January–December 2021

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January • February • March  • April • May • June • July • September  • October • November • December

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The following is an archive of past Japanese Art Society of America lectures and special events. Go to JASA-Sponsored Events for our most current schedule.

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January

Tuesday, January 12, 5 p.m. EST

Live Zoom Webinar: The Unfathomable Art of Sesson

Even after a century of prolific scholarship, the life and work of the monk-painter Sesson Shūkei (ca.1492-1577) remain enigmatic. Professor Yukio Lippit, Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okamura Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, will address questions of artistic geography and pictorial meaning through a study of one of this artist’s most famous works, Dragon and Tiger, in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Webinar posted: View Professor Lippit’s talk on The Unfathomable Art of Sesson.

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February

Sunday, February 7, 5 p.m. EST

Live Zoom Webinar: Collecting Mingei: Three Perspectives

Japanese folk art and crafts both fall into the collecting category Mingei. This overarching term covers everything from preindustrial crafts to handmade everyday tools and vessels. Discussing their approach on collecting will be Kyoko Utsumi Mimura, Waseda University arts faculty member and former Director of the Mingeikan in Tokyo; Ty Heineken, Joint Director, Studio Japan, in Kingston, New Jersey, and author with his wife, Kiyoko, of Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry, published by John Weatherhill in 1981, the first cultural overview on the subject in a foreign language; and David M. Kahn, Executive Director of the Adirondack Experience in upstate New York and a JASA board member.

Webinar posted: View the panel talk on Collecting Mingei: Three Perspectives.

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Wednesday, February 17, 6 p.m. EST

Live Zoom Webinar: Netsuke and Sagemono in the Year of the Ox

The  zodiacal year 2021 is the Year of the Ox. (There are 12 animals in the zodiac, referred to as juni-shi in Japanese, as the cycle rotates every 12 years. On the Chinese lunar calendar, the new year begins on a different day each year—February 12 in 2021. In Japan, which adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873, the new zodiac year begins on January 1.) In recognition of this special occasion, the image of the ox in Japanese folklore and religion will be explored through netsuke and sagemono. In our Webinar co-sponsored by the International Netsuke Society, netsuke collector Dr. David Butsumyo will speak about these miniature sculptures, which originated in 17th-century Japan. Netsuke and sagemono were used as clothing accessories on a daily basis by people of all walks of life in Japan for over three centuries. Because Japanese clothing during the Edo Period lacked pockets, small personal containers evolved to carry different types of things: inro (medicine boxes with stacked compartments), kiseruzutsu (pipe cases), tabako ire (tobacco pouches) and kinchaku (coin purses) are a few examples. Sagemono is the general term for these containers, and they were worn at the right hip, secured and suspended from the obi (sash) by a toggle called a netsuke. These utilitarian ensembles evolved into refined fashion accessories of great beauty and high technical achievement.

Webinar posted: View the February 17 Webinar Netsuke and Sagemono in the Year of the Ox.

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March

Sunday March 14, 5:00 p.m. EST

Live Zoom Webinar: JASA Annual Meeting and Lecture Making Meiji Modern

Professor Chelsea Foxwell, University of Chicago, and Dr. Bradley Bailey, Ting Tsung and Wei Fung Chao Curator of Asian Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Webinar posted: View the March 14 lecture Making Meiji Modern.

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April

Tuesday, April 6, 5 p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: Actors and Courtesans in Ukiyo-e: Japanese Prints from the Collection of Lee E. Dirks

John Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will introduce this special three-month-only rotation (March 8–May 31) in the Print Room (Gallery 231) in the Arts of Japan Galleries, which highlights masterworks of ukiyo-e prints from the collection of Florida-based collector Lee E. Dirks (who is interviewed in the latest issue of Impressions). The array of works, dating from the late 17th to the mid-19th century, focuses on representations of the human figure, especially actors of the Kabuki stage and courtesans of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters in Edo (present-day Tokyo). The rotation also celebrates the magnanimous gifts and promised gifts from Mr. Dirks of several rare early ukiyo-e prints, presented in celebration of the museum’s 150th Anniversary.

Highlights of the display include a stupendous group of beauty prints by Utamaro, the renowned late 18th-century master of female “physiognomy,” as well as dynamic bust portraits of Kabuki actors by the enigmatic master Sharaku, whose unforgettable works were all created in 1794–95. A star of the exhibition is also one of the rarest, Hokusai’s Spying with a Telescope, of which only three impressions are known to survive.

Webinar posted: View the April 6 Webinar on Actors and Courtesans in Ukiyo-e: Japanese Prints from the Collection of Lee E. Dirks.

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Wednesday, April 21, 5 p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: The Birth of Fashion in Japanese Textile Art

The connection between fashion and economy is often indicated by frequent changes in style. Extensive textile production, development of new techniques, designs of novel patterns, the regular publication of woodblock-printed pattern books were amongst the sectors of economy devoted to the ever-changing supply of garments in early modern Japan.

In this presentation, Monika Bincsik, PhD, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, will focus on the history of Japanese kosode (robes with small sleeve openings at the wrists, worn by both women and men) from the Momoyama (1573–1615) through the mid-Edo period (1615–1868) and highlight the changes of modes and styles. Dr. Bincsik will discuss how political and social changes affected the T-shaped garments, introduce women whose tastes changed the direction of kosode designs, and analyze the development of the Keichō, Kanbun, and Genroku kosode.

We will also see how certain decorative techniques influenced the popularity of trends, and the revolution of patterns after Miyazaki Yūzensai (1654–1736) created a new paste-resist dying method (yūzen). In the 17th century, the wives of wealthy merchants were engaged in “style competitions” (date kurabe) and designs by famous artists such as Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694) and Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1750) also became favored. At the same time, pattern and color choices of court ladies and warrior-class women were distinct. Furthermore, kosode styles were different in Kyoto and Edo thus we will observe how these two big cities competed in the world of brightly colored, exquisitely embellished garments.

Webinar posted: View the April 21 Webinar on The Birth of Fashion in Japanese Textile Art. In addition, here is a link to Frank Feltens’ article on Sartorial Identity, published in Ars Orientalis in 2017.

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May

Wednesday, May 12, 5 p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France

Elizabeth Emery, PhD, Professor of French at Montclair State University, will speak about her new book, Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853–1914 (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020). This Zoom webinar will be moderated by Rachel Saunders, PhD, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at Harvard Art Museums, and recently elected member of the JASA Board of Directors.

Although 19th- and early 20th-century women collectors actively bequeathed Japanese works to major museums like the Louvre, the Musée Guimet, the Musée Cernuschi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japonisme has long been considered the province of a small group of elite men. Dr. Emery’s book tells the forgotten stories of French women travelers, salon hostesses, writers, actresses and collectors who engaged with Japanese art alongside their better-known male contemporaries.

In her talk for JASA, Dr. Emery will bring attention to a few of the figures discussed in the book, using Japanese works they once knew to tell their stories. Clémence d’Ennery (1823–1898), the founder of the Musée d’Ennery in Paris, which houses one of the largest collections of netsuke on permanent display, is a central figure. She began collecting Japanese and Chinese mythological creatures in the 1840s, built and decorated a house for them in the 1870s, and bequeathed the Paris-based “Musée d’Ennery” to the state as a free public museum in 1893. A friend of the Goncourt brothers and a fifty-year patron of Parisian dealers of Asian art, d’Ennery’s struggles to gain recognition as a collector and curator serve as a lens through which to examine the collecting and display practices of other women of her day.

Webinar posted: View Dr. Emery’s Webinar on Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France. 

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June

Wednesday, June 9, and Wednesday, June 16,  5–6:15 p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: Looking at Art through the Lens of Scientific Analysis

This two-part series will explore the nature of color in Japanese painting and prints. Renowned scientist and head of the Scientific Laboratory of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marco Leona, will share the studies of his department and collaborations with art historians and curators. With the Met’s outstanding collection of screens, paintings and woodblock prints, he has had a wonderful chance to delve deeply into the science and materials of pigments for these works.

Japanese painters of the Edo and Meiji period achieved a rich visual language within the constraints of a simple, almost minimalist technique. A relatively narrow range of pigments thinly bound in hide glue afforded painters such as Jakuchu, Kōrin, and Hokusai surprisingly evocative possibilities. At the same time, countless, now anonymous, master printers translated into multiple copies the designs created by individual artists, simultaneously developing the most advanced color reproduction technique available at that time anywhere in the world.

Japanese artists of the Edo and Meiji period made a concerted effort toward technical advancement, quickly adopting new pigments and adapting their technique to attain new visual effects. From Kōrin’s technical choices in Irises at Yatsuhashi, to Hokusai’s experiments with Prussian blue in his paintings, from the sophisticated use of indigo and Prussian blue mixtures in the Nishimuraya-printed Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, to the selective introduction of synthetic dyes in Meiji prints, Japanese art shows that materials and meanings are tightly interconnected.

This talk series will highlight the connection between esthetic effects and technical choices by discussing the results of scientific examinations of Japanese paintings and woodblock prints in private and public collections in the United States carried out over the last 15 years. These results were obtained by using a combination of nondestructive and microanalytical techniques, including FORS, XRF, SEM, Raman and SERS.

Part I: Blue

Wednesday, June 9, 5–6:15 p.m. EDT

Part II: Red, with historian Henry Smith

Wednesday, June 16, 5–6:15 p.m. EDT

Webinars posted: View Looking at Art through the Lens of Scientific Analysis Part I and Part II.

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July

Tuesday, July 13,  5  p.m. EDT

Live Zoom Webinar: Saitō Kiyoshi: Graphic Awakening

Saitō Kiyoshi’s (1907–1997) keen sense of design, superb technique, and engagement with a variety of appealing themes made him one of the best known and most popular Japanese print artists of the twentieth century. Saitō emerged as a seminal figure of the modernist creative print movement, in which artists claimed complete authorship of their work by carving and printing their own designs. He flourished as the movement attracted patrons among members of the occupying forces and, later, Western travelers for business and pleasure. Honors at the 1951 São Paulo Biennial launched him and the creative print movement to prominence at home and abroad. When new diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Japan provided opportunities for Japanese artists to exhibit, teach, and live abroad, Saitō was among the first to do so, thus further broadening his audience.

Celebrating a gift of over 100 prints by Saitō from members Charles and Robyn Citrin, The Ringling Museum of Art opened Saitō Kiyoshi: Graphic Awakening in March 2021—the first major survey of the artist’s work since his death. Rhiannon Paget, the curator of the exhibition, will discuss Saitō’s transition from painting to print, key themes in his work, and his masterful approach to composition, color and texture.

Webinar posted: View Saitō Kiyoshi: Graphic Awakening.

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September

Monday, September 20, 5 p.m. EDT

Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will open Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality, the first solo presentation of work by the artist at a U.S. museum in 25 years, August 21, 2021, through January 1, 2022. For JASA’s September program Lia Robinson, Director of Programs and Research at the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, will be joined by Liquid Reality curator Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, MoMA, to introduce recent research at Kubota’s archive and a behind the scenes look at the artist’s seminal video sculptures presented in the exhibition at MoMA.

While the work of New York–based artist Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015) has been widely referenced in postwar art history, featured in numerous exhibitions and part of many major collections across the globe, the scope of her activities as an artist, curator and critic are less well known. Kubota’s inception of video diary and video sculpture, writing as a correspondent for the journal Bijutsu Techō, and inclusive programming as Video Curator at Anthology Film Archives (1974–82), contributed significantly to the expansion of the video canon and exploration in this nascent media.

The exhibition Liquid Reality examines Shigeko Kubota’s visionary approach to video and highlights six video sculptures from a key period when she began to explore increasingly complex content and sculptural forms, including motors, mirrors, and water. These video sculptures, which expanded the potential for video art and interrogated our relationship to new technologies, resonate perhaps even more strongly in society today where video is ubiquitous.

Webinar posted: View the Zoom talk Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality.

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October

Tuesday, October 12, 5 p.m. EDT

Washi Transformed: Traditional Japanese Paper Becomes Contemporary Art

Japanese art historian Meher McArthur will discuss her upcoming exhibition Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper, which will begin touring the country this autumn. Her talk will present the works of nine Japanese artists featured in the exhibition: Hina Aoyama, Eriko Horiki, Kyoko Ibe, Yoshio Ikezaki, Kakuko Ishii, Yuko Kimura, Yuko Nishimura, Takaaki Tanaka and Ayomi Yoshida. These artists have different approaches in the use of traditional Japanese handmade paper, or washi, as a medium for their works of contemporary art, from spectacular sculptures and installations to sublime wall pieces, screens and installations. Here is a link to the exhibition, the artists, and the tour schedule, for your interest: Washi Transformed.

Webinar posted: View the Zoom talk Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper.

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November

Wednesday, November 3, 5 p.m. EDT

Sterling Inspiration: Edward C. Moore’s Passion for Japanese Art and the Role His Japanese Collections Played at Tiffany & Co.

This talk will draw on groundbreaking research into Edward C. Moore, the head of Tiffany & Co.’s silver division during the second half of the 19th century, conducted for the recently published book Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co. and the accompanying exhibition that will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum in 2024. An avid, pioneering collector of works of art from diverse moments in time and geographies, Moore amassed a vast collection of Japanese works of art, ranging from metalwork to ceramics, lacquerware, baskets and textiles. His collections inspired him and his staff at Tiffany & Co. to produce silverwares of unprecedented virtuosity and originality.

During this talk, Medill Harvey will explore the transformative role Moore’s Japanese collections played at Tiffany & Co. It is a story of technical innovation, imaginative artistry and dynamic cultural exchange. Monika Bincsik will discuss the group of more than 800 Japanese objects bequeathed by Moore to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1891 and Moore’s collecting sources.

Webinar posted: View the Zoom talk Sterling Inspiration: Edward C. Moore’s Passion for Japanese Art and the Role His Japanese Collections Played at Tiffany & Co.