Guest Column: Introductions from Chelsea
Hello, Paperfox readers! I’m Chelsea, an old friend of the glorious Sarah, blogmistress extraordinaire! This summer, I’ll be guestblogging here about art history — specifically Japanese art, a subject that many art history intro classes in college that you may have taken just don’t cover. Which is a shame, because Japanese art is simply fascinating — anything but the stuffy and boring stuff you might think you’d learn when reading about art history.
So, what can you expect to see this summer? The oldest pottery in the world. The shrines of a religious site that its pilgrims travel hundreds of miles to not see, merely stand in front of its closed gates. More Buddhas than you’d ever thought existed. Scrolls that unravel almost endlessly in elaborate illustrated stories. Scrolls that illustrate unsolvable riddles. Scrolls that depict the romantic trials of Japan’s most popular prince. (Can you tell scrolls were a popular medium?) And of course, prints — prints with landscapes, prints with shoguns, prints with prostitutes. In fact, prints more erotic and, well, blatant than anything you’d ever expect to be considered ‘fine art.’
I think a lot of people nowadays think Japanese art is all about manga (comics). Even if you’re not interested in Japanese comics, you’ve probably seen them on the shelves in Barnes & Noble — it’s becoming really popular and even ‘mainstream’ now. I actually became interested in Japanese culture through manga, and that’s part of the reason why I took a Japanese art history course this past semester.
But let me tell you, this course was about a lot more than just the country’s art. One of the important things about art history is context — art is made because of the culture, people, and events that happen around it. This is really important to keep in mind when we look at art outside the common ‘Western’ scheme of things. Often, it’s completely and utterly tied to cultural practices, sometimes not even considered ‘art’ by its peoples. And so, learning about Japanese art history (and most non-Western art history in general) also means becoming very familiar with the cultural practices themselves, which is something I’m going to try to focus on in my posts this summer. I think having objects and concrete things to look at can make something that could be boring, like history, more real — and vice versa: art’s way more interesting when you know why, how, and by whom it was made. Plus, there are a bunch of fun, weird anecdotes that those old art historian types never share with people — but I’ll be relaying them to you right here.
Before I stop writing, I just want to give a brief rundown of some of the most important references I’ll be using this summer to write my posts (an art historian’s gotta give credit where it’s due, after all). First of all, my credentials: though I’m only a rising junior in college, I am completely, utterly, and totally obsessed with art history. I’m an art history major who’s worked in three different museums, all as an educator and/or docent — so I’ve got a lot of practice under my belt making art history accessible to people who aren’t stodgy, tweedy old art history professors.
My art history professor (who is not at all stodgy or tweedy, by the way) who taught the class I talked about above is naturally my main source. But since this is the internet, I’m going to keep his information off the site for now — not because I’m plagiarizing, but because I don’t want to overstep my bounds in the kind of crazy virtual world of the internet. But if you are curious or want to further discuss what I’m saying, just email me, and I’ll be more than happy to point you towards where you can find out more about my class and my professor.
Our textbook for the course was Penelope Mason’s A History of Japanese Art (2nd ed.). (Yes, if you clicked on that link and then came back, you’ll know that it is ridiculously expensive.) It’s also just the tiniest bit dry, but as my professor said, it’s the best book on the market for a thorough overview of an entire culture’s art, so I’ll be referencing old Penelope often.
As for the internet, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, so watch out. I’ll weed through the good ones for you, but for now, you may want to check out the Cleveland Museum of Art’s online highlights tour of its Japanese art collection, which is an excellent (and high-tech), though short, beginning. Wikipedia has a good collection of articles on Japanese art that are also a solid overview; I’ll be going into a lot of what it discusses in more depth. And finally, I’ll be using the fabulous Wikimedia Commons for some high-quality, copyright-free images for your viewing pleasure — I mean, what’s art history without gorgeous pictures?
This is Chelsea, signing off for now, and looking forward to a summer full of art historical goodness! Look for a post about the oldest pottery ever very, very soon. . .
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