On exhibit: The works of a multitalented master: Hon'ami Koetsu

by Edward J. Sozanski

(Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday August 6, 2000, Arts & Entertainment)

Chances are that until now you haven't heard much, if anything, about the Japanese master Hon'ami Koetsu, who lived from 1558 to 1637.

That's to be expected, because except for a few of the most illustrious figures associated with woodblock prints, such as Hiroshige and Hokusai, relatively few Japanese artists are known by name in the West.

Add to that the fact that Koetsu was famous in his own time primarily as a calligrapher. There isn't an equivalent in Western art for pictorial writing, so it's not a genre that Westerners are conditioned to appreciate.

But Koetsu was more than a virtuoso calligrapher. A connoisseur of the tea ceremony, he made ceramic tea bowls, designed lacquerware, and supervised the production of printed books about theater. He collaborated in the creation of painted hand scrolls and poem cards.

So how does one explain Koetsu in Western terms, the better to understand why the Philadelphia Museum of Art is devoting a major exhibition to him?

Koetsu might be thought of as a combination of the poet-painter William Blake and the poet-painter-craftsman William Morris. The comparison isn't exact, but, like these two Englishmen, Koetsu was multitalented in the arts.

And like Morris, a key figure in the 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement, Koetsu helped to generate a revival of aesthetic ideals from an earlier period in his country's history.

In doing so, he often functioned as a kind of art director by commissioning and coordinating various art-related projects.

For instance, the magnificent pieces of lacquerware in the exhibition were designed by him to be crafted by others. The large hand scrolls that are perhaps the most spectacular objects in the show involved three principals - a calligrapher for their poetry (Koetsu), a painter and a papermaker.

"The Arts of Hon'ami Koetsu," which opened at the Art Museum last weekend, might appear a daunting prospect for anyone not familiar with Japanese history and culture, not to mention language. Yet it's also a deeply rewarding experience for visitors willing to shift intellectual gears and place themselves in an unfamiliar aesthetic environment.

The show is relatively small - about 60 objects at any one time - but extremely select. Felice Fischer, the museum's curator of Japanese art, has worked with the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Foundation to acquire loans of major significance, especially from Japan.

For instance, the show will include during its run 12 Koetsu objects designated by the Japanese government as "important cultural properties" and two designated as "important art objects."

(Because many of the exhibits are works on paper that can't bear excessive exposure to light, the exhibition installation will change substantially on Sept. 18. About 50 objects will be rotated at that time.)

The Koetsu exhibition is more than a collection of precious and beautiful objects, it represents exposure to a set of unfamiliar and highly exacting cultural parameters. From the moment one steps through the blue-curtained entry, one is immersed in a spirit of minimal grace and elegant symmetry.

Time slows almost to a stop in the galleries, not so much because the material is historical as because each object communicates through its design and craftsmanship an enormous investment of time, patience, deliberation and skill.

Permit yourself to be possessed by this spirit. Throw off the shackles of Western obsession with haste, and the exhibition will feel considerably less alien, even if you can't read Japanese (every calligraphy is translated).

This is a highly nuanced experience, so take time to consider details of design and craftsmanship, especially the "handmade" character of just about everything here.

A good portion of the show involves calligraphy, for which Koetsu is justly renowned. A non-Japanese speaker must engage them strictly as visual compositions, which the artist's fluidly cursive style of penmanship makes relatively easy to do.

The stars of the calligraphy segment are the large hand scrolls, one of which was recently acquired by the Art Museum. Others are from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum and the Nomura Art Museum in Kyoto, where Koetsu lived.

Each is distinctive in some way, at least in the sections exposed to view. The Seattle scroll displays considerable rhythmic variation in the boldness and thickness of brushstrokes, which encourages a viewer to regard the mark-making as gestural painting.

The soft pastel colors to the sections of the Cleveland scroll emphasize the papermaker's considerable contribution to the collaboration.

In the Kyoto scroll, the calligraphy and the painting integrate naturally, as wisteria blooms hanging from the top edge flow in elongated characters that are common in Koetsu's writing style.

The Art Museum's scroll is easy to spot - it has been damaged by fire. But it also has been restored in a way that preserves evidence of the damage, which to Japanese eyes adds to its appeal.

In these scrolls, the integration of the three arts is so seamless that one isn't conscious of collaboration. This manifest harmony is one of the pleasures of Koetsu's art, seen also in the smaller poem cards and, as noted, in the lacquer boxes he designed.

Two computer-driven, interactive displays are designed to help visitors understand the architecture of such collaboration, and to simulate handling of previous objects whose tactile qualities are intrinsic to their appeal.

The displays were developed in partnership with the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan.

One allows visitors to manipulate a virtual scroll and to isolate its various components. For example, you can view calligraphy without painting or vice-versa, and even hear poetry chanted.

The other display features a cast-resin tea bowl, modeled on a black raku example in the Gotoh Museum, Tokyo, that visitors can handle. When they do so, a three-dimensional image of the real bowl appears on a video screen.

These devices are fascinating and, being interactive, offer visitors some respite from the intense scrutiny that the show demands. But they're almost antithetical to the experience of Japanese art, which reveres high craftsmanship and the sensuousness of actual objects.

These qualities are easy to grasp in the show's final section, which presents a group of tea bowls. One of these was exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

Japanese tea bowls appear to be the humblest of objects. They look crudely rough, asymmetrical and full of flaws such as glaze bubbles. But humbleness is exactly their point. Because they aren't perfect, their imperfections can be considered symbolic of natural things such as landscape features, and also as the futility of human striving to imitate nature.

The tea bowls, like everything else in the Koetsu exhibition, are intensely contemplative objects. The Japanese put great stock in contemplation, and this installation will help you to achieve that state of mind.

The galleries are painted a light jade green that shifts into gray in dim light. The color provides a cool, restful environment accentuated by a somewhat minimal installation - everything in cases, no extraneous doodads or signage, and bare walls where one would normally expect to see visual focal points.

The Koetsu exhibition is more like visiting a temple than an art exhibition - it even looks silent. It's a project very dear to curator Fischer's heart, and if you give it half a chance, it will become so to yours as well.