Museums and Shodo in Kyoto

Up early today for a trip into Kyoto. Even with all the things I've seen there, I can still find more to do. Today, I was headed to a special exhibition at the Museum of Kyoto, as had been recommended to me by Muraoka-sensei. I ended up a little lost getting there, saw one sign, but it wasn't very clear about which street to turn down. I asked directions from an official looking Japanese man, but still ended up wandering a little. When I did find the Museum of Kyoto, I realized I had passed it before on one of my trips into Kyoto and could have found it immediately if I had known that was where I was going. Figures.

The special exhibition was on the 4th floor, so I went straight up. There was so much to see, painting after painting by Japanese artists. Many of them were your standard nihonga subjects, trees, nature, geisha, festivals, those sorts of things, and it illustrated how much art is influenced by ones surroundings. The Japanese paint what they see around them, so do many artists, and that is one of the defining characteristics of the style, even if the image is abstracted.

This exhibition felt different in a few ways. One was the size. With few exceptions, they were all wall-sized, 2' x 3' or so, some bigger or smaller. The colors were all over the place, bright, saturated hues, or darkened neutrals with everything between. Some of the paintings were very realist oriented, shadows, colors, almost a photograph, while others were little more than line with fuzzy color filling the shapes. Presentation was very good, I appreciated the lighting especially, as it made bright colors seem to glow and dark colors reseed into the distance. I've noticed before how some nihonga can be very thickly painted, while others thin and wispy, and I saw the same variance here. I also noticed a lot of different surface textures, even some purposefully stressed or scratched away. One painting was covered in bristles having fallen out of the artists brush. It was a great exhibition, and I recorded the names of many artists that impressed me. I was very tempted to purchase an exhibition catalog, but held off for the moment as I can go back another time if I decide.

From the museum I went again to the Kyoto International House for the free class in shodo, or Japanese Calligraphy. It was fun, I enjoy using the brush and learning the techniques of control. I focused mainly on kanji today, reproducing the characters for 'study abroad', 'winter', 'the four seasons', 'above, between, below', and a few others. Afterwards I went for late lunch with a Japanese friend, Syunpei. Among other things, we discussed how english does not focus so much on anything like 'calligraphy', sure there is cursive writing, and I explained this concept as best I could, but that is very personal and unique to the individual. Japanese calligraphy does entail some individuality in each character, but the difference lies in what is considered art. In Japanese shodo, one might see art on the gallery wall because of the way it is written over what is said, while in english, with a much more universal character set, the focus would be on what was said over how it was written. Sure, font selection is important, but it is a different aspect than the individual hand of an artist.