#idk who took the second pic but its the same byoubu

[welcometojapanese]

Edo Avante Garde

A documentary on the history of Edo period Japanese folding screens.

Before discussing the documentary I would like to give a brief introduction to its creator. Linda Hoaglund is a film producer, and translator that graduated from Yale, and was born and raised in a more rural part of Japan, by her parents who went there as missionaries. As such she was in just about every way except genetically Japanese, and had grown up living a very Japanese way of life. Thanks to this she is fluent in Japanese. Her knowledge of both Japanese and Western customs and cultures aided in her efforts to receive help/cooperation from many temples, shrines, and art institutions to create this documentary.

In the 1600’s, at the start of the Edo period Tokugawa Shogun took power leading to a peaceful era post civil war, raising the status of samurai, and closed Japan off from the West. As such,for the next roughly 250 years, during this era while Japan was cut off from the rest of the world, its economy, culture and art began to flourish. 

The art primarily discussed here will be byobu. A Japanese folding partition that is painted with ink, and often decorated with gold leaf paper. The byobu are large roughly 6 foot tall privacy screens that often decorated the rooms of Shogun, samurai, and merchants.

The Japanese painting style is very different from that of the West. Rather than using oils, or charcoal to illustrate a page, in Japan they used ink. The Japanese painting style also does not rely on a focal point to illustrate depth, but rather a layering of things in the foreground, and moving those things in the background further up the page. 

Near the end of the Edo era there was also a shift in the power dynamic of the country. From the authorities and samurai over to the merchants where the meaning behind the art being displayed changed. No longer were these large paintings meant to be displays of force and power, but were rather to show a merchant's discernment and wealth. So the mood that needed to be illustrated was no longer an oppressive one represented by large animals like peacocks and tigers, but could change depending on the mood the merchant wanted to give in the room it would be displayed. This gave artists a great deal more freedom with their work. (Using the word oppressive may have seemed strange as a way to describe this type of Art, but not only considering the size, and content, but also the way this media is consumed can make it so. Not only are these paintings quite large, but typically when one viewed them they would not be walking by in the gallery, but rather sitting near them, thus giving the sense of being surrounded.)  Because of this Japan entered into an era of experimentation you could say with their art. A combination of hyperrealism and abstract allowing the eye to see an ever-changing scenery on the byoubu. The blank page, or empty space filled with gold leaf, would often be used to illustrate the clouds, the ground, or even just the entire background scenery. This is because as the merchants no longer wanted to overwhelm individuals with the art, the freedom the artists were given led them to making smaller pieces on the byobu. That is not to say however that the pieces are worse or not of equal value to those before, many of them may even be more valuable just because of the level of detail, experimentation, and thought put into the composition. As in these types of painting each stroke counts. It's not like with oils where you can go over and hide your mistakes, but if a mistake is made it is one that has to either be worked with in a way so that it's not noticeable, or restarted. Many of these practices are ones that would not come to the Western world of art until much later. It is this almost modern multimedia, freeform, and experimental aspects that led Linda Hoaglund to saying these pieces were Edo Avant Garde.

Japanese art is heavily connected to nature, religion, and spiritualism. In Shintoism it is believed that every living thing has a spirit. This is reflected in the art of Edo Japan with the practice of Shasei, or drawing from life. While of course many artists approach this in different ways, whether they approach the image with hyperrealism or abstract simplicity, in each painting a sort of character or essence for the animals illustrated can be seen. This is almost directly oppositional to the West where our approach to painting animals is typically very anatomical, and is meant to look accurate to the eye, but is also seen as kitsch or embarrassing. Yet in Japan some of the most famous artists of their time like Ito Jakchu, and Maruyama Okyo, are known to have painted not just any animals, but their own pets. In the case of Jakchu, part of what led him to become so well known was the hyper realistic nature of the birds, and specifically his chickens, that he was painting. For Okyo, they were known for painting a variety of different things, many of them from life, but the ones I can't help but remember the most are the ones they did of puppies. 

Now with Japanese art, as I stated before, it's not typically necessary for something to be painted as you would see it with the eye. So long as it is representational of the spirit then often that successful completion of a piece. In the documentary another reason stated for this is the fact that humans are perhaps not meant to be the ones whose point of view is represented by the artist, but rather in many cases it is the point of view of the gods. There are a number of illustrations on these byobu that represents a story, but rather than choosing one specific scene from this story it shows the scene in its entirety, oftentimes the point of view of the clouds. Many of these paintings also depict natural phenomena as works of the gods. Rarely in any of these paintings though is the primary focus a person. Portraits, while very popular in the West, in Japan were rarely done. Even in many of the paintings including people the people are just a small part of it, like the rest of the animals and things in this world. That is yet another reason that many say Japanese paintings are meant to represent the view of the gods.

These are the pieces that inspired the greats such as Hokusai, and directly led to the expansion of Japanese art and culture in the West to shape the works of Van Gogh and Jean Claude Monet

Words of interest:

Byoubu- folding partitions often golden or painted

Shasei- painting from nature

Tarashikomi - wet on wet painting technique

Sensu- folding fans with story or art printed

Avant Garde- new experimental ideas in art

Some thoughts on art:

I had a moment to talk to the filmmaker of the doc. Edo Avant Garde which was shown at PSU, and a lot of what we talked about was how when these byobu are commonly used theyre just opened up in a museum behind some glass and everyone’s walking by, the viewer doesn’t even really get to appreciate just how big the piece is, or get close enough to see the detail, and even the height at which your seeing it is not how it was intended to be viewed. This really ended up taking a lot of the impact, and functionality from the art. Originally the 6ft tall folding screens were meant to fill the room (as a backdrop) of a meeting/ gathering of some sort. They are meant to be seen from relatively close-up, most of the time theyre seen would be from a sitting position making them appear even larger, and with natural or candlelight (which makes the gold leaf reflect differently and is super cool) I think the way that we in the west consume art doesn’t necessarily make sense for those cultures for which their art is not just meant to be a painting on canvas but is meant to be functional, or used/ viewed in certain ways.

For more info:

edoavantgarde.com

#hopefully this makes sense I had to splice together some parts of the essay to make things shorter #sorry it took so long I'm a professional procrastinator~ #byobu #japanese art history #Japanese art #japanese study #language and culture study #ty to my friend Lily that took this great pic when we wen to japan #this folding screen is at Ruykoku Daigaku's Oomiya Campus in kyoto #idk who took the second pic but its the same byoubu