East meets West at Honolulu Academy of Arts exhibit

HONOLULU -- 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, Postimpressionism, 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 Arts. The show also includes European--influenced works by renowned Japanese artists, representing a crosscurrent 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, the highest price ever paid for a piece of art.\nCurator Jennifer Saville spent four years assembling the 53 paintings on loan from 28 museums, 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.The exhibit, open until June 6, will only be seen in Hawaii.\n"For me this exhibit is about the exchange between Europe and Japan," Stephen Little, director of the Honolulu Academy of Art, said.\nIt also coincides with the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Japan signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, ending 200 years of isolation after Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay leading several ships.As Japan opened itself to the West, a new class of Japanese industrialists set about to collect Western art, works by such French impressionists as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cezanne, all of whom are represented in the exhibit.\nSome of the works on display are from the first generation of Japanese oil painters, many of whom traveled to Paris in the late 19th century to study with the impressionist masters in the French ateliers. Until that time, artists in Japan were accustomed to working with ink on paper and silk. The connection between the two cultures can be seen in the vibrant colors and the rapid brush strokes, Saville said. Oil painting was new for them, and the Japanese artists had to learn how to paint, how to create an illusion of space.\n"It was an entirely different approach to creativity and art," Saville said.\nUmehara Ryuzaburo was a student of Pierre--Auguste Renoir, who sent the young Japanese painter to Italy to study the frescoes of Naples. The result was his 1913 painting, "Narcissus," on loan from the National Museum of Art in Tokyo. The painting shows a seated male nude done in bold brush strokes and stark colors and is positioned in the exhibit next to Renoir's 1891 "Bather," a female nude painted in soft pastel colors.The blending of the two cultures also can be seen in such paintings as Mitsutani Kunishiro's 1932 "Scarlet Rug," on loan from the Ohara museum. The study of two Japanese female nudes on a brilliant red rug combines the Western subjects with an Asian appearance, not only the women, but the Pekinese dog with which they play and the Japanese flower arrangement behind them.\nMany of the French painters collected Japanese woodblock prints, as well. The Honolulu academy has the third largest collection of such prints in the world, a 9,000--piece collection in the James Michener Gallery.\nThe Japanese influence can be seen in Edgar Degas' portrait of American impressionist Mary Cassatt, who is seen seated, leaning forward holding cards in her hands, asymmetrically placed against an unfinished background. The painting, the only work from outside Japan, is on loan from The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. It was included because it was once owned by Kojiro Matsukata, whose collection became the core of the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park in Tokyo, and because it illustrates the East--West connection.\nOther Japanese artists never made it to France, but emulated the impressionist masters by studying reproductions.Yorozu Tetsugaro's 1912 portrait of his wife in "Head of a Woman (Woman With a Boa)," on loan from the Iwate Museum of Art, shows the influence of both van Gogh and Matisse, whose "Odalisque With Arms Raised" from 1921 is positioned to its right. It is a case study of the two works painted in a similar style.\n"Many of these painters are household names in Japan but are not known outside Japan," Little said.\nAn example is painter Raphael Collin, whose "Young Woman," from 1894, opens the show. Many of the Japanese painters studied with Collin, but his work is little known in the West, Saville said.\nActor George Takei, whose grandparents emigrated from Japan in the late 19th century, narrates the audio portion of the self-guided tour. The audio is also available in Japanese. Takei, best known for his role as Mr. Sulu on the "Star Trek" television and movie series, is chairman of the Japanese-American National Museum in Los Angeles. He called the exhibit a landmark.\n"This is in the 'Star Trek' concept as well," Takei said. "Alien civilizations are not that alien"