 16th-century Iznik dish, boldly and colourfully decorated with a tulip and other flowers.


Te point is that whether an object is lacquer, a Mughal miniature of a prince holding a flower, a colourful Japanese kimono, a 16th-century Persian calligraphy on a floral ground, Chinese and Japanese flower paintings, a Tibetan thangka, or one of the small number of contemporary installation pieces, the floral


theme runs throughout. Also the understanding of


the symbolic backgrounds of the art on view that the museum presents to visitors invites them to linger longer with a particular painting or object at hand. Te result is a joyous celebration of the symbol of the events of 1967 – flowers. MARTIN BARNES LORBER


• From 23 June to 1 October, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, www.asianart.org • Catalogue available


Takahashi Rakusai IV (b. 1925), Jar, Japan. Ceramic. Robert and Lisa Kessler Collection


its bold forms, ash glazes and coarse bodies and Bizen with its smaller pieces of smoother clay and utilitarian form. Works by Kobayashi Yucho, Taku Mamoru and Kakurezaki Ryuichi provide great examples of this trend and are well represented. Te field of


experimentation can lead in two directions. Te first is the group of both Japanese and American potters, who appear to be more interested in tour de force as the final result rather than thought-out


experimental design. Te other is represented in this exhibition – those potters dedicated to new frontiers of compatible form, material and design with the end being a careful balance of beauty and material, gathered here through the good taste and careful eyes of Robert and Lisa Kessler.


• 23 August to 1 October, Denver Art Museum, www.denverartmuseum.org • Catalogue available


MARTIN BARNES LORBER


SUMMER QUARTER 2017 ASIAN ART


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