Awakening Interest: Pioneering Exhibitions of East Asian Art in Berlin in the Early 20th Century

by Herbert Butz, Deputy Director and Curator of Chinese Archaeology and Chinese Applied Arts, Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin.

As the Museum of East Asian Art (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst) in Berlin prepares to celebrate the centenary anniversary of its founding in November this year Herbert Butz looks back at some of the seminal exhibitions staged there in the first half of the twentieth century. Otto Kümmel (1874-1952), the museum's legendary founding director undertook a series of large-scale exhibitions to make its collections more widely known, and encourage the interest of private collectors. The exhibitions and the people and organizations who shaped them made pre-war Berlin a thriving centre for East Asian art.

Poster for the East Asian art exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, Berlin, 1912 Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Arhiv

by Wolfgang Klose, professor of theoretical physics, University of Saarbrücken and the University of Karlsruhe.

Gustav Jacoby was one of the great German collectors of Japanese art in the early 20th century, deeply committed to enhancing public awareness and knowledge of Japanese art and crafts. His personal holdings of sword decorations and lacquerware in particular exceeded many museum collections of his time. Jacoby started collecting Japanese art seriously in 1899, and as early as 1903 was able to publish a series of sword guards from his collection in a catalogue. The first public exhibition of Jacoby's private collection in Berlin 1904, `Small Works of Japanese Art', featured almost 1,200 objects. Jacoby was extremely generous, and made large material and financial contributions to the East Asian collections of several institutions: for instance, Jacoby helped transform the East Asian Art Collection in Berlin in 1919, donating virtually his entire collection. Unfortunately, the pieces he donated, together with the vast majority of the collection's other pre-war holdings, were confiscated as war booty by the Soviet Army and removed to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where they still remain today.

Gustav Jacoby, 1910

by Matthew P. McKelway, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, Gakushuin University, and visiting professor at Waseda University.

John Weber's collection exhibits a variety of formats, styles and modes of painting, its real strengths lie in the works from the Muromachi and Edo periods. Many of the works hold unique importance for the history of Japanese art. A painting by Sesson Shukei, Hotei Reaching for the Moon, represents the prominence of figural depictions in the collection's Muromachi period pieces, the work brims with joviality. Measuring over a metre in height, the Weber painting is one of Sesson's larger figure paintings. The Weber collection has one painting by Hokusai, The Courtesan Eguchi as the Bodhisattva Fugen and the Monk Saigyo. The work is significant for the uniqueness of its subject-matter within Hokusai's oeuvre. It is also noteworthy for its correspondence to a surviving preparatory sketch in the Freer Gallery of Art. While the collection is still growing, we can take the opportunity that the Berlin exhibition affords to pause and focus on the collection's strengths.

Cherry Trees By Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-1691), c. late 1650s-60 One of a pair of six-panel screens, ink, colour, gold and gold leaf on paper Each screen: height 165.2 cm, width 355.4 cm (Photography by John Bigelow Taylor)

by Joe Earle, Chair of the Department of Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The John C. Weber Collection includes classic examples of both Kodaiji and Negoro lacquers, as well as an exceedingly rare early example of a lacquer box with a theme from the Tale of Genji. The Weber Negoro bottle is one of the most perfectly formed in existence and has been frequently published and long admired for its overall balance. Not only that, it also has a distinguished pedigree, having once been owned by legendary film director Akira Kurosawa. Less refined than the bottle but striking in its monumentality is the Weber rice-tub, a piece which has few parallels among published examples of Negoro lacquer. Although there is no documentary evidence to connect this vessel with the To-daiji in Nara, it is similar to one that is preserved there; it is easy to imagine this piece too, being brought ceremoniously into the temple refectory on the occasion of the Shunie, a formal meal that takes place there in March every year. A delicate little box that once held imported incense dates from the late 15th century and is decorated in the elaborate combination of techniques. Its pictorial scheme and literary allusion mark an important moment in the development of Japanese lacquer decoration; the design points unmistakably to Chapter 24 of the Tale of Genji, entitled `Butterflies'.

Bottle Late Kamakura or Muromachi Period, 14th/early 15th century Negoro ware, black and red lacquered wood Height 30.9 cm (Photography by John Bigelow Taylor)

by Terry Satsuki Milhaupt, an independent scholar who specializes in Japanese textile history.

Weber began acquiring Japanese textiles in 1996. His friend and advisor Julia Meech has encouraged his interest in Japanese art; she assists him in collecting within this specialized realm - an area often avoided by private collectors due to the complexities of handling and storage. Weber has made a conscious effort to acquire museum-quality pieces that are visually powerful, refined and elegant. The collection also reflects Weber's interest in representing a broad cross section of Japanese society and different historical eras. The approximately 200 garments in the collection date from the 17th to the 20th century, from a rare bugaku theatre costume to a kimono designed by the modern artist Serizawa Keisuke. Weber also focuses on categories not usually collected by museums, including men's underkimono, firemen's coats and children's garments.

Kosode Edo period, 2nd half of the 18th century Silk embroidery on purple-black crepe silk round; paste-resist dyeing Height 159.5 cm, width 120.4 cm (Photography by John Bigelow Taylor)

by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.

The ceramics from the John C. Weber Collection are an articulation of Japanese aesthetic sensibilities. Beautiful examples enable us to explore the beginnings of pictorial design from the sgraffito technique and underglaze iron-oxide painting in Mino ware, to the early flourishing of painted expression on white porcelain with first underglaze cobalt-blue and then the clear and bright overglaze decorated Hizen ware. The five examples discussed in this article span less than a century in date, but amply illustrate the rapid development of ceramic painting in the late 16th to mid-17th century, enabling us to realize that successful painted expression is not restricted to two-dimensional media.

Dish Momoyama period, 1580-1600 Mino ware, grey Shino type Stoneware with iron-rich slip and incised design Height 7.2 cm, diameter 29.7 cm (Photography by John Bigelow Taylor)

One of the events commemorating the centenary of the Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin, is `Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection'. The idea for the exhibition emerged some three years ago during a dinner in Tokyo hosted by Klaus Naumann, whose collection of lacquer is also being shown as part of the celebrations. As John Weber, an established American collector, describes it, `since most of the museum's historic Japanese collection is sitting in crates in the cellar of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg - it is war booty taken at the end of World War II - I was approached by Peter-Klaus Schuster, director general of the seventeen national museums in Berlin, about the possibility of lending a selection from my Japanese collection to their centenary celebration exhibition'. According to Weber, `the fact that my ancestors came from Germany at about the time that the museum was founded made this a serendipitous opportunity for me'.
During the course of preparations for the show, Orientations spoke to Weber not only about his interests in Japanese art but also about the process of collecting and the psychology of a collector.

John Weber, abbot Gyokudo Izumida and Morimoto Yasuyoshi at the Zen temple Shogen-in, Ouda, Nara, April 1998

John Weber finishing the `Half Ironman', Montauk, October 2004

by Antje Papist-Matsuo, PhD candidate at the Free University, Berlin.

The Naumann Collection comprises distinguished pieces from Japan, China and the Ryukyu Islands which are masterly representations of crucial technical and artistic developments in the history of this medium. Naumann assembled the collection as a connoisseur guided by criteria that mirror traditional Japanese taste; consequently, the exhibition is entitled `A Japanese Taste for Lacquer: The Klaus F. Naumann Collection'. An example is the collection's exquisite group of lacquer hand drums, mainly used in No and kabuki theatre. The elaborate use of takamaki-e for the design of the small hand drum with a very dynamic depiction of the Wind and Thunder Gods is rather uncommon. The techniques of harigaki (needle painting) and kakiwari (where linear detail is left in reserve, appearing as black lines) have been applied to create fine details in the musculature and physiognomies of the figures.

Small hand drum Tokugawa period, 17th century Black and brown lacquer with gold and silver maki-e on wood Length 25 cm, diameter 10 cm

by Terese Tse Bartholomew, Curator of Himalayan Art and Chinese Decorative Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

The Chinese language lends itself to puns, and these are often adopted visually as rebuses. A depiction of a certain plant combined with various animals or objects can be interpreted as the equivalent of an auspicious phrase conveying a specific wish. Some of these rebuses involve the citron; when one talks about this fruit in Chinese art, the Buddha's Hand or Fingered Citron (Citrus medica Sarcodactylis) comes to mind. In Chinese it is called foshou, `Buddha's Hand'. The first character, fo, is a play on the words for `blessings', fu, and `riches', fu; the second character, shou, is a pun on `longevity', shou. Many other puns and rebuses are explored in the article, with a special emphasis on the citron and botanical motifs.

Detail showing the front flap of a purse Qing period, c. 1850-1900 Embroidered silk Height 11.43 cm, width 10.79 cm Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Gift of Ursula W. Bingham (1988.32.7)

Uli Sigg was first introduced to Chinese contemporary art in 1979 during a trip to China, when he helped to craft the first joint venture between the PRC and a Western country. Today, Sigg's collection - numbering well over 1,200 works of art - is considered to be the finest of its kind. Julie Segraves, Executive Director of the Asian Art Coordinating Council (AACC), caught up with him during one of his frequent visits to Beijing to discuss his collection and the Chinese contemporary art scene.

Uli Sigg with an untitled painting by Fang Lijun

Shawn Eichman has been appointed Curator of East Asian Art at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, effective from January 2007. Eichman, who specializes in the arts of China and Japan and is an expert on Daoist and Buddhist art, earned his PhD in Chinese literature at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa.

Shawn Eichmann

The Asia Art Archive (AAA) launched two new projects in late August. The first is a website that aims to trace the development of international contemporary art biennales, over seventy of which have taken place globally to date. As well as providing a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon, the website aims to serve as a research tool, with statistics, facts and documentary resources in both English and Chinese. The project can be reached from the AAA website (www.aaa.org.hk). On 24 August, the AAA also released From Reality to Fantasy: The Art of Luis Chan, a monograph on the important 20th century Hong Kong artist, in celebration of his centenary. Over 200 images of Chan's works are included, the majority of which have not been published before.
The 51st exhibition and sale of contemporary Japanese prints, hanga, organized by the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) will be held on 19 to 22 October at the Tokyo American Club. There will be 211 works by 185 Japanese and non-Japanese artists. The accompanying catalogue is the most comprehensive annual English language publication on hanga. This year's edition includes a new essay on the development of the medium and an extended glossary of techniques and terms specific to Japanese contemporary print art.
The University of California, Berkeley, is to establish a professorship in Tibetan Buddhism after a US$1 million endowment from the Khyentse Foundation. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, the main incarnation of the Khyentse lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, set up the Khyentse Foundation to support institutions and individuals in the study and practice of Buddhism. He believes that the establishment of the position and the objective study of Buddhism `can benefit not only the students, but Buddhism itself' and chose Berkeley because it has `the strongest history of Buddhist study in Western academia'.

Dzongsar Kyentse Rinpoche

Jhamsang in his studio in Lhasa, showing British artist Wayne Warren his work that is now on view in the Exhibition `Waves on the Turquoise Lake: Contemporary Expression of Tibetan Art' at CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder until 20 October.

HRH Prince Charles with Erich Theophile, Executive Director of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust, discussing the architectural drawings presented at an event to launch its `International Campaign to Restore the Patan Royal Palace', hosted by the Prince at Clarence House.

The ninth `Asian Art in London' (AAL) will run from 2 to 10 November. Evening receptions in Kensington Church Street, St James's and Mayfair on 4, 5 and 6 respectively, will be followed on 8 November by a launch party held at the Royal Academy of Arts. Tickets cost ú50 each, and can be booked through AAL by telephone (44 207 499 2215) or email (info@asianartinlondon.com). A programme of lectures, workshops, panel discussions and study days will run throughout the week, with topics including the history of lacquerwork, metaphor in 17th century Mughal art, Japanese papercraft, and changes in Meiji period art. Further details can be found at the AAL website (asianartinlondon.com), and on the Orientations calendar of Asian art events.
The article also includes an interview with Christopher Bruckner, who is celebrating ten years in London as a dealer. Orientations talks to him about the past decade, and what lies ahead.

by John Sanday, an architect specializing in the conservation of historic buildings.

In 2002, with funding from the American Himalayan Foundation (AHF) John Sanday embarked on a project to conserve Buli Lhakhang, a little-known Buddhist monastic complex in Gyatsa village in the Bumthang valley. Dating from the 17th century, it was identified as having all the problems a conservator could wish for: acute structural failure; impending structural failure; and the presence of two different styles of wall paintings. The painted surfaces and some of the carved timbers were also in need of cleaning and restoration. Buli Lhakhang was thus the perfect training ground for teaching a nation whose theories on the preservation of cultural heritage, ironically, resulted in the destruction of many historic structures when put into practice.