Meet Japan without leaving Los Angeles Dances and Masks: The Arts of the Noh Theater, Sept. 5 - Dec. 1, 2007
Cultural News, October 2007
Noh Performance by Watanabe Nangaku, woodblock printed hand scroll, 1795. Courtesy of Prof. Scott Johnson.
“Dances and Masks: The Arts of the Noh Theater” is the fall exhibition at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford at California’s Central Valley.
In its galleries, visitors can have direct encounters with the craft objects of the stage, including carved wooden masks, painted fans, and finely woven silk textiles, and to consider the place of Noh in Japanese culture.
The Noh theater is one of the world’s oldest continuous theatrical traditions. Formalized in the fourteenth century by a father-son team of actor-composers, Kan’ami and Ze’ami, who were patronized by the warrior elite of their day, Noh built upon many other structures already established in Japanese culture.
These include shrine performances, dance, instrumental music, chant, poetry and narrative, not to mention the advanced arts of carving and textile weaving.
The main gallery of the exhibition focuses on images of actors on the stage, the stories of celebrated Noh plays, the comic Kyōgen interlude and the place of Noh in Japanese culture.
In the first section, the last great master of Rimpa, Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942) and the printmaker Tsukioka Kogyo (1869-1927), the two artists who focused most closely on Noh in the early twentieth century, are paired off against one another.
The similarities and contrasts in these artists’ styles are brought out especially in the album on which they were commissioned to collaborate, consisting of shikishi paintings with a Noh play for each month of the year.
The six paintings from this rare album constitute one of the highlights of this section, which includes plays such as Hagoromo (The Feathery Robe), Dojoji (Dojo Temple), Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), Sekidera Komachi (Lady Komachi at the Barrier Temple), Okina (The Old Man) and Takasago.
At various points throughout the room are displayed Noh robes, one for almost each of the five categories of character-oriented plays, with both subtle and sparkling surfaces, and masks of major types, including Hannya, Okina and Zō-onna, by contemporary carver Yamaguchi Bidō.
The Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture is located at 15770 Tenth Ave., Hanford, CA 93230-9533, (559) 582-4915, www.ccjac.org. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Docent tours are given every Saturday at 1 p.m. The museum will be closed for Thanksgiving and the day following.
Dances and Masks: The Arts of the Noh Theater, through Dec. 1
Cultural News, November 2007 Issue
Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942), Okina, from the album One Thousand Grasses, polychrome woodblock print.
“Dances and Masks: The Arts of the Noh Theater” in on view at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford at California’s Central Valley through Dec. 1.
Two artists stand out as pioneers in depictions of Noh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tsukioka Kogyo (1860-1927), a son-in-law of the great printmaker Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), established Noh as a theme for popular prints for the first time, taking the lead from the printmakers Ogata Gekko and Yoshu Chikanobu, who worked more tentatively in this area. Kogyo created three major series of Noh prints, most striking of which was his Nogaku Zue of 1897-1902, with well over a hundred designs.
The Noh work of Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942), considered the last of the Rimpa line (the school influenced by Ogata Korin), makes a striking contrast with that of Kogyo.
Whereas Kogyo is typically descriptive and journalistic, true to the appearance of the stage and things on the stage, Sekka boils down Noh and its elements to their refined essences, and creates poetry of its movements and forms.
His works feature more stylization than Kogyo’s, with rounded, flowing forms, richly pooling colors and a playful, sometimes startling, sense of design.
Eight works by Kogyo and eleven by Sekka are on view this month.
The Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture is located at 15770 Tenth Ave., Hanford, CA 93230, (559) 582-4915, www.ccjac.org. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Docent tours are given every Saturday at 1 p.m. The museum will be closed for Thanksgiving and the day following.