Organizer and Chair: Cynthea J. Bogel, University of Oregon
Discussant: Stephen Addis, University of Richmond
Teaching and research in the field of Japanese art history require that we consider, among other issues, the history, appearance, meaning, and relative value of objects. We utilize—and perpetuate—certain paradigms in the course of our investigations that define and structure the discipline. Genre boundaries and artistic schools, taxonomies for materials and styles, divisions according to religious and secular content, value judgments and hierarchies, and numerous other such normative categories effectively function as paradigms for the field. Some are engendered by the objects, others are comparatively external to the work. Some are useful to our understanding, some ultimately deleterious. Neither the source nor the motivation for our models and means of inquiry is constant. Nonetheless, this panel attempts to recognize and isolate certain paradigms for the field, probe their origins and sustaining contexts, and critically examine the relative value and expediency of classifications and modes of analysis. Both the paradigm and its affective structure will be examined through studies of specific objects, sites, categories, or phenomena. Panelists’ papers will be made available prior to the conference. The conference panel will comprise summaries of these papers, brief comments from a discussant, and a full hour of moderated discussion between audience members and panelists.
Kendall H. Brown, University of Southern California
As a religion, state of mind, aesthetic construct, artistic style or adjective, Zen provides the most utilized paradigm in the contemporary understanding of Japanese culture. At the rarefied level of professional discourse, it is in regard to the Edo period genre of "Zenga" (Zen painting) that Zen functions most forcefully as a conceptual pattern by which art and artists are understood. Yet our idea of Zen is largely a modern construct formed by such scholars as Suzuki, Nishida and Hisamatsu, philosophers fundamentally concerned with defining Japanese culture in relation to the west and whose interpretation of Zen is largely as an essentialist, ahistorical and non-critical doctrine centered on the "inner experience" of the practitioner. Their ideas dovetail with a high modernist art theory which holds supreme that art proffering a spontaneous expression of existential insight and championing "pure spontaneity" as rebellion against institutions.
By interpreting Zen painting as a type of proto-modern art, art historians have posited it as a movement in which conflicts and socio-political determinants are subordinated to the search for transcendental truth. Specifically, artistic style is radically privileged over subject, patronage and reception. Moreover, Zen painting is presented with few of the discontinuities or complexities of other genres. Finally, priests who work in a Zen context but do not paint in an abstract style are written out of the canon, even as expressive artists with scant connection to Zen are written into it. These ideas will be demonstrated with examples from the normative treatments of specific artists and works which point up the limitations of the modern Zen paradigm.
Ellen P. Conant, Independent Scholar
The concept of "Japaneseness" played a major role in the molding of modern Japanese art. It was no less influential in shaping modern Japanese understanding for their art of earlier periods and thus was a determining factor in the establishment of a canon of Japanese art. This preoccupation with Japaneseness, past and present, coincided with the overweening nationalism so prevalent in nineteenth century Western art and art history and so predominant in the exhibits that the major powers competitively displayed at international exhibitions. Western escapism and exoticism, coupled with a preference for whatever seemed uniquely Japanese in their art, further reinforced the efforts of officials, entrepreneurs, and critics to stress the concept of "Japaneseness" as a means of forging a sense of national identity and eliciting international acclaim.
Nowhere is this concept more readily apparent and yet more resistant to reappraisal than in the paradigm of Nihonga and the canonization of works such as the Hibo Kannon of Kano Hogai. Kitazawa Noriaki’s study of literary records to trace the evolution around 1890 of such politically fraught terminology as Nihonga and Yoga to designate and distinguish two major trends in Meiji art is not buttressed by a comparably detailed analysis of the institutional reorganization and stylistic changes that occurred in Japanese art circles during the Bakumatsu and early Meiji periods.
Mere historical research will not suffice to unravel these conundrums. Historiographical study is necessary to determine how these concepts evolved, when they were imposed, and what constraints they exercised on the development of modern Japanese art.
Cynthea J. Bogel, University of Oregon
Since their implementation in various forms during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the National Treasure (Kokuho) and Important Cultural Properties (Juyobunkazai) designations for the protection of Japanese art and architecture have helped to structure both native and non-Japanese responses to the arts of Japan. The formation of a canon of Japanese art has depended on these designations in different ways and degrees. Although the history of art as a discipline in Japan has been strongly influenced by Western norms, traditional criterion for art appraisal existed at the time the National Treasure system was created. The impact of the system on collecting and connoisseurship of Japanese art at home and abroad is considerable, but inconsistent. In some instances, the native articulation of what constitutes an important work of Japanese art has differed from Western preferences: such is the case with Buddhist art, particularly statuary. On the other hand, the Western taste for woodblock prints and carved netsuke miniatures is nowhere evident in the national designations of important art objects. These differences, along with other aspects of the National Treasure system (or responses to it), articulate tensions and stratagems in the construction of a history of Japan’s cultural heritage. The present study will consider the formation of this influential system for evaluating and preserving Japanese art, and its relationship to our understanding of Japanese art.