From Japan, objects of beauty and everyday life
MFA exhibit touches on nine centuries
Among the more than 80 objects in "Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection," the traveling show now at the Museum of Fine Arts, is a piece that will stay at the MFA: a bed cover, or yogi. The funny-looking red, kimono-shaped piece adorned with a crane and paulownia blossoms appears to stand upright on its own, cushioned arms spread. Presumably the wealthy, mid-19th-century merchant who owned it crawled into it each night as if it were a sleeping bag. Weber has given it to the MFA, along with several kimonos.
Weber's collection, highlighted in this show organized by the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin, demonstrates an intellectual passion for Japanese culture and its evolution, with a particular regard to Chinese influences. Chronologically, the show begins with a rare bronze plate inscribed with the lotus sutra that dates to 1141, which had been ritually buried on a mountainside and only unearthed in the 1920s. It ends with early-20th-century kimonos emblazoned with designs influenced by Western modern art.
Weber is a retired medical school professor from New York who previously collected Chinese art with his then wife. He began his collection of Japanese objects in 1996 after he got divorced.
His collection, one of the best private repositories of Japanese art outside of Japan, includes paintings, lacquer ware, ceramics, and textiles. The exhibition spans two floors. The first floor focuses on what we think of as crafts, or art objects with utility; the paintings are upstairs.
From the 13th to the 15th century, Japanese artists (often Zen monks) borrowed from Chinese motifs, the way hundreds of years later American painters took their cue from Europeans. Two ink drawings of Hotei, a legendary 10th-century wandering monk and bodhisattva, or enlightened one, delineate the differences.
The first, "Hotei," is attributed to Kano Masanobu, who lived from 1434 to 1530 and was the founder of a centuries-long school of painting. Plump and grinning, the monk's face is drawn with the fine detail associated with Chinese painting. The second, "Hotei Reaching for the Moon," painted in the 16th century by Sesson Shukei, features a Japanese emphasis on looser, more gestural lines; the image is less a portrait than Kano's, and more an emblem of Hotei's exuberance and striving for enlightenment.
"Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang," a scroll drawing by Dozo Eisu, who worked in the mid-16th century, puts a distinctly Japanese spin on a traditional Chinese subject: the landscape in the Hunan Province where two rivers meet. The Chinese habitually depicted the eight views on separate scrolls or screens. This artist condensed them onto one scroll, depicting them vertically. That orientation was a common way to display art in Japanese homes at the time; it completely changes how the landscape is read.
Paintings on scrolls and screens often took a sprawling approach to narrative. Weber has a six-panel scene from "The Tale of Genji," widely considered the first known novel, written by Lady Murasaki in the early 11th century. The screen dates to the early 17th century, and takes an aerial perspective, inviting us to peek into rooms from above to see narratives of courtship unfurling in precise detail.
The MFA has another show up, "Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings From the Floating World, 1690-1850," featuring ukiyo-e paintings of the worlds of theater and brothels, and this show selectively echoes that one. A gorgeous 17th-century screen by painting master Hishikawa Moronobu, "A Visit to the Yoshiwara," meanders in vivid colors through the red light district of
The yogi, along with a series of dramatic kimonos, is downstairs. Kimonos became a marketing tool, representing Japan to the Western world, in the 19th century. The bright red "Robe With Wisteria and Stylized Waves" took a large amount of the dye made from safflower petals to achieve its warm tones, which indicates that the woman who wore it 200 years ago was wealthy. Safflower fades to yellow in the sunlight, so this piece has been remarkably preserved.
A fireman's coat dating to the early 20th century was probably worn more often. Here, it hangs inside out, to reveal a remarkable scene dyed and stitched into its lining: a bold, black anchor hitting roiling blue water. The coat's outside is a standard-issue uniform, with a geometric brick pattern of white on blue. The inside, though, may have been a talisman to ward off bad luck fighting fires.
Weber has taken a particular interest in the Japanese tea ceremony, which evolved from being an audacious display of wealth and tea services from China in the 14th century to being a more spiritual pursuit in the 15th century, and continued to grow more refined and ritualized. A style of lacquer called Negoro, developed by Buddhist monks, became a standby at tea ceremonies. A lobed tray from 1491 is a lovely example, with brick-red cinnabar sheen covering layers of black lacquer beneath, which peek through intentionally - imbuing the piece with an antique quality at the time it was made.
A set of stoneware serving dishes used for tea from 1600-1620 demonstrates a growing facility with glazing techniques. Each boxy vessel sports an autumnal design of persimmons hanging beneath a canopy of green glaze; drips of blue accent the pieces, as do stripes of brown iron oxide.
"Arts of Japan" tackles nine centuries of cultural history. It is a bit of a tease. Each thematic stop - the tea ceremony, the novelistic screens - is brief but rich, deserving a show of its own. Only the beauties of the Floating World get one.
