Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), Magome no tsuki (Moon at Magome), from the series
Tōkyō nijūkei (Twenty Views of Tokyo), ōban tate-e, 15 3/8 x 10 1/4 in. (39 x 26 cm), Lot 77,
Estimate: $1,000-1,500

Iron and Ink: Prints and Paintings, featuring Tetsubin from
the Crawford Collection
Bonhams New York
Online auction, July 18-26, 2022

As indicated by the title of this online sale, woodblock prints, paintings, and iron tea kettles and the focus. The prints include works by many noted artists from the Edo to the modern period depicting landscapes, figures, animals, and geometric images. Paintings and calligraphy by a wide range of artists are also featured. Closing the sale is a striking collection of distinctive iron tea kettles (tetsubin) from the collection of Jill and Byron Crawford, who enthusiastically assembled a distinctive collection in Malibu.

Read more, click here.

Courtesy of the artist and Zürcher Gallery, New York/Paris

Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line, Japan Society
Concludes July 24, 2022

This solo exhibition will be the first institutional survey of Kazuko Miyamoto (b.1942, Tokyo), a relatively little-known but significant artist, and will provide a long overdue examination of this singular artist’s career. This exhibition reclaims Miyamoto’s contributions to the development of Minimalism, challenging its general understanding as male dominated, and embraces her highly individual artistic pursuit to reveal a sustained interest in the body through evocative conceptual experiments and investigations in performance and textiles.

Kazuko Miyamoto provides an overview of the artist’s work, moving from her contributions to the Minimalism movement through early paintings and drawings from the 1960s, and her increasingly spatial string constructions in the 1970s, to her conceptual experiments in performance, culminating in her kimono series from 1987 through the 1990s. A number of works that will be on view have never been shown publicly, offering a crucial opportunity for the public to encounter Miyamoto’s rich oeuvre for the first time.

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Chuan Shinko, Portrait of Gaofeng Yuanmiao, 1238-1295, hanging scroll, ink on paper.
Gift of Charles Lang Freer.

Mind Over Matter: Zen in Medieval Japan, National Museum of Asian Art
Concludes July 24, 2022

This exhibition showcases the breadth of the museum’s medieval Zen collections, highlighting rare and striking works from Japan and China to illustrate the visual, spiritual, and philosophical power of Zen. Rooted in the culture of medieval Japan, the lessons of Zen have become an important part of contemporary American life, as applicable today as they were in premodern times.

Monastic Zen painting in medieval Japan (ca. 1200–1600) is one of the great artistic traditions of East Asia and of the world. The abbreviated, seemingly impromptu paintings in monochrome ink have influenced artists and enthusiasts for centuries. Many of the most accomplished artists of this era—Mokuan, Ryōzen, Shūbun, Sesshū, Sesson, and many others—were Zen monks credited by later generations as the creators of a unique and remarkable legacy of ink painting. Indeed, Zen monk-painters inspired a number of the most important professional painting lineages of Japan’s early modern period (ca. 1600–1868) and formed a thematic backbone of Japanese art and cultural identity in modern times.

To learn more about some of the key aspects of Zen, an online interactive experience Voices of Zen: Contemporary Voices accompanies the exhibition. The interactive features three artworks from the exhibition—a splashed-ink landscape by the sixteenth-century artist Sōen, dynamic calligraphy by the rebellious monk Ikkyū, and an early sixteenth-century tea bowl fixed using kintsugi repair.

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Listening to Clay: Works by Artists Featured in the Latest Book by Alice and Halsey North and Louise Cort,
Joan B Mirviss LTD
July 20-August 26, 2022

All sixteen artists showcased in Listening to Clay: Conversations with Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists (Monacelli Press/release date: June 14, 2022) are participating in this exhibition in honor of the book’s publication, which was authored by Alice and Halsey North, pioneering collectors and museum patrons, together with Louise Allison Cort, Curator Emerita of Ceramics, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. Works that best embody the inspirations, challenges, and achievements of their distinguished careers have been selected for this special exhibition. Most of the artists have been long represented by Joan B Mirviss LTD, who has witnessed their impressive artistic development over the decades. Accompanied by the rich personal stories found within the book, the clay works on offer in the exhibition Listening to Clay represent these artists’ innovative brilliance and encapsulate the diversity of ceramics in Japan today.

The gallery exhibition features works by all sixteen artists in the book, Listening to Clay (listed in chronological order):
Hayashi Yasuo (b. 1928)
Mishima Kimiyo (b. 1932)
Morino Hiroaki Taimei (b. 1934)
Kohyama Yasuhisa (b. 1936)
Miyashita Zenji (1939-2012)
Miwa Ryūkishō (Kyūsetsu XII/ Ryōsaku) (b. 1940)
Koike Shōko (b. 1943)
Ogawa Machiko (b. 1946)
Fukami Sueharu (b. 1947)
Kakurezaki Ryūichi (b. 1950)
Miwa Kyūsetsu XIII (Kazuhiko) (b. 1951)
Akiyama Yō (b. 1953)
Kaneta Masanao (b. 1953)
Yagi Akira (b. 1955)
Kitamura Junko (b. 1956)
and Kondō Takahiro (b. 1958)

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L-R: Kiyoko Morioka (born 1974), Flower Vase 瓶子型花器, ceramic, H. 8 7/8 x W. 5 7/8 x D. 5 7/8 in.
(22.4 x 15 x 15 cm) and Kota Arinaga (born 1978), Netz インディゴ (Indigo), 2022, glass, H. 17 3/8 x W. 9 5/8 x D. 9 5/8 in. (44 x 24.5 x 24.5 cm)

On the Axis: Works by Koto Arinaga and Kiyoko Morioka,
Ippodo Gallery
July 21-August 25, 2022
Opening reception: July 21, 5-8pm

Ippodo Gallery presents On the Axis, the gallery's first-ever dual exhibition featuring 15 pieces by glass artist Kota Arinaga and 25 by porcelain ceramist Kiyoko Morioka. At first glance, the duality between Arinaga and Morioka is pronounced. Arinaga is a male artist, Morioka female. Arinaga works with the immediacy of glass, while Morioka the patience of kiln firing. And yet, both artists are fascinated by the arcs and axes of time, exploring its dichotomies and the dualities in their work. In the stillness of the exhibition, their explorations complement and challenge one another, so that the viewer can reflect on time’s passages and surprises as it warps or rushes, freezes or evolves. Both glass and clay materials are embedded with the passage of time, requiring expert craftsmanship and patience over an extended period to produce a precious work of art.

Kota Arinaga began working with glass to create delicate patterns with lines. The threads of color seemingly stretch weave across the surface, layering like yards of yarn. As they thicken along the glass, the concept transcends the technique: Despite the rapid process of glassblowing, the permanence of form captures and contains the multitudes which have survived the testament of time.

In contrast, growing up in Kanazawa City, Kioyoko Morioka watched the gray urban sky day after day, as the ombre shades laid over her like a blanket. She grew up and changed, but the sky proved constant. Now her works evoke the same feelings of comfort, safety, and warmth provided under the clouds.

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Wang Mansheng (born 1962), Deep in the Mountains Searching for Ancient Trees, No. 5, 2014,
ink on paper, 71 x 38.5 in.

Wang Mansheng's Moonlight on Stones Curated by Dr. Chao Ling,
Fu Qiumeng Fine Art
Concludes July 23, 2022

Moonlight on Stones is the gallery’s first solo exhibition devoted to the Asian-American landscape artist Wang Mansheng (born 1962). Wang uses self-invented organic painting materials, in addition to conventional ones, to explore contemporary forms of landscape and finds enchanting and enlightening visual structures to embody his perception of nature.

Moonlight on Stones features 19 paintings selected from Wang’s Night Mountain and Ancient Trees series. These artworks, executed between 2008 and the present, are on display for the first time. Each work in the Night Mountain collection is inspired by a line from classical Chinese poetry. The relationship between text and image–a traditional scope–has been enacted in a novel way through the artist’s sensitivity and intellectual interests. The Ancient Trees collection represents his consideration of longevity and form. In intimate contact with the ecosystem of the Hudson River Valley, he makes brushes and ink out of local organic materials to paint objects found in the area while demonstrating his reflections on lines, shape and texture.

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Chao Ling, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong. An exhibition catalog is available online, in which his introductory essay is included, as well as other print and video materials. Read more, click here

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Oki Toshie, Daybreak, 2015, madake bamboo, rattan, 5.25 x 11.75 x 5.75 in.

Oki Toshie, TAI Modern
Last day July 23, 2022

Born in Gunma in 1976, Okie Toshie studied under Iizuka Shokansai. Since she began exhibiting her works in 2002, she has maintained an active schedule of shows, won several important awards, and has had her work enter several museums, including the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon. Most recently, some of her creations were included in Masterpieces of Bamboo Art: Katsushiro Soho and Fujinuma Noboru at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts in Utsunomiya in 2020.

Commenting on her work, Okie remarked, “It is a joy for me to create my artwork. At the same time, it is painful. Every time I push my creative boundaries, I hit walls of resistance. This makes me realize how incompetent I am and how much there is still to learn. On top of that, it shows a part of me that I want to hide. This process is, however, a necessary part of my life just as eating and sleeping are. I chose to work in the Traditional Craft Organization which has many rules and regulations that limit working in more sculptural forms. Despite this, I am very comfortable working within this restrained freedom to express myself.”

An informative and fully illustrated online catalogue is available on TAI Modern's website. Read more, click here.

Hanbok: Gender, Class, and Modernity, Korea Society
Online lecture, July 21, 6pm

Riding the Korean Wave sweeping the world, the traditional Korean costumes have become increasingly visible in global media. In 2021, hanbok-the generic term referring to traditional style Korean clothing-was registered in the Oxford English Dictionary. In this comprehensive series of lectures, Dr. Minjee Kim, the preeminent scholar of Korean textile and fashion in the U.S., illustrates and elucidates hanbok in sartorial, socio-cultural, and historical contexts.

In this third lecture which will wrap up the exploration of hanbok as a new lexicon of world fashion, Dr. Kim will discuss how the notions of gender and class shaped dress practice in Joseon and their modern transitions up to the twenty-first century.

Read more and register, click here

Samurai armor from the Inaba clan, early Edo period (1615–1867)

Giuseppe Piva Japanese Art, which is based in Milan, Italy, has just announced the acquisition of several important and appealing Japanese works of art. At the top of the list is this fine example of tosei gusoku (modern armor), a type that was common throughout the time period but had certain significant innovations added. It was owned by the Inaba clan, who originated in 16th century Mino province and during the Edo period were named daimyō of large and strategic provinces. In addition to this fine suit of armor, Giuseppe Piva has also added several impressive swords and sword furnishings.

Jugyoku II, Large wood netsuke of a Nio guardian, late 19th century, L. 5.8 cm

For those looking for more decorative works of art, the gallery has dramatic paintings and finely crafted three-dimensional art works. A particularly skillfully rendered example is this Large Wood Netsuke of a Nio Guardian. Carved in the late 19th century by Jugyoku II, this powerful and energetic muscular guardian deity is shown wearing a billowing shawl and sitting on a straw sandal, while he pulls on a long rope.

For more information about these and other fine items, click here.

Wada, Waichisai III (1899-1975), Flower Basket, 1945-72, madake, rattan, wood and urushi covered metal beads, object: 12.5 x 11 x 12 in. Collection of Carl & Marilynn Thoma, © Artist or artist estate, courtesy of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, photo by TAI Modern

Creative Splendor: Japanese Bamboo Baskets from the Thoma Collection,
San Antonio Museum of Art July 15, 2022-January 2, 2024

Creative Splendor: Japanese Bamboo Baskets from the Thoma Collection is a series of three installations of approximately fifteen baskets, each, that will survey the outstanding accomplishments of Japanese basket makers active since the nineteenth century to the present day from three regions of Japan: the Kansai region, which encompasses the ancient capital, Kyoto; the Kanto region, which stretches westward from Tokyo; and the southernmost island of Kyushu. The exhibition demonstrates the specific techniques and styles of cutting and weaving bamboo that are particular to each of these geographic regions.