Organizer and Chair: Ann W. Norton, Providence College
Gender Issues in Contemporary Japanese Art
Gunhild Borggreen, University of Copenhagen
In the past 10-15 years many artists have turned to conceptual art as a means to describe or comment on aspects of contemporary living conditions, either as an artist within a particular art historical context, or as a human being in the social structures of a certain society. This tendency of establishing art historical or socio-political comments through actual art works can be seen in Japan as in many other countries.
One particular theme often found in international contemporary art of this kind is gender. At first glance the debates on feminist art and other aspects of gender that have been much discussed in Western art critique, seem almost absent when looking at Japanese art critique and reviews. Turning to the specific art works, on the other hand, there are many examples of Japanese artists, both male and female, who address gender issues in one respect or another.
This paper will offer concrete examples from contemporary Japanese art that represent different aspects of gender, such as gender roles in social context, gender stereotyping through popular culture, the position of women within art world institutions, and art works dealing with body and sexuality. The paper will look closer at the apparent absence of gender related discussions in art theory and critique on one hand, while at the same time gender issues are revealed and questioned in numerous art works in contemporary Japan.
Narrative Framing in the Tale of Genji Scroll from 12th-Century Japan
Masako Watanabe, Cornell University
My paper explores the boundaries between text and image with a particular focus on the twelfth-century illustrated handscroll of the Tale of Genji, the novel of courtly romance written by Lady Murasaki in early eleventh-century Japan.
In the Genji handscroll the illustrations are compartmentalized in small rectangular frames alternating with long inscriptions from the text, inserted at regular intervals; the dynamic and complex correlations between text and image project the ambiguity and richness of the novel.
This paper will present how word and image reflect each other to amplify narrative development through closely examining both the pictorial and textual structures of the Genji scroll. The pictorially distinctive device of the removal of the roof, fukinuki yatai to manipulate an interior narrative space within a rectangular picture, plays a critical role in framing narrative voices and shifting perspectives and distances among characters, readers, and multiple narrators all of which the Genji text utilizes to present subtle and complex modes of characters' emotions.
My presentation will closely examine in selected scenes to reveal how text and image are mutually indispensable and echo one another to project a certain "poetic world" in the compartmentalized handscroll format as if their relationship is paralleled to that between waka-poetry and prose in the courtly literature.
Remembered Art of the Unseen: Aspects of Sacred Space in Asia
Ann W. Norton, Providence College
Some of the most splendid "forms" of Asian religious art may best be experienced through memory. Examples include the samavasarana of Jainism and the many mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism. These divine constructs serve as holy places of sacred instruction. Functioning briefly as holy sites, they then become "formless," serving as remembered interior models to further aid worshippers toward their spiritual goal. For both philosophies "enlightenment" is key. Jains wish at last to dwell in the realm of the Siddhas, Buddhists consider moksa as a state wherein there is the complete absence of inherent/independent existence.
Both the Jain samavasarana and the Buddhist mandala are described in sacred texts as being made of gold, silver and gems. Each is exceedingly large in human terms; the samavasarana is nearly eight miles in diameter, the Buddhist mandalas may house hundreds of divinities.
The power of the samavasarana and mandala lies both in their connection with the void and with their constant renewal through memory. In both cases the enlightened teacher is believed to have attained moksa, desired by the faithful as well. Using images in painting, sculpture, and architecture which in turn follow the texts, worshippers recreate (remember) the only place where enlightenment leading to moksa could and can occur.
Today, Jain and Buddhist artworks are still functioning as memory aids for devotees. This interdisciplinary study will explore artistic models which allude to the unseen "state of voidness" through hints of metaphysical structures held only in memory.
Two Farewell Paintings of the Late Northern Song
Elizabeth Brotherton, State University of New York
This paper will discuss two farewell paintings from the final decades of the Northern Song period, that reveal common underlying concerns-poetry-painting correlation, Tang precedents, current border policy-but present very different approaches to these concerns. "Yang Pass" by Li Gonglin (ca. 1087), not extant but well recorded in contemporary writings, was given to its recipient in place of a farewell poem and was hailed for offering a wholly new interpretation of older farewell conventions. Apparently it departed from convention not only by being a painting rather than a poem, but also in its depiction of a transcendent fisherman which it juxtaposed with a nearby parting scene, to suggest the painter's emotional distancing from such a scene and all that it represented (ambition, overwrought sadness, expansionist war). In contrast, a court painting by Hu Shunchen (1122), given to a He Xuanming upon his westward departure, shows a vast mountainous landscape in which small figures travel: rather than present the viewer with a narrative depiction of farewell sentiment only to undermine that sentiment, the later work continues in visual form the conventions of earlier farewell poetry and weds these to more recent landscape painting idioms. The two paintings embody different ideas in relation not only to literary tradition and geo-political reality, but also to the very definition of painting. Their differences relate to their origins (scholar-official and court professional) as well as to the contrasting goals of their recipients; yet it is quite possible that the court painter was responding, at some level, to the celebrated "Yang Pass."