The Price Collection of Edo Art @ Sackler Gallery
The interconnectivity of all things – for some, this bond is religion; for others, just fateful coincidences. But whatever your interpretation of the relationship between all things, a stunning study of one era’s belief in interconnectivity is now on display at the Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian’s Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes exhibition.
The show, on display through April 2008, is a startling reminder that art is much more than just paint and a brush. Those who have seen the connected Freer Gallery’s collection of Edo screens will be impressed with the spectacular pieces exhibited in this special showcase of the Etsuko and Joe Price Collection – including over 25 of the era’s signature compositions: wide, colored screen canvases from masters like Sakai Hoitsu which embody the Edo ideal – practicality and aesthetics combining to produce an image of association, of interconnectivity.
Each screen, some of which are very large (two by six feet with six panels are commonplace), is incredibly unique. These works demand the viewer to invert their sensibilities of looking at traditional Western art; in lieu of judging from a distance, this art form begs you to look closer and study the technique. In magnificent scenes of rice harvests and festivals, each face (in crowds of hundreds) is rendered in painstaking detail, creating a human connection between each character in the scene and the onlooker. While it may be the beautiful usage of silver and gold that will attract your eye, it is often times the simplest of detailing -- as in Katsu Jagyoku’s stunning work with bird legs, of all things -- that will keep your attention.
The Edo period (liberally dated from 1615-1868) was a dramatic period of artistic sensibility shifts in Japan. While the country attempted to maintain a rigid isolationist policy, many of the Edo artists were influenced heavily from the techniques and aesthetics of China’s Ming dynasty – examples of which can be seen in the Price’s collection of clay pottery and fans. The focus of the Edo period was not to take aimlessly from these cultures, but to combine the practical and the mystical into one sweeping aesthetic – just as American visionary Frank Lloyd Wright took inspiration in the Edo design, continuing its legacy.
The Sackler Gallery has done a fine job of realizing the connection between the myth and the ordinary – the power of this art that recognizes the transformation of simple objects from the utilitarian to the artistic. As one of the museum’s helpful placards reminds you as you wander through, “There is no neutral.”
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, located at 1050 Independence Avenue SW, is open daily from 10 a.m to 5:30 PM every day except December 25. Admission is free. Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes: Edo Masters From the Price Collection will run through April 13, 2008.