The Morikami Museum Shows Japanese Prints from the Paul & Christine Meehan Collection

Written by George Roosevelt Tuesday, 07 February 2012 00:24

Delray Beach, Florida.- The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is proud to present "Old Techniques, New Interpretations" on view at the museum from February 7th through May 6th. This exhibition showcase more than 75 prints from the Paul and Christine Meehan Collection.Setting the scene for this exhibit, the art of Japanese woodblock prints experienced a revival in the early 20th century which inspired the development of two new printmaking movements in Japan: shin hanga (modern prints) and sosaku hanga (creative prints).

In the early 20th century, Japanese woodblock print-making experienced a revival with the development of shin hanga, the ‘modern print’ movement, and sosaku hanga, the ‘creative print’ movement. While shin hanga attempted to revive the techniques and subject matter of the centuries-old ukiyo-e tradition, which had reached its apogee in the 18th and 19th centuries, sosaku hanga reacted against it. The vibrant prints of beautiful women and picturesque landscapes of ukiyo-e and, later, shin hanga were the enterprise of a guild, carried out by several different craftsmen that included the designer-artist, wood carver, colorist, printer, and publisher. In contrast, sosaku hanga artists controlled every aspect of their work from designing the image and carving the block, to inking and printing the paper. In comparison, their compositions were also much more expressive and abstract.


In the early 1950s, sosaku hanga artists began producing works that reflected a more contemporary view of the world, resulting in a postwar print revival that looked with great intellectual introspection at contemporary Western art – a blending of East and West. Throughout the decades, these artists experimented with different materials and printmaking techniques, producing highly conceptual prints that gave a definitive nod to contemporary developments in European and American painting, from the abstract aesthetics of Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) to the expressionist drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956). The exhibition at the Morikami Museum features over 60 prints that celebrate over 40 years of sosaku hanga masters from Kiyoshi Saito (1907 – 1997) to Toko Shinoda (b. 1913), among many others.

Since its opening in 1977, The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens has been a center for Japanese arts and culture in South Florida, with rotating exhibitions in its galleries, tea ceremonies performed monthly in its Seishin-an tea house, an educational outreach program with local schools and organizations, and Japanese traditional festivals celebrated for the public several times a year. The original building, named the Yamato-kan, is modeled to suggest a Japanese villa. It features a ring of exhibition rooms embracing an open-air courtyard with a dry garden of gravel, pebbles and small boulders. The Yamato-kan offers a permanent exhibit chronicling the history of the Yamato Colony, a Japanese farming community in South Florida 100 years ago. The principal museum building opened in 1993 to meet a popular demand for more programming, more versatile facilities, and to satisfy the needs of a growing community. The museum’s architecture is inspired by traditional Japanese design. The building features exhibition galleries, 225-seat theater, authentic tea house with viewing gallery, library, classrooms, museum store, cafe and lakeside terrace with Japanese courtyard garden. The Morikami Museum Collection houses 5,000 Japanese art objects and artifacts, including a 500-piece collection of tea ceremony items, more than 200 textile pieces and recent fine art acquisitions. The collections of the Morikami Museum focus on objects that help generate an understanding of the culture of Japan, particularly the period during which the Yamato, Florida colonists and the museum’s namesake, George Morikami, lived, i.e. mid-19th to late 20th centuries. Central to the collections are Japanese articles of daily life dating from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) to the present, including fine arts and folk arts from the same and earlier periods. The 200 acres that surround The Morikami’s two museum buildings include expansive Japanese gardens with strolling paths, resting areas, tropical bonsai collection, small lakes teeming with koi and other wildlife, nature trails, pine forests and park and picnic areas. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, with its unique gardens and collections, is one of Palm Beach County’s most treasured cultural attractions. Located in a tranquil natural setting, The Morikami invites visitors to explore its many facets and to discover Florida’s heritage and its connection with Japan. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.morikami.org

The Morikami Museum Shows Japanese Prints from the Paul & Christine Meehan Collection

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~