The Japanese Art Society of America

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The Japanese Art Society of America (JASA) promotes the study and appreciation of Japanese art. Founded in 1973 as the Ukiyo-e Society of America by collectors of Japanese prints, the Society's mission has expanded to include related fields of Japanese art.

Contents

History

While the Society now addresses all aspects of Japanese art and culture, it traces its origins to a small group of ukiyo-e print collectors in and around New York City in 1973, at a time when Parke-Bernet Galleries (later to merge with Sotheby's) had begun to develop a market for Japanese art. The first major auction was the 1969 sale of the Blanche McFetridge estate, consisting of ukiyo-e prints once owned by Frank Lloyd Wright, followed by the 1972 sale of the estate of Hans Popper (1904–1971), a Viennese businessman who spent time working in Japan. His collection included masterpieces by Harunobu, Utamaro, Sharaku and Hokusai, and the sale attracted many of the great collectors and dealers of the era, including Richard Pillsbury Gale (1900–1973) in Minnesota, Felix Tikotin (1893–1986), a dealer living in Switzerland, and Nishi Saiju (1927–1995), the first Japanese dealer to attend a sale in the United States.

JASA entered its fourth decade under the direction of Joan Baekeland as president, and the long-time Chicago collector George Mann as vice president. The current president is Dr. Susan Peters. Today, JASA has some 400 members from countries around the world, including Japan.

Activities

Through its annual lectures, seminars and other events, the Society provides a forum for the exchange ideas and experiences about traditional and contemporary arts of Japan.

The Society also sponsors exhibitions, such as Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860, [1] which was shown at Asia Society in New York City in Spring 2008.

Programs and publications

Programs for members and the public remain the focus of the Society: in 2009, for example, members had tea in the Japanese teahouse at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills near Tarrytown, New York; visited private and public collections in Sacramento and San Francisco; and toured the Richard Fishbein and Estelle Bender Collection as well as the mini-museum of the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in New York City. Lecture programs in New York are held at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and elsewhere.

The programs and publications of the Society were valuable in the 1970s, when ukiyo-e studies and, for that matter, Edo period art history had scarcely entered the academic mainstream either in the United States or Japan.[ citation needed ]

The society publishes a quarterly newsletter for members as well as an annual journal, Impressions. ( ISSN   1095-2136) [2] [3] Impressions was the recipient of the 2009 Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture, [4] awarded by the Donald Keene Center, Columbia University.

Related Research Articles

Utamaro Japanese artist

Kitagawa Utamaro was a Japanese artist. He is one of the most highly regarded designers of ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings, and is best known for his bijin ōkubi-e "large-headed pictures of beautiful women" of the 1790s. He also produced nature studies, particularly illustrated books of insects.

Ukiyo-e Genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries

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Hokusai Japanese artist

Katsushika Hokusai, known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. Born in Edo, Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji which includes the internationally iconic print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

Kunisada

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<i>Nishiki-e</i>

Nishiki-e is a type of Japanese multi-coloured woodblock printing; the technique is used primarily in ukiyo-e. It was invented in the 1760s, and perfected and popularized by the printmaker Suzuki Harunobu, who produced many nishiki-e prints between 1765 and his death five years later.

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Shin-hanga was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods. It maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, as opposed to the parallel sōsaku-hanga movement which advocated the principles of "self-drawn" (jiga), "self-carved" (jikoku) and "self-printed" (jizuri), according to which the artist, with the desire of expressing the self, is the sole creator of art.

Masami Teraoka

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Koryūsai

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The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, in the Hōeidō edition (1833–1834), is a series of ukiyo-e woodcut prints created by Utagawa Hiroshige after his first travel along the Tōkaidō in 1832.

Tsutaya Jūzaburō

Tsutaya Jūzaburō was the founder and head of the Tsutaya publishing house in Edo, Japan, and produced illustrated books and ukiyo-e woodblock prints of many of the period's most famous artists. Tsutaya's is the best-remembered name of all ukiyo-e publishers. He is also known as Tsuta-Jū and Jūzaburō I.

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Richard Douglas Lane (1926–2002) was an American scholar, author, collector, and dealer of Japanese art. He lived in Japan for much of his life, and had a long association with the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, which now holds his vast art collection.

Utagawa Toyoharu

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<i>Shinagawa no Tsuki</i>, <i>Yoshiwara no Hana</i>, and <i>Fukagawa no Yuki</i>

Beginning in the late 18th the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro produced three hanging-scroll paintings for the prominent merchant Zenno Ihē. The themes of the paintings are "moon", "flowers", and "snow", and are named Shinagawa no Tsuki, Yoshiwara no Hana, and Fukagawa no Yuki

References

  1. ↑ Asia Society Presents Major Exhibition of Japanese Woodblock Prints And Paintings
  2. ↑ Japanese Art Society publications
  3. ↑ Art Index, Jan. 2010, New York, H. W. Wilson Co., Vol. 81, No. 1, p. xiii
  4. ↑ 2009 Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture
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