Nihonga: Japanese Art, Western Influences -- Extensive Way Collection Reflects Late 19Th-Century Renegade Painting Movement In Japan

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"Modern Masters of Kyoto: The Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection," through Feb. 13, at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Volunteer Park, Seattle. Hours are Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays until 9 p.m. Information: 206-654-3100. Curator Michiyo Morioka will give an opening night lecture today at 7 p.m. at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Like many of the best private art collections, the Griffith and Patricia Way collection of Japanese painting is the result of a curiosity that was burnished into passion, armchair scholarship that evolved into connoisseurship, and a large dose of serendipity.

The beautiful and rare collection of the Ways' Nihonga art that opens today at the Seattle Asian Art Museum would never have been amassed were it not for the horrors of World War II. In 1942 Griffith Way, then a young officer in the U.S. Navy, was put through an intensive course in Japanese and sent to the Pacific theater, where he served as a translator and interpreter. When the war ended, he was among the first waves of U.S. military divisions sent into Japan to try to restore stability amid the chaos and rubble.

Way's experiences during those postwar months in Japan so moved him that nine years later, after returning to Seattle to study law, he set up a law office in Tokyo. He practiced law there for more than 40 years, maintaining homes in both Tokyo and Seattle.

From his first introduction to Japanese culture, Way was intrigued by its art. Like many Westerners, he was initially interested in calligraphy, the graceful, highly stylized writing that is considered an art form in many non-Western cultures. His interest in calligraphy led him to study other traditional Japanese art styles, including contemporary prints.

But slowly he came to love Nihonga, a renegade painting movement that existed in Japan from the late 19th century through the 1930s. Nihonga essentially described the efforts of a group of convention-breaking artists who wanted to preserve some traditional Japanese aesthetics at the same time that they longed to break away from certain rigid, traditional formalities and incorporate Western ideas about color, naturalism and individualism.

Nihonga was a response to Japan's gradual opening to the West. Until the mid-19th century, Japan was so concerned about preserving its cultural purity that it effectively closed itself to Western culture, including Western art. But as Japan was forced to open its doors to English and American traders and entrepreneurs, among others, Western influences crept in. Japanese collectors began buying European art and some Japanese artists, having traveled to European art capitals, began making European-style art.

Nihonga artists were, therefore, highly nationalistic but also fascinated by foreign ideas about art. The tension created by those two seemingly contrary notions is why many scholars of Japanese art now consider Nihonga one of the richest and most psychologically complex Japanese art movements of any period. And it was these characteristics that Way says drew him to Nihonga, despite the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s, when he began collecting, few collectors or scholars considered Nihonga important.

Since then, Nihonga has become extremely popular in Japan, and Nihonga shows are now held there regularly. The Way collection is considered the premier Nihonga collection outside of Japan. After traveling to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next spring, the show will go on to Japan.

The Seattle exhibition of 80 paintings was curated by Michiyo Morioka, a Seattle-based art historian and independent curator. Because there is so little space at the Seattle Asian Art Museum for temporary exhibitions, the show is being presented in two parts. The 80 works now on display will come down in mid-November, to be replaced by 80 other works mostly by the same artists. A symposium on Nihonga that has attracted international scholars is being held Sunday and Monday.

The title of this exhibition, "Modern Masters of Kyoto: Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection," is a cumbersome mouthful that nevertheless is informative. The term "modern" in Japanese culture means from the second half of the 19th century into the 20th century. The works are mostly from the group of Nihonga artists working in Kyoto, Japan's historic culture capital, though by the early 20th century Tokyo was already rivaling Kyoto as a center of artistic activity.

Finally, Nihonga did transform Japanese painting, for the first time making it possible for Japanese artists to step outside the narrow confines of tradition. Though these paintings will likely seem very traditional to visitors not steeped in the history of Japanese art, they were revolutionary in their time.

All the works in the show were painted either on traditional folding screens or silk scrolls. The artists used ink and vegetable and mineral pigments. All this was traditional.

But the themes, points of view, colors and brushwork employed by the many artists in this movement were unconventional and not necessarily alike, in the same way that the term "Impressionism" described an artistic movement, though not a precise style.

In "Woman Holding a Flower," early 1920s, by Kajiwara Hisako, (1896-1988), the young woman's robe is brilliantly colored in reds with splashes of pink, blue and white - a bright palette for the period. The figure is compressed into a horizontal frame rather than a vertical one, also unusual. It is a close-up portrait, a painting suggesting the young woman's individuality, a point of view that would have been unheard of a half century earlier.

Interestingly, the artist of this painting was a woman, one of several represented in this show. Like the male artists, many of whom were the bad-boy artists of their period, the women Nihonga painters were also highly independent. Hisako turned down marriage proposals to devote herself to her career, which eventually spanned almost 70 years.

Another woman represented in this exhibition, Uemura Shoen, (1875-1949), painted the gorgeous "Summer Evening," about 1900. It is the full-length image of a woman in a golden kimono looking over a balcony. Her back is to us. She holds a fan in one hand. We can't see her face. It's impossible to know her age or what she is looking at. Perhaps she waits for a lover. Her hair is held with an exquisite tortoise-shell pin, her obi and kimono drape in smooth folds around her waist and legs. Shoen was known for her paintings of beautiful women. The mystery and subtle sensuality of this image make it a far cry from less specific, group images of women that came before.

The most spirited bad-boy among these artists was Tsuji Kako, (1870-1931). An outspoken experimenter and a lifelong practitioner of Zen Buddhism, he painted one of the stunning works in the exhibition, a four-paneled screen called "Green Waves," about 1910. Kako painted nothing but waves for several years. He was fascinated by their transitory quality and power. In "Green Waves" he used fat, punchy brush strokes that had little to do with the controlled subtlety of traditional Japanese brushwork. His brushwork gives the viewer the sensation of being inside the wave. The horizon is high and the wave rolls on into infinity. The abstract quality of the work seems to anticipate the abstract art movement that would be the sea change of 20th century Western art.

Kako also painted the charming "White Heron Castle," about 1910. It is the image of Himeji Castle, a formidable example of 16th-century Japanese architecture, but Kako turns it into a dreamy, fairy-tale palace by ignoring the dark ink outlines typical of Japanese art.

Like some other Nihonga artists, Tomita Keisen (1879-1936) had a wry sense of humor. Known for his carousing and rowdy private life, his eye for the foibles of others often came out in his work.

In "Wang Xizhi," about 1915, he shows a famous Chinese calligrapher sitting at his desk waiting for inspiration. According to stories passed down through the centuries, the calligrapher was inspired to do his most famous piece by the sight of graceful geese. But Keisen in his painting replaces graceful wild geese with fat, squawking domesticated geese, suggesting the possibility that the calligrapher's reputation was overblown, and that his work more closely resembled land-bound garden geese rather than elegant wild ones.

Like much Asian art, the subtleties of this lovely exhibition will be lost on those who hurry through. But those who take the time to linger will be rewarded by the transcendent beauty of many of these works.