Japan & Paris: Impressionism at Honolulu Academy of Arts

[KamaAina]

Get on over there before June 8. Neighbor Island people, see if you can work it into your next O'ahu run.

It is not only the first Impressionist exhibit ever held in Hawai'i, it is the only venue for this one-of-a-kind exhibit that details the surprising influence Japanese artisis and collectors had on the French Impressionist movement in the first half of the 20th century.

Of course, you've got your Monets, your Cezannes, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Degas, and others -- but the Japanese Impressionist artists who studied in France steal the show. I can almost guarantee you that your snobby Art History major friends from the mainland will not be aware of this, so you've got 'em right where you want 'em!

http://www.honoluluacademy.org/exh/now_showing.htm

Organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Japan and Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era presents masterpieces by such artists as Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Corot, Paul Cézanne, and Claude Monet on loan from many of Japan's premier collections, including that of the Öhara Museum of Art, Kurashiki; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Bridgestone Museum of Art; Tokyo National Museum; Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Chiba; and the Ise Foundation, Tokyo. This exhibition explores the history of collecting Western art in Japan and investigates


the influence of this collecting interest on Japanese modern art. In particular, the exhibition addresses the development of Western-style modernist impulses as Japan’s early interest in the Barbizon School extended to include modes of expression such as Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, and Fauvism. Both Western and Japanese artists who were collected at the beginning of the twentieth century by progressive Japanese art enthusiasts will be included. In addition to showcasing works by some of the best-known French and European painters, the work of Japanese artists who were instrumental in the introduction of Western modes of expression to Japan such as Kojima Zenzaburö, Kume Keiichirö, Maeda Kanji, Mitsutani Kunishirö, and Fujita Tsuguharu, will be featured. Approximately 50 works will be presented in Japan & Paris, which will be the first exhibition in the West to treat this area of art history. It will also be the first exhibition of Impressionist paintings ever presented in Honolulu.

The works in the show not only demonstrate the deep cross-cultural nature of art in Japan from about 1880 to 1930, but several French works in the exhibition were among those acquired by the first Japanese collectors of Western modernism. For instance, although subsequently acquired by Japanese museums, some of the canvases were originally purchased by Hayashi Tadamasa, a Japanese art dealer who went to Paris in the 1890s to develop a business exporting Japanese objects to Western collectors. He became one of the first to collect Western art and return with it to Japan. Other early collectors represented in the exhibition are Matsukata Kojirö, whose collection is the core of the National Museum of Western Art, and Öhara Magosaburö, whose collection forms the basis of the Öhara Museum of Art, Japan’s first Western art museum founded in Kurashiki in 1930.

The Academy will borrow works from Japanese museums and private collections, including an elegant portrait by Modigliani from the Ise Foundation; a luminous depiction of a nude bather by Renoir from the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art; a Barbizon-influenced depiction of women gathering apples by Kume Keiichirö from the Kume Museum of Art, Chiba; and a richly characterized portrait of a woman from the demi-monde by Toulouse-Lautrec from the Öhara Museum of Art, Kurashiki.

[Quetzal]

1. This is even getting news in Canada

http://www.canada.com/travel/story.html?id=7E8BD5D3-5CE5-41D7-A05D-B1F74948872C

East meets West at French impressionism exhibit in Hawaii

HONOLULU (AP) - East and West cross, clash and meld into cityscapes, landscapes, portraits and nudes in an exhibit of works by European masters purchased a century ago by Japanese industrialists and rarely seen outside Japan.

Japan & Paris: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the Modern Era, an exhibit of French and Japanese paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is on view at the Honolulu Academy of the Arts.

The show also includes European-influenced works by renowned Japanese artists, representing a cross-current between East and West that began at least 100 years before a Japanese collector purchased Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990 for $82.5 million US, the highest price ever paid for a piece of art.

Curator Jennifer Saville spent four years assembling the 53 paintings on loan from 28 museums and corporate and private collections in Japan. The museums include the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Art in Ehime and the Hiroshima Museum of Art.

[Loco_moco]

2. Mahalo for the tip...

...my wife and I will definitely try to fit it in our schedule.. it sounds too unique to miss... we'll be on Oahu at the end of May for graduations... and this event is now at the top of our to do list...!

:hi:

[opihimoimoi]

3. eh, me too. dis is da kine show I stay like.

I will make every effort to visit AA in Honolulu.

Its only 23 min from the pond.

[keopeli]

4. I'm going on Thursday! Should be fantastic!