Lessons of the Cherry Blossom: Japanese Woodblock Prints - April 20, 2012 - September 03, 2012

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:48:00 -0700

In 1912, over 3,000 cherry trees were bestowed upon Washington, D.C., by Tokyo in an effort to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan. The trees were planted along the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park, where they continue to be admired every spring during cherry–blossom season. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of this diplomatic gift, the Norton Simon Museum presents Lessons of the Cherry Blossom: Japanese Woodblock Prints. The exhibition features 16 prints from the Museum’s permanent collection, several of which have not been on view before, including three rare sets of uncut double prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and works by Totoya Hokkei and Chōbunsai Eishi. Two prints from Katsushika Hokusai’s Rare Views of Famous Bridges series, which have been in storage for over 30 years, are also being exhibited.

Lessons of the Cherry Blossom explores the significance of the cherry blossom (sakura) in Japan. The sakura has long been an important symbol in Japanese art and literature, so much so that by the eighth century, the general term for flower (hana) in poetry referred to the cherry blossom. Its significance in Japan is due, in part, to its evanescent beauty, which resonates with the Buddhist ethos of life’s illusory nature. The cherry tree blooms en masse during the spring, and its blossoms die within a week of their flowering, making their beauty both intense and short-lived. It is during this time that friends and family gather to take part in hanami, or “flower viewing,” by traveling to districts populated by cherry trees.

Cherry trees typically grew in remote mountain areas; however, under Shogun Yoshimune (1716–45), cherry trees were planted in cities as a means of urban beautification and of demonstrating the government’s benevolence. Areas such as the city at Asuka Mountain, Goten Mountain at Shinagawa and along the banks of the Sumida River and the upper Tama River became famous for cherry-blossom viewing. The history of the sakura reveals that almost all of Japan’s famous cherry-blossom spots were not natural, but the result of human effort to beautify the landscape.

Prints featuring cherry-blossom viewing became popular in the early 19th century, when increased travel, combined with the desire of publishers to find a new subject not based on changes in the clothing fashions of courtesans and geisha, resulted in a commercial market for landscape prints depicting famous places, or meisho. While most of the prints included in the exhibition focus on images of meisho, a few prints feature bijin, or beautiful women. Artists often conflated beautiful women and cherry blossoms, as both were symbols of the temporary nature of beauty and life.

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Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life - July 20, 2012 - January 21, 2013

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:45:36 -0700

The classical definition of a still life—a work of art depicting inanimate, typically commonplace objects that are either natural (food, flowers or game) or man-made (glasses, books, vases and other collectibles)—conveys little about the rich associations inherent to this genre. In the academic tradition of Western art, still life occupied the lowest position in the hierarchy of the arts, which recognized history painting, portraiture and landscape painting as superior. It was disparaged critically and theoretically as mere copying that lacked artistic imagination and placed no intellectual demands on the viewer. Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life posits that nothing could be further from the truth for this category of art, which hovers between mimesis and symbolism, and in which artistic skill and fantasy are tantamount to its success. Drawing on the spectacular resources of the Norton Simon collections, the exhibition explores the wealth of aesthetic and conceptual artistic strategies that challenge the shortsighted view of still life as simply an art of imitation. It also underscores why the still life continues to be an important vehicle of expression.

Significant Objects examines the genre from four perspectives designed to tease out the import of the still life, to identify the rich associational value of time, place or circumstance, and to encourage meaningful encounters with the objects.

The first section, Depiction & Desire, looks at the still life as a barometer of wonder and of the impulse to collect and display. Exacting portrayals of individual flowers or cubist abstractions that seize on the sensual elements of color, texture and weight are illustrative of the passion to capture, document and celebrate material pleasures and possessions through the counterfeit of the visual image. Virtuosity considers the exercise of skill and the mastery of technique as a means to create illusion and objects of imaginative, complex beauty. Still lifes rendered in oil, pastel, wood and various printing processes invite scrutiny as to how artists make the difficult look easy and where the boundaries lie between technical expertise and artistry. Decoding the Still Life approaches these arrangements as coded with meaning and allegory. From the popular and moralizing symbols embedded in 17th-century fruit and flower paintings to the political and personal meanings insinuated by 19th- and 20th-century artists, these implied secrets bring a mysterious resonance to the compositions and underscore their capacity to communicate intellectual insights. Finally, Still Life off the Table takes a liberal view of the genre, looking at radical variations that can be considered still-life related. Abstractions, assemblage and the deconstruction of the tabletop arrangement show how the genre stretches beyond the conventions of its historically conservative nature and yet is malleable enough to remain a vital instrument for provocative, contemporary innovations.

Still life occupies a special place in the Norton Simon Museum, with singular examples in a variety of media, including paintings, prints and photographs. Mr. Simon acquired his first still life in 1955. From that moment on, the genre maintained his attention much as any other he pursued, if it met his criteria for quality, rarity and beauty. Though cautious about revealing his favorite objects in the collection, Simon admitted a deep fondness for Paul Cézanne’s Tulips in a Vase, 1888–90, which is presented in the exhibition. Also included are stellar examples by the genre’s greatest practitioners: Jan Brueghel, Rembrandt and Francisco de Zurbarán, from the 17th century; Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Gustave Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour and Vincent van Gogh, from the 18th and 19th centuries; and Pablo Picasso, Richard Diebenkorn, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and George Herms, from the 20th century.

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Norton Simon Museum - Exhibitions

Lessons of the Cherry Blossom: Japanese Woodblock Prints - April 20, 2012 - September 03, 2012

Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life - July 20, 2012 - January 21, 2013