What I can do now is to praise the artist.
My Visit / Outline of the Exhibition
As I said before, I was looking forward to the exhibition a lot and had prepared an advance ticket — a two-times ticket for the two-terms exhibition — and attended twice. For some reasons, I visited the museum in the late afternoon of the final day of each term. It was a close shave. I almost missed them both actually.
The exhibition was held in the feature-exhibition gallery at the third floor(the second floor in English) of the Kyūshū National Museum 九州国立博物館 last summer in the midst of the Heisei-period major repair of Mieidō 御影堂 of Tōshōdai-ji 唐招提寺. They took the opportunity to have his largest painting work that was dedicated to the temple as a special feature exhibit.
It was the most splendid, spiritual, satisfying exhibition that I've ever seen, because of the power of the artist 東山魁夷, in the first place, of course, and also the enthusiastic ambitious elaborate arrangements which are based on a deep appreciation of art. Curated by Masaaki Ozaki 尾崎正明. I loved it, including the comments on paintings, and the pictorial catalogue. The book was excellent, full of properly photographed and printed his artworks. I have considered finishing this post only by saying "Just read the book". However, this is my blog, and that's nothing adventurous. Then, shall we have a close look at the exhibition and his life?
Into the Gallery
"Huge", that was my first impression. Section I: Seeking the Way (The Prewar Period); soon after the entrance into the gallery, the large canvases had a great impact. His early works were not yet sophisticated but quite energetic, and indicated young painter's ambitions. In fact, his painting works were all bigger than I thought. His tendency toward abstraction left cute impressions on the canvases, and small copies on books or the internet don't tell us about the size, details, matière, texture. They reminded me of the Aura of a work of art right after I ended the first season of this blogging adventure. In this Information Age, I am interested in something that cannot be reproduced. Life is Time. Experience cannot be reproduced and is made with Time. Higashiyama's artworks are truly worth experiencing. From his early works to the last, the retrospective exhibition traces the path that the artist had taken in chronological order except the works for Tōshōdai-ji temple.
His Early Years
Kaii Higashiyama was born in Yokohama in 1908 (Meiji 41). Since near the end of Edo — the abolition of "Sakoku" the National Isolation (1854), the change of the political system, modernisation and westernisation, wars — around this time, Japan was in turbulent times, and the successive dynamic changes of this country lasted actually until the 1990s.
"Later on, his father moved to Kobe, where he ran a ship chandler, and Higashiyama spent his childhood and youth there, too. Although they were well-off, his parents did not necessarily get on with each other and this seems to have left an unhealable wound on young Higashiyama. The somewhat stifling emotions identifiable at inadvertent moments may derive from such memories.
Higashiyama was highly sensitive and feeble from his childhood and when the balance between emotion and reason broke down, it was the nature surrounding Kobe that comforted him. This shows that his introverted personality and his deep involvement with nature had already been formed when he was a young boy. He was fond of being alone at home and began drawing pictures for fun as a matter of course. However, he did not necessarily intend to become a painter from the very beginning. It was after he entered junior high school that he decided to become an artist.
Overriding his parent's opposition, in 1926 (Taisho 15), Higashiyama entered the Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) Department of Tokyo Fine Arts School. As a student, he studied diligently continuing as a scholarship student until he graduated and went straight on to the graduate course. During this period, his work was accepted at the Teiten (Imperial Academy Art Exhibition) and he made a favourable start as an artist.
While working on Japanese-style painting, Higashiyama felt that he should also learn Western art while he was young and decided to go to study in Germany. He says he was fascinated by the solemn darkened of the Northern European countries. He attended Nagano Seminar to learn German and managed to raise enough money to cover his expenses for a year or so. He seems to have been warned that going abroad would be a detour in the conventional nihonga circles, but upon completing the graduate course in 1933 (Showa 8), he took a boat from Miike Port in Fukuoka in August and went to Berlin via Hamburg." —Masaaki Ozaki, translated by Kikuko Ogawa, from the catalogue of the exhibition.
Western-style Expressions
After the end of Samurai, in the torrent of westernisation, the traditional Japanese-style art was dying. For instance, Hōgai Kano 狩野芳崖 (1828 – 1888), was a proficient Kano-ha 狩野派 (Kano school) Nihonga painter who saw the discontinuation of Samurai's patronage toward Kano-ha and the severe decrease in demand for Nihonga, and financially struggled. He should be, as it were, the Last Kano-ha, if you would prefer to see things in a dramatic way. And he passed away in Meiji19, unfortunately a year before the establishment of Tokyo Fine Arts School that was founded in order to preserve traditional Japanese art and create prosperity of it again in the middle of a wave of nationalism. Japan was wavering between westernisation and nationalism for over a hundred years. The period during which the young painter Higashiyama was studying at Tokyo Fine Arts School — Tokyo University of the Arts 東京藝術大学 of today — was a time of marriage. It seems that many of artists of this time were seeking new possibilities of Nihonga by absorbing the elements, styles, techniques, philosophies of Yōga, or Western-style art, and the way they survive. We can find a lot of artworks that indicate traces of marriage between Japanese-style and Western-style in around the period.
"Higashiyama is said to have been relatively unaffected by such new movements. Even so, the thick layers of pigment in Mountains in Autumn Colors testify that he was not indifferent to the trend of the time. Modern nihonga developed by adopting many yoga-like techniques. Regarding the introduction of Western-style realism, this period may have been the more or less final phase." —Masaaki Ozaki
He was studying diligently in the countries of Europe, however, due to his father's illness, though he still had another year to go, Higashiyama's stay in Germany had to be discontinued.
Awakening to Landscapes
"Higashiyama's life after his return to Japan was not as favorable as expected. Having been away from Japan for two years exerted a significant effect within the art circles. While one after another of his classmates at the art school debuted in the art world, although Higashiyama's works were accepted at the government exhibitions every year, he did not attract much attention and was seized with a feeling close to anxiety. Personally, he was kept busy as his mother was ill and his father's debts had to be settled. Matters other than his work as an artist often wore out his nerves.
In 1945 (Showa 20), at a time when defeat seemed certain, Higashiyama was drafted into the forces and assigned to the military unit in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu. He felt he would probably never be able to paint again and simply trained towards the death he would have to face in due course. Amidst such circumstances, one day, he went into the city to sort out the burnt-out area. The view he saw from the tower of Kumamoto Castle shook his soul. The Higo Plain and the view of Aso extending in the background was majestic, but, being used to traveling, he had not found it so unusual. Yet, on that occasion, the sky was clear into the distance the way the mountain and river extended was full of solemnity, the plain was a vivid green, and the trees in the woods were overflowing with a sense of fulfilment. Higashiyama was so overcome by emotion that he was moved to tears. He probably asked himself why he had not depicted this view, which he must have overlooked as an ordinary scene until then. He says he was seized with joy and, at the same time, remorse.
Higashiyama was familiar with nature from an early stage and thought he had captured its heart, but he got so absorbed in pursuing new subject matters, compositions, colors, and techniques or shadowed by secular ambition that his eyes for observing nature got clouded. The moment he gave up painting and faced imminent death in the army, his heart became pure and he must have become able to sense the brilliance of life that nature originally possesses. He told himself that if he was ever to hold a paintbrush again, he would depict this sensation just as it felt at that moment.
—— While leading a life of routine, people hardly notice the true beauty of nature. However, when they become truly aware of death and are set free from all kinds of desires, nature viewed with an innocent heart appears as a beautiful world "as clear as ice." According to Yasunari Kawabata, "The secret of all arts is this terminal eye." Apparently it is when one becomes strongly aware of death that life is also perceived in one's mind with the all the more radiance.
Nevertheless, it was a pitiful start that Higashiyama had to make after the war. His mother and younger brother died one after the other and his work was rejected at The First Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition). Yet, dragging such depressed feelings having fallen to the rock bottom, he climbed to the top of Mount Kano on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba, an experience which was to decide his art from then on anew. While sitting on the grassland in the evening without a human in sight, all sorts of thoughts crossed his mind. The peace of mind he was able to identify after repetition of joy and sorrow seemed to tell him that a landscape is not a real view but a reflection of his own mind. All existences in heaven and earth are, at this moment, sharing the same fate and once everyone is able to quietly acknowledge each other's existence and sense that we are living in transiency, it finally becomes possible to feel a sense of fulfillment deep down.
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| Afterglow |
Afterglow (cat. No. 8) is indeed a work resulting from Higashiyama's rumination in Kumamoto and his experience on Mount Kano. The composition stacked from the foreground towards the background shows an infinite expanse and the colors on the mountain surface are rich in nuance. It is overflowing with a perfectly clear sense of transparency and we can feel a penetrating eye on nature that did not exist until then. This was no other than Higashiyama's "awakening to landscapes." The reason Higashiyama's works constantly captivate the viewers is that his "terminal eye," his penetrating eye looking intently at nature, and the profound emotion that look captures are lurking in them." ––Masaaki Ozaki
It continues on the next Monday-post, 'REVIEW: Exhibition "Kaii Higasihyama" PART 2'
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