Masters of Bamboo at the Asian Art Museum

Saturday, 24 March 2007 20:09

Masters of Bamboo, however, approaches the collection’s masterworks in an entirely new way; the exhibition is organized around the network of master disciple relationships through which makers of these baskets are interconnected. On view in the museum’s Hambrecht Gallery, Masters of Bamboo features one artwork each by 76 bamboo artists representing most of the major lineages in the three key geographic regions—Western Japan, focused in Osaka and Kyoto; Eastern Japan, focused mainly in Tochigi, Niigata, and Tokyo prefectures; and Kyushu, focused primarily in Oita prefecture—over the past 150 years. Many of the artworks in the exhibition are on view publicly for the first time.

Masters of Bamboo was organized by the Asian Art Museum, and curated by Melissa Rinne, the museum’s assistant curator of Japanese art. The exhibition is accompanied by a 128 page publication in which Ms. Rinne, in collaboration with bamboo specialist Koichiro Okada,provides an overview of this intriguing art form. She also traces the network of master disciple influences that constitute the major lineages, or lines of artistic transmission, in bamboo art, from the nineteenth century through artists who are active today. These lineages have never before been described in a systematic way, and they provide a means of comprehending Japanese bamboo work from a global perspective.

In comparison with Japan’s other decorative and applied arts, such as ceramics or textiles, bamboo basketry is a relatively small-scale art form that requires decades to learn; most members of the younger generation of recognized bamboo artists are in their forties and fifties, following years of training and development. Another unique aspect of this form of Japanese decorative art is that almost every step of production is accomplished by a single person: Bamboo work requires a sensitive and individualistic approach to the material, which does not lend itself to division of labor within a local industry and cannot rely on the forces of nature.

As artist Fujinuma Noboru (b. 1945) says, “Unlike the ceramist, for whom the fires of the kiln play an important role in the outcome, the bamboo artist bears full responsibility for every step of the creative process. Without splitting the bamboo and working through each of the various steps oneself, one cannot get the ‘feel’ of each individual bamboo culm and thus know for what kind of piece it will be best suited. And there are no shortcuts in bamboo—there is no way to mechanize the process.”  Because of these qualities, it is very difficult to achieve technical mastery of the bamboo medium without spending the initial years of one’s training under the guidance of someone already skilled at working with bamboo as an artistic material.
 
For this reason, at some time in their careers most major bamboo artists have been formally or informally associated with one of a handful of artistic lineages that have served as the centers of artistic bamboo training for generation after generation. Most of these lineages are based in three regions: Western Japan; Eastern Japan; and Kyushu. While artists must learn a full corpus of techniques, regional characteristics or aesthetic tendencies emblematic of certain lineages appear in the output of the artists in those lineages.

In a traditional arrangement a senior artist has a number of live-in students who work very closely with the teacher, assisting with works produced in quantity while learning by observation the signature techniques used by the master to make his one of a kind pieces for competitive juried exhibitions.

The artists featured in Masters of Bamboo, living from the early 1800s through the present, have transformed bamboo work from a sophisticated skill-driven artisanal occupation into a highly innovative art form. While every work in the exhibition has been chosen for its artistic merit and for its demonstration of the maker’s abilities, it will become evident to museum visitors that nineteenth and early twentieth century bamboo artists were more involved than their later counterparts with reproducing Chinese models or medieval Japanesestyle baskets for practitioners of the sencha (steeped green tea) and matcha (powdered green tea) tea ceremonies, as well as with making baskets that, though of superior artistic sensibility, had primarily utilitarian uses. In contrast the artworks in this exhibition made in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries bespeak the blossoming of bamboo craft into a highly creative and often sculptural means of artistic expression.

The Cotsen Collection, with its remarkable scope, is perhaps the only collection anywhere from whose contents an exhibition such as Masters of Bamboo could be organized. For example, the exhibition includes:  baskets by all five generations of the Hayakawa Shokosai lineage, considered to be the progenitor of bamboo work as an art: Hayakawa Shokosai I (1815–1897) is said to have been the first bamboo artist to sign his baskets, and Hayakawa Shokosai V (b. 1932) is one of the five artists in the bamboo art genre to have been designated Living National Treasures by the Japanese government. (Masters of Bamboo features works by all five Living National Treasures.)  the work of Wada Waichisai I (1815–1909) of Osaka prefecture as well as works by nineteen artists from the various lineages that developed out of his formal or informal tutelage, including four generations of the Tanabe Chikuunsai lineage based in Sakai, Osaka.baskets by Iizuka Hosai I (1851–1915) and ten of his direct and indirect artistic descendents_a piece by legendary teacher Iwao Kounsai (1901–1992) of Beppu, Oita prefecture, as well as nine works from the generations of successors who benefited directly or indirectly from his teachings. One of these is by Kajiwara Aya, the first female artist to be officially admitted into one of the two major bamboo artist associations. In addition to breadth, the Cotsen Collection boasts superb quality. Many of the pieces selected for the exhibition are renowned masterworks, representing the height of the artists’ oeuvres.

The remarkable susudake bamboo flower basket by Sakaguchi Sounsai (1899–1967) seems as strikingly original today as it did when it was made. Shimmering of Heated Air  by Shono Shounsai, the first bamboo artist to be named by the Japanese government as a Living National Treasure, and Core by Tanabe Chikuunsai III expand the realm of the traditional flower basket to new sculptural heights, while artist Yako Hodo dispenses with the vessel form altogether in his extraordinary spherical masterwork My UFO.

On the occasion of the Masters of Bamboo exhibition, the Asian Art Museum has received seven new bamboo works by important artists not previously represented in the Lloyd Cotsen Japanese Bamboo Basket Collection. The generous donation from the artists of these works not only enriches the range of bamboo artistry in this already extraordinary collection but also serves to reinforce the Asian Art Museum’s commitment to it.