The museum is a projection of the national and urban culture, giving the latter a special temperament.
Art exhibitions are a window to civilization, allowing people to glimpse a different view of the world.
Many art museums in Japan have long been heard of, but unfortunately they have not been able to do so. Qi Lin's book came at an opportune time. As the title suggests, the author hopes to use the museum to understand the country's cultural and artistic history and compare the differences between the two countries. In her opinion, the spirit of learning Japanese art is quite commendable: before the Meiji Restoration, China was the coordinates, which can be seen in art museums such as ceramics, calligraphy and painting, and tea ceremony; After the Black Ship Incident, the West was referenced and studied on a large scale, and the two art museums of Otsuka and Ohara systematically copied and collected Western art.
Let's first see how Chinese art is absorbed and borrowed.
When you admire ancient Japanese paintings and calligraphy, you will find that the characters are kanji, and the pen and ink are Chinese style. Our famous artists are also admired by the other side and take it as a fashion. But they are also trying to explore their own art, as reflected in the ink painting of Xuezhou's work. At the age of 48, he became a member of the Ming Mission, where he was able to exchange and learn from Chinese painters, and the traces of Ming painting can be clearly seen in the "Four Seasons Landscape Map" created during this period. However, in his later years, his work "Autumn and Winter Landscape Map" has formed a unique style in both composition and brush - just like the Japanese garden in the Xuezhou period, it has also formed a sub-category of "dry landscape" with a national aesthetic sense.
Left: Four seasons landscape map Right: Autumn and winter landscape map (taken in the book)
Look at the tea ceremony again. From boiling tea, ordering tea to brewing tea, tea culture prevailed across the sea, becoming a symbol of taste and culture, and was pushed to the top by tea ceremony master Senrikyu. Before him, the tea ceremony had formed a set of cumbersome and luxurious ceremonies, and Senrikyu practiced the pearlescent tea of the common people, and implemented the simple and authentic "wabi tea" way in many aspects such as tea room arrangement, tea vessel selection, tea drinking space and number of people. Senrikyu's custom-made Rakucha bowl was irregular in shape and glaze color, and the tea man after him, Liu Zongyue, praised the Ido bowl and interpreted the admiration of crude tea ware to the extreme. In any case, the wabi-cha style of "cold, frozen, silent, and dry" makes the imported product of tea truly rooted in the local culture.
Senrikyu custom tea bowl "Morning Boat" (taken in the book)
In the long process of imitation, absorption and borrowing, the Japanese-style aesthetics of "mourning, seclusion, and wabi-sabi" formed have made the art with the same root bear different fruits, which seem to be similar, but the spiritual core is completely different.
With the Meiji Restoration in full swing, Japan began to look to the Western art world. What struck me the most in this wave of learning was the spontaneous emergence of cultural awareness and artistic appreciation among unofficial groups.
In Kurashiki with a population of less than 500,000, there is a private museum that systematically collects the works of representative artists of Western modern and contemporary art history, the Ohara Museum of Art. The museum attached great importance to the collection of contemporaneous works that continue to this day. In order to make the works of high-quality painters accessible to ordinary Japanese citizens, they made a special trip to Monet's mansion and earnestly requested that they eventually own the masterpiece "Water Lilies". 80 years later, the water lily plant of Monet's former residence was also moved to the museum, accompanied by the painting. The spirit of art transcends borders, and the people who make such efforts are only private entrepreneurs in small towns.
In fact, excellent art museums are not only located in major cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, nor are they all national or official. There is also a special art museum in the small city of Tokushima, which replicates classic works from Western art history through ceramic panels.
Left: Replica of the clay plate of the Takamatsuzuka Kofun mural (pictured in the exhibition hall) Right: Part of the clay plate replica of the Sistine Chapel fresco (pictured in the book)
Last month, I watched an exhibition of cultural exchanges between China and Japan, the Han and Tang dynasties, in which the Takamatsuzuka Kofun mural, a national treasure, was displayed as a clay plate reproduction. I was amazed at the time how convenient it would be if Dunhuang murals could also use this technique! The frescoes are very easy to discolor and peel off in the erosion of time, and the terracotta plates are well preserved in their original appearance, and they themselves are more durable and strong than copying. The Otsuka International Art Museum gave me a real artistic feast: the frescoes of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel were displayed as they were, the appearance of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" before and after the restoration were displayed separately, Van Gogh's seven "Sunflowers" scattered around the world and Rembrandt's self-portraits from different periods were collected, El Greco's five paintings for the Great Altarpiece of Notre Dame College in Aragon and the long-destroyed altar itself were restored to their former glory... The museum spent seven years reproducing 1,074 works from more than 190 museums in 25 countries, and everything from the selection of works to the form of presentation was driven by the company called the Otsuka Group.
The concept of using one's own technology and financial resources to do a cause that benefits the people of Japan is probably the reason why so many high-quality art museums in Japan can bloom all over the world, large and small.
Qi Lin takes readers to learn about ten Japanese art museums, and at the same time launches a meditation and reflection on art and culture. And what we get from us is not only the enjoyment of beauty, but also the exploration of the eternal motif of how to preserve, share, and learn from human art. Whatever the sentiment, there is indeed much to learn from this country. I also firmly believe that with the increasing self-confidence and self-improvement of economy and culture, Chinese art that has never been extinguished will blossom everywhere and bloom more brilliantly!