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Daruma Pilgirms Gallery
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Kawanabe Kyosai
Kawanabe Gyoosai (1831 - 89) 河鍋暁斎
Daruma and the Courtesans
Etsuko and Joe Price Collection
© Funaki Naoto Pages
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Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum
Warabi City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan 335-0003
About Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)
This great artist has grown in stature as we have been able the better to get the Meiji period into perspective. He studied at an early age under Kuniyoshi and later under Kano masters, but eventually he went his own independent way. Essentially a nationalistic painter, he was nonetherless fully aware of Wetern art - indeed, he dealt with it quite broardmindedly in his book "Kyosai Gadan" published in 1887 - but he was robust enough not to succumb, as so many of his contemporaries did, to the blandishments of foreign styles, and was one of the last great painters in the truly Japanese tradition.
If he has a fault, it is over-exuberance: he paints vigorously with a full brush, but his immense bravura and skill are sometimes a little overpowering. But this very impetuousness and daring is often more economically used in smaller sketches and drawings and they have always elicited greater Western praise than many of his more important works.
Kyosai, because of the warmth of his personallity, his eccentricities and his known love for sake over and above his gifts as a painter, was a legend in his lifetime, and by great good fortune we have two intimate Western accounts of him at work: one by Emile Guimet, who with Felix Regamy, visited him in Japan in 1876, and wrote about him in "Promenades Japonaise," published in 1881; the other by Josiah Conder, the British architesct, who studied painting under Kyosai in the 1880s, and who, in his "Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyosai," published in 1911, gave a very full account of the artist's methods.Both Guimet and Conder were impressed by Kyosai's attack."
(Jaock Hiller)
© Kusumi Kawanabe, Director of the Museum
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河鍋暁斎 カエルとヘビの戯れ
Frogs and Serpents Frolicking
© Quote from : kuma90san.vox.com
暁斎百鬼画談
Click thumbnail for more of his paintings.
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Daruma Pilgrims in Japan
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Kyoto National Museum 2008
The 19th-century painter Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889) is known for his uninhibited brush and for his innovative, bold compositions. He was, however, also classically trained in the techniques of the orthodox Kano school and painted many extremely intricate works.
Those who are familiar with Kyosai in Japan think of him as an eccentric artist of demons and ghosts, while others may have never heard of him.
At age seven, Kyosai became a pupil of the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). From age eleven to nineteen, he received primary training in the Surugadai Kano lineage, whose members traditionally served as "official painters" (omote eshi) for the Tokugawa government. After achieving a mastery of the Kano techniques and style, Kyosai became independent.
During the tumultuous years between the end of the Tokugawa government and the nascent Meiji Restoration (1867), he assumed the name Kyosai ("Crazy Studio") and became very popular in Edo (now Tokyo) with his satirical paintings.
In 1870, however, governmental authorities arrested and imprisoned the notorious artist for his caricatures and punished him with fifty lashes before releasing him. Thereafter, he assumed a new pseudonym by changing the first character of his name kyo, which meant "crazy" or "wild," to a synonymous character meaning "dawn" or "enlightenment."
Nonetheless, Kyosai continued to produce innovative compositions by ingeniously incorporating traditional painting techniques and styles and never lost sight of visions as an eccentric artist in spite of the upheavals of Japan's attempt to modernize, known as bunmei kaika ("Civilization and Enlightenment").
With the historic opening of the country, Kyosai became acquainted with many Westerners, including the English architect Josiah Conder (1852-1920), the German physician Erwin von Baelz (1849-1913), and the French industrialist Emile Guimet (1836-1918).
These Japan enthusiasts, fearing the sudden Westernization of Japan, were fascinated by a quickly disappearing Edo culture and were drawn to the prodigious artist, whose works bridged concepts of tradition and modernity.
Although Kyosai's unique painting style has attracted much attention abroad, no comprehensive exhibition of this artist has been held in Japan until now. In commemorating the 120th memorial of Kyosai, who died of stomach cancer on April 26, 1889, the Kyoto National Museum proudly and exclusively presents his first major retrospective in Japan this spring.
Over 130 works spanning the career of this prolific painter have been selected to show his oeuvre. The exhibition explores his fantastical, burlesque works as well as more conservative ones that reflect his training in the Kano school through eight themes:
I. The Works of "Crazy Studio,"
II. The World of the Supernatural: Demons, Ghosts, and Gods,
III. Requiem for Tatsu,
IV. Large-scale Works,
V. Myriad of Themes,
VI. Hilarious Pictures,
VII. Tales and Annual Events, and VIII. A Modern Virtuoso.
Highlights of the exhibition include twenty-four paintings from the United Kingdom and The Netherlands and twenty-two other works which will be shown publicly for the first time (eleven of these are newly discovered works).
This retrospective brings Kyosai into the ranks of eccentric master artists, such as Ito Jakucho (1716-1800) and Soga Shohaku (1731-1781), whose works have been previously reassessed through major exhibitions at the Kyoto National Museum. Although highly individualistic, Kyosai did not merely demonstrate an impulsive brush but a classically trained one.
The Japanese catch phrase for the exhibition might be translated, "His works are so bizarre, they'll make you want to cry." Be shocked and surprised to discover both the bizarre and the beautiful in this artist's stunning repertoire.
http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/tokubetsu/080408/tokubetsu.html
Quote from the Japan Times
April 24, 2008
One hell of a time
Meji Period 'Demon of Painting' looked West
By MATTHEW LARKING
What wasn't to like about an artist who painted the scroll "Hard Times in Hell," in which the king of Hell and his coterie of demons ascend to paradise in search of more suitable employment?
Laughter from official quarters was decidedly muted when the same acute satirical eye focused on contemporary society and its fondness for all things Western. Whether Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889) really did depict an act of sodomy between foreigners and Japanese at a shogakai (a drinking and painting party) in 1870 is unsubstantiated. The jail time Kyosai spent in the event's aftermath, however, is historical record.
Kyosai's distinct sarcasm, playful virtuosity and extraordinary inventiveness are the themes of Kyoto National Museum's spring exhibition, "Bridge to Modernity: Kyosai's Adventures in Painting," showing till May 11. The artist lived in a time of extraordinary national and cultural tumult as Japan transformed itself from a feudalist society into a modern nation state. While his contemporaries were searching for methods to modernize Japanese-style painting — later given the name nihonga — or adopting more vanguard expressions in oil paint and imported Western styles, Kyosai was a bastion of tradition.
Precious little about Kyosai, however, is conventional. His apprenticeship as an artist began at the age of 7 in the studio of ukiyo-e (genre painting) artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Kyosai had penchant for sketching from "life" that is illustrated by a macabre, apocryphal tale of the precocious student fishing a severed head out of a river — when he was 8 years old — to use as a subject for sketching practice.
From his 11th year through to his late teens, he was enrolled in the Surugadai branch of the revered Kano School. The surplus of skill he exhibited earned him the nickname the "Demon of Painting" from Maemura Towa, his first Kano teacher, which the artist later amended to "Intoxicated Demon of Painting" to convey his fondness for alcohol.
Kyosai graduated from his Kano training when still a teen, and the exhibition starts with a work from that time, "Bishomonten" (1848). While he revered the Kano school, his allegiance to its principals slackened as he later took on other styles. The most significant deviation was a comic, vulgar style, often satirical and certainly eccentric.
An early precedent for the genre is seen in the "Scrolls of Frolicking Animals," attributed to Toba Sojo (1053-1140), a Buddhist priest. Kyosai updated the style to notable effect, particularly in his "Fart Battle" (1867). Also shown in the the Mori Art Museum's "Smile" exhibition last year, the scroll depicts participants being fed from a caldron of root vegetables to provoke a battle of gas as entertainment for palace courtiers. As the amusements progress, the passing of wind intensifies to the wind-powered launching of hay bales as missiles between the opposing teams. Spectators will note the essential qualities of manga here, which a concurrent event at the Kyoto International Manga Museum also showing till May 11, "Kyosai Manga Festa," makes even more explicit.
In larger paintings, Kyosai depicted ferocious creatures of lore and legend. In "Ghost" (1883) he uses kaki-byoso (painted borders) in place of the conventional silk borders of the picture mounting, making it appear as if the ghost were rising free from the painted surface by appearing to extend beyond the customary painting space. In an even larger, 17-meter work, a curtain made for the Shintomi Theater called "Actors as the One Hundred Demons" (1880), Kyosai combined portraits of actors working at the theater with another of his favored themes, the "Night Procession of the Demons." Fortified with a few bottles of rice wine, Kyosai completed the work in four hours. The result was a sensation.
With all this, it is remarkable to note — as Kano Hiroyuki, the exhibition's supervisory curator, does in his catalog essay — that Kyosai is generally unknown in Japan. Despite a memorial museum dedicated to the artist in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, the present exhibition is the first large scale retrospective in this country of the his work.
A more persistent interest in Kyosai has been taken up in the West, and the reason for this in part was Kyosai's interactions with foreigners in the early years of the Meiji Period (1868-1912). In particular, Englishman Josaiah Condor was a student and intimate of the artist, and the one who held Kyosai's hand on his deathbed. Early publications in English, such as Condor's "Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyosai" (1911), which concentrated on the author's personal collection, spurred the affection.
Hopefully, the Kyosai's slippage into oblivion will be halted by this exhibition, and the free-spirited artist will be remembered as the "Intoxicated Demon" rather than another, late signature he used: "Nyoku (Like Emptiness)."
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20080424a1.html
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