'Precious Woods, Pure Enjoyment' Is Now On View At The Saint Louis Art Museum

St. Louis MO

23 April, 2022

3:51 PM

Description

Press release from the St. Louis Art Museum: April 21, 2022 ST. LOUIS, April 21, 2022—The Saint Louis Art Museum will present "Precious Woods, Pure Enjoyment: Japanese Art from the 19th and 20th Centuries," an installation featuring works reflecting a range of traditional styles and sources of cultural inspiration that remained strong during a period when Japan rapidly modernized and adopted many Western modes of artistic expression. The free installation will be on view in Gallery 225 through October 30. Several works are associated with the "bunjinga" (literati painting) or "nanga" (southern painting) schools inspired by the art of literati or scholar-officials in China, much of which is geographically situated south of Japan. These include the partially unrolled handscroll in the center of the gallery, "Precious Woods, Pure Enjoyment," a painting from 1848 by Hine Taizan; the hanging scroll "Lotus Pond with Irises" from the late 1890s by Kubota Beisen; the painted fan "Dispositions of the Gentlemen" from 1916 by Tomioka Tessai; as well as the pair of folding screens, "Landscape of the Four Seasons" of 1932, by Matsubayashi Keigetsu. During the course of the 20th century, another modern art movement known as "Nihonga" (Japanese-style painting) emphasized a return to the subjects and styles of native Japanese visual art. Examples from this school of Japanese painting are represented by Fusen Tetsu's "Southern Island" and Okamura Utarō's "Mount Fuji." Five bamboo flower baskets accompany the display of the hanging scrolls, as they might be typically juxtaposed in the recessed alcove spaces of a Japanese home to hold arrangements of seasonal flowers. Some of them are based on Chinese basket forms, while others take on a more uniquely Japanese shape. These baskets are part of a group of 36 assembled by Nancy Jane Davidson Shestack, a native of St. Louis. They were recently bequeathed by her husband, Alan Shestack, a former director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Precious Woods, Pure Enjoyment: Japanese Art from the 19th and 20th Centuries" is curated by Philip Hu, curator of Asian art. This press release was produced by the City of St. Louis. The views expressed here are the author's own.