An Autumn Harvest of Japanese Art

With six remaining performances in November, there’s still time to see, hear, and devour Madame Butterfly.

Flowering Cherry and Autumn Maples with Poem Slips, approx. 1654/81. By Tosa Mitsuoki (approx. 1617-1691). Pair of six-panel screens; ink, color, gold, and silver on silk. The Art Institute of Chicago.

By Paul Duclos
Published: November, 2010 

 

With six remaining performances in November, there’s still time to see, hear, and devour Madame Butterfly. The tragic love story returns in a classic new-to-San Francisco production by Broadway legend Harold Prince (Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera). Svetla Vassileva sang the title role in October, a young Japanese geisha who falls for a charismatic but callous American sailor (tenor Stefano Secco). The Times of London praised the soprano’s “beautifully free and unencumbered voice … capable of the most intimate pianissimo but also riding the whole orchestra with ease.” Daniella Dessì, a singer praised by Opera News for her “penetrating, extravagant, unabashedly emotional” voice, sings the title role for all performances this month. Prince’s staging, created for Lyric Opera of Chicago and infused with touches of traditional Japanese theater, “remains one of the most beautiful in Lyric’s repertory” (Opera News). Music Director Nicola Luisotti “mixes Puccini’s colors strongly and fearlessly, so that the collision of East and West is even more menacing than Puccini knew” (The Times of London).

     

This fall, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco presents “Beyond Golden Clouds: Five Centuries of Japanese Screens,” a special exhibition of 41 rarely-seen large-scale Japanese screens dating from the sixteenth century through the present. The exhibition—on view through January 16—celebrates the evolution of the folding screen, or byōbu (“wind wall”), from pre-modern to contemporary, highlighting its distinctive position in Japanese culture as both a functional and expressive art form. The exceptional, yet diverse artworks are borrowed from the esteemed collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

     

The phrase “beyond golden clouds” describes one of the most popular motifs in classical screens, while also expressing the departure from conventional compositions and techniques in the past century. The Asian Art Museum’s presentation of “Beyond Golden Clouds” includes an introduction to the fundamental compositions, materials, formats, and subjects of traditional folding screens, and a selection of self-guided thematic tours for visitors at every level of expertise and interest.

     

And to cap off your sojourn to the east, make your way to the Legion of Honor to take in “Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism.” This exhibit introduces audiences to the development of the Japanese print over two centuries (the eighteenth through the twentieth) and reveals its profound influence on Western art during the era of Impressionism. This exhibition complements the de Young Museum’s presentations of paintings from the Musée d’Orsay, many of which are aesthetically indebted to concepts of Japanese art. Culled primarily from the holdings of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the exhibition of approximately 250 prints, drawings, and artists’ books unfolds in three sections: Evolution, Essence, and Influence. The exhibition runs through January 9.