University of California at Santa Barbara
Topic: Woodblock Print

 

TALK: Katsuhika Hokusai, Winslow Homer and the “Great Wave”

By Christine Guth (Stanford University)

Tuesday, January 30, 4:00PM

McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020. UC Santa Barbara

 

Hokusai’s  “Great Wave” is widely recognized as a modern icon, but the question of how it achieved this status is difficult to answer. In her talk, Guth will address this larger issue through  an exploration of the early responses to this image in the United States, especially as seen in the paintings of Winslow Homer.

 

Christine Guth, pre-eminent scholar of Japanese art history now a Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, raise provocative questions on globalization through the lens of visual culture.

 

Sponsored by the IHC’s East Asian Cultural Studies Research Focus Group, the departments of East Asian Language and Cultural Studies, Global Studies, History of Art and Architecture, History and the East Asia Center.

 

Interdisciplinary Humanities Center

Topic: Bamboo

The Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art Presents:

The Tanabe Family: Four Generations of Bamboo Artists

September 5, 2006 – December 2, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Photo) Tanabe Chikuunsai II (1910-2000), Tapered senshu-ami weave flower basket. Bamboo with lacquer. Lee Institute Permanent Collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Photo) Tanabe Chikuunsai III (1940-), Circles and Squares (Hoen). Bamboo with lacquer. Courtesy of the Tanabe Family.

Hanford, California: The Lee Institute is pleased to announce the opening of a special exhibition devoted to one of the great lineages of bamboo artists in Japan.  Ranging from traditional baskets woven for flower arrangement and tea ceremony to abstract sculptures of plaited bamboo, this exhibit will present over forty works by master artists of the Tanabe line, more than half borrowed from private collections in the U.S. and Japan.

 

The exhibited baskets and sculpture cover a century of artistic production, from the early 1900s to the present, providing visitors with an unprecedented opportunity to view the growth of this art form over time, and within the traditional familial master-disciple system of Japanese crafts.  Viewers will experience both the innovations and underlying continuity of the Tanabe masters, as each applies the family’s techniques to a unique conception of what bamboo art can and should be, in keeping with his or her times.

 

The Tanabe family, revered as the longest continuous lineage of bamboo artists, was established as masters of basketry by Chikuunsai I (1877-1937).  In his time, bamboo baskets were an indispensable part of the sencha (roasted leaf) tea ceremony, which unlike its more Japanese-oriented matcha (powdered tea) version, was based around appreciations of Chinese culture.  Chikuunsai I’s decorative baskets were heavily influenced by those of the Chinese literati tradition, but took on an unmistakable Japanese sensibility in his experiments with the form. 

 

These experiments were brought to fruition by his son and successor, Chikuunsai II (1910-2000), whose use of thinner bamboo strips with expansive spacing allowed him to create vessels with a light, ethereal quality and brilliant moiré patterning.  The third Chikuunsai (1940-), while continuing the family tradition of eye-pleasing basketry, ventured into abstract, geometrical sculpture, using rod-like arrow bamboo to create architecture-like constructions. 

 

The youngest Tanabe master, currently Sh? chiku (1973-) but slated to become Chikuunsai IV, also works in both basketry and abstract sculpture.  In the latter pursuit, he creates organic forms with pale strips of spotted tiger bamboo, which wrap tightly around one another to define the body of the piece, creating swirls of energy from the repetition and occasional breaks in their concentric lines.               

 

Finally, The Tanabe Family: Four Generations of Bamboo Artists also provides us with the opportunity to consider one possible kind of interaction between man and nature, in the engagement of a line of sophisticated artists with a revered natural material.  Bamboo, as both natural material and conceptual metaphor, holds an ancient, noble lineage in the Far East.  Fast-growing and plentiful but marvelously rare in its combination of flexibility and hardiness, bamboo has from prehistoric times served various roles in human workmanship and ideals of life.  In poetry, it has served as a symbol of the feminine; in Confucian philosophy, as a metaphor for the perfected gentleman; in myth, as the very source of life.  Its strength and pliancy also make it an exceptional material for craftsmanship, and the implied cultural meanings of bamboo are never far beyond the striated earth tones of its gleaming surfaces. 

 

This exhibition is guest curated by Mr. Robert Coffland of the TAI Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, who along with Dennis and Alexandra Lenehan of Los Altos Hills, CA and Wendy and Stan Simpson of Visalia, CA, generously provided support for its creation.   

 

The Lee Institute is located 6 miles south of downtown Hanford at 15770 Tenth Avenue.  The gallery and reference library are wheelchair accessible and open to the public Tuesday­-Saturday from 1:00–5:00 pm. Fees are $5 for adults, $3 for students; members and children under 12 are free. Docent tours of the exhibition are held every Saturday at 1:00 pm and special pre-arranged group tours are available for an additional fee. Please see our website at http://www.shermanleeinstitute.org or call (559) 582-4915.