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Collecting Japanese Antiques. Alistair Seton
Читать онлайн.Название Collecting Japanese Antiques
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isbn 9781462905881
Автор произведения Alistair Seton
Издательство Ingram
Early History of Screens
The Chinese first made screens in the third century BC. Screens came to Japan in the seventh century (the earliest reference is AD 686 in Nihon Shoki). By 756, Tōdaiji Temple in Nara stocked a hundred, on both secular and religious themes.
In the Heian era (794-1185), a distinction began to be made between Yamato-e (non-religious pictures with Japanese themes and style, such as cherries, maples, birds, and seasonal changes), and Kara-e (those inspired by China). Japanese have tended to prefer practical objects even in art. Screens and paintings on doors served the purpose of separating space-dividing a room, keeping out drafts, forming a backdrop to a religious ceremony, or partitioning off a storage space. There was little room for "art for art's saké." Art had to work!
Screens and poets were closely connected at the Heian court. Poems were composed specifically for screens and scrolls, often depicting verdant hills in the changing seasons, or genre scenes. Most Yamato-e paintings were made for the court, while religious institutions kept commissioning pictures of saints and more especially mandalas, which explain Buddhist theories in graphic ways. Although few paintings prior to the twelfth century remain, the religious hold Buddhism exerted for centuries weakened from then on, though tea ceremony addicts and followers of Zen Buddhism, with its call for precepts and pithy epithets, widened the scope of screens and scrolls, adding dogma and priestly portraits.
Structural Improvements to Screens
Murase Miyeko states in Masterpieces of Japanese Screen Painting: The American Collection that in eighth-century screens "each of the six panels was originally surrounded by a silk border of brilliant red, and the panels were tied to one another at the top and bottom with colored leather thongs or silken cords. Each panel was regarded as a separate, independent pictorial unit, as well as a component of a single decorative piece.... This ancient method of joining screen panels was gradually modified. In the early thirteenth century, panels were arranged so that the brocaded border surrounded every two panels, rather than each individual one.
"The final solution to the problem of this still unsatisfactory format appears to have been achieved in the early fourteenth century, producing the format which is still in use today. The leather or silk cords that had once linked the byōbu (i.e. screen) panels were abandoned. In their place, strips of paper were pasted, horizontally, from the front of one panel to the back of the next, forming hinges. The strips alternated with other strips of paper affixed to the panels in the reverse direction."
To explain a little more clearly, these paper hinges provide contact and stability, much like tendons in the human body. When you stretch your leg, its shape changes as the tendons are pulled straight by the muscles or compressed by others. You can see the slight ripple of the paper hinge on a screen through the covering material. The alternating direction of the hinges provides stability; if one strip of paper gets weaker, the next one above and below should still hold and give the strength and flexibility needed. The strips of paper are covered with gold or white paper where visible and the same material as the back, where invisible. The new brocade frame is visible at the top and bottom of each panel, and at the far left and far right sides of the screen. As Murase says, "this technical innovation at last made it possible to display a continuous and unified composition in a screen painting."
Fig. 27 Kyōno, "Archery Lesson" (mother teaching son), two-panel screen, sumi and color on paper, c. 1920,5 ft 7 in x 6ft (1.7 x 1.8 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Now artists could execute sweeping, uninterrupted images on the surface of both screens, achieving an unprecedented aesthetic level of room decoration. Some later artists designed dramatic, even epic subjects like towering tree trunks rising out of sight or the whole panoply of the seasons. Others concentrated on smaller-scale subjects like autumn grasses, ducks or kimono on racks.
According to Liza Hyde, "though screens originated in China, they reached their apex in Japan, perhaps because the Japanese had fewer interior walls (and mobile ones appealed to them); the Chinese liked monumental walls hung with scrolls and large, lacquered wooden screens better. In English they were known as Coromandel (as they were brought out through the Straits of Coromandel). Paper hinges would not suit these heavy pieces. Korean screens later took after the Japanese and used paper hinges."
Fig. 28 Anon.,"Cranes" (det ail). six-panel screen, sumi and color on paper with gold clouds, 18th c., 5 ft 6 1/2 in x 12ft (1.7 x 3.6 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Fig. 29 Kō Hōgen, 15th descendant of Kanō Motonobu, "Shishi" (lions) six-panel screen, 19th c. (Edo). 6ft x 12ft 3 in (1.8 x 3.6 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Gold Screens
Gilded screen painting appeared in the fourteenth century. The entire surface was covered with paper-thin sheets of gold leaf. These found good markets in neighboring countries. Hyde adds: "There was a sharp increase in the domestic demand for gold screens in the mid-fifteenth century. They were used at funeral rites in Buddhist temples, and in the homes of cultivated men as convenient backdrops against which hanging scrolls of painting and calligraphy could be displayed."
Initially, the gilded panels remained undecorated, but soon they came to be painted in ink or lavish colors. Gold flakes of varying hues were sprinkled onto gilded surfaces, and gold was used along with ink and colors. The total effect was dazzling. The Momoyama screens made at the end of the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth were the most famous. Daimyō developed a mania for building castles with extravagant interiors featuring gold screens. These screens reflected light in dark rooms, making the rooms look warmer and also more magnificent. Masters painted bold, impressive images against shimmering gold or silver grounds. In these surroundings, monochrome ink screens created a special ambience. Hazy mist and water landscapes form a metaphysical world of concentration, meditation and poetry.
Fig. 30 Anon., "Pines, Water and Wisteria," six-panel screen, sumi and color on heavily embossed gold, late 17th c., 5 ft 8 in x 12ft 2 in (1.7 x 3.7 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Fig. 31 Anon., "Hawks," one of a pair of six-panel screens, ink and color, late 16-17th c., each 5 ft 6 in x 12ft 2 in (1.7 x 3.7 m) purchased in Japan in 1933 from Fujita by Paul Theodore Frankl and from his estate. Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Fig. 32 Anon., "Morning Glories, Vines and Grasses," six-panel screen, mineral colors on gold leaf, early 18th c., 5 ft 8 1/2 in x 12ft (1.7 m x 3.6 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Fig. 33a, b Seikō, "Corn Festival" (details), pair of two-panel screens, ink and color, 20th c., each 5 ft 5 1/2 in x 6ft 2 in (1.7 m x 1.9 m). Photo courtesy Liza Hyde.
Common Screen Subjects
Landscapes (sansui) are the best known subjects in scrolls. You may be surprised to learn that Japan's scenery really can look like the traditional mist-shrouded hills with prominent pines portrayed in screens, especially after rain in June. The great Sesshū Tōyō (1420-1506) may have been inspired by Chinese predecessors, but such scenes also exist here (see Fig. 5).
Rakuchū rakugai. This is a variant of the above but shows genre scenes set in Kyoto or neighboring places. Clouds often divide the different scenes and localities-a little mystifying until you understand the convention.
Four seasons (shiki). The seasons typical of Kyoto were taken as true of all Japan and portrayed in pairs