In love with Inagaki Toshijiro 稲垣稔次郎

I came face to face with another of my katazome idols yesterday. There is an exhibition on at the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art (京都国立近代美術館）at the moment, showing works by Toshijiro and his older brother Chusei, who was a painter. I admit I walked pretty quickly through th Chusei half of the exhibition to get to the Toshijiro half.

WOW~ if his kimono and kataezome (dyed pictures on washi paper) look cool in books, they are even more beautiful in real life. He has a really clever way of using two patterns side by side, especially in his kimono. 　

detail of the kimono below

I also admire the way he depicts people and objects in a simplified form but still gives you enough visual information to know exactly what it is. For example in this next piece showing Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto, the three women in the foreground in kimono.

 This last piece was surprisingly unlike his others. It shows a bustling Kyoto street at nightime. The colours are so spectacular you can just imagine what the festive feel of the street was like, all that neon and those well dressed people.

 

After seeing the exhbition you'd see why he was made a "National Treasure"

Another World - Ito Jakuchu 伊藤若冲

I've mentioned the paintings of Ito Jakuchu here before. Yesterday I was lucky enough to see a major exhibition of his works at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. The exhibition was called "Another World".

It was incredible. It was one of those exhibitions where you've seen their work in a book or something before and thought it was nice or ok. But then you get a chance to see it up close and in real life and you see a whole new side to it. For me, it was seeing the detail in his paintings. The way he depicted individual feathers or added texture to leaves was really interesting.

The paintings I was most interested in and had been hoping to see, where those of Cockatoos.

This ink painting is from 1771!!! And don't try telling me that's not a cockatoo, because it is!

Here's another one, not sure what year it is from but Jakuchu died in 1800 so it had to be before that.

And finally this round one from 1782

I'm dying to know where he (and others around the same era) got these images from. Were these birds brought to Japan by dutch traders? Are these images copied from paintings done by others? Did he really see a cockatoo or was he using his imagination? These are things I really want to look into.

Starstruck - Serizawa 芹沢圭介

Yesterday I made a trek out to Shizuoka from Kyoto on the bullet train to catch the last day of two exhibitions I really wanted to see when I came here to Japan for my 3 week trip.

The first was at the Keisuke Serizawa Art Gallery, which was showing 「芹沢銈介の名作　―花ヨリモ花　染メノ花―」. I guess you could translate it as "The Famous works of Serizawa Keisuke - A dyed flower is more real than a flower" (which is apparently a quote of his).

Anyway, it was fantastic. Serizawa's Katazome work is very well known in Japan and this probably has alot to do with the way he made his art accessible, like the katazome dyed calendars he produced yearly.

He was influenced by Okinawan "Bingata" dyeing (similar technique wise to katazome) and he formed part of the Mingei movement - a craft movement in Japan that proposed art for the masses.

I loved his colours and his sense of design was really interesting. Some of my favourite pieces in the exhibition :

this is a linen kimono from 1961

Its such a simple motif but the way he has repeated it makes it very bold.

This is an early work from the 1930's depicting the area around Shizuoka (?) with Mt Fuji in the background.

This is the website of the gallery : http://www.seribi.jp/