Fujishima Takeji

Snow at the Hiunkaku, Nishihonganji Temple, Kyoto, Fujishima Takeji

Snow at Chioin Temple,
 1943, Fujishima Takeji

In order for a lasting artistic tradition to develop, a nation or ethnic culture must possess two fundamental qualities. Both are the result of a single factor--economic stability. That blessing allows the development of two more, an educated elite, and excess wealth. In effect, the first provides the artists, the second buys their time to pursue their creative instincts. Wealth and economic stability likewise result in an environment conducive to such pursuits. In the Far East, the two major national cultures to achieve the level of economic stability resulting in lasting artistic traditions--an art history--have been China and Japan. That's not to exclude Southeast Asia or Korea, but both of these cultures have been so heavily influenced by the two powerhouses as to be adjuncts rather than unique entities. The other important aspect in the development of a modern artistic culture is the acceptance of foreign influences and the successful melding of them into the existing art of a nation. China has done that, for the most part, only within the past fifty or sixty years. In Japan, such foreign influences date back to the turn of the 20th century.

 

Hiroshima Museum of Art

Fujishima Takeji

Nude with Peach Blossom,
1902, Fujishima Takeji,
Hiroshima Museum of Art.

There is, in Hiroshima, Japan, a private art museum called (naturally enough) The Hiroshima Museum of Art (left, not to be confused with the huge Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art). It's not large, and it has struggled financially over the years; but it also houses an interesting record of this century-long acceptance of Western (mostly European) art influences, displaying the work of artists such as Seurat, Cezanne, Vuillard, Redon, Soutine, and Modigliani (an interesting combination, perhaps having more to do with the costs of acquisitions than aesthetic or historical factors). However, also in the museum's collection are works by Japanese artists, Kuroda Seiki, Saborusuke Okada, Ryusei Kishida, Kunzo Minami, Maeta Kanji, Yuzo Saeki, and Fujishima Takeji. What these painters have in common is that they all studied for a period of time in Europe, adopting European stylistic influences and European content into their work. Minus the wall labels, any of them could pass for French, Spanish, or Italian artists. Fujishima Takeji (above, right) is an interesting case in point.

 

Pond, Villa Deste ,1908-09, Fujishima Takeji--Japanese Impressionism?

The Great Buddha at Kamakura,
Fujishima, Takeji

Fujishima Takeji (remember, the family name comes first) was born in 1867 in Kagoshima (that's on the southern tip of the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu). He left home for Tokyo in 1884 at the age of seventeen to study art there in traditional Japanese art academies (the only kind there were at the time). However, that's not to say there was not already Japanese artists teaching Western art, one of them being Yamamoto Hōsui, who, having studied in Paris, was eager to add a European vitalization to what had become an extremely hidebound, conservative, Japanese painting culture. Fujishima Takeji fell under his influence, even though he, himself, could not afford to visit Europe. For twelve years, starting in 1893, Fujishima taught elementary art in Tsu, Mie Prefecture (coastal south-central part of Japan) saving his money to move to Europe to further his studies.



Morning glory and women, 1904, Fujishima Takeji. Not all of the artist's
Western style paintings were done after he went to Europe.

Woman with a Black Fan,
1908, Fujishima Takeji

Fujishima studied at Paris' Ecole des Beaux Arts, as well as their branch, the French Academy in Rome for five years before returning to Tokyo to become a professor at the Tokyo School of Art. He was elected a member of the Imperial Art Academy and was among the first to receive Order of Culture from the Japanese government. He died in 1943 at the age of seventy-six. In little more than half a lifetime, he and his wall-mates in Hiroshima's little museum of art were the driving force in freeing Japanese painting from its stifling medieval past, bringing it into the 20th century.

 

Scent, 1915, Fujishima Takeji--Japanese subject, European style.

Yoshio Taniguchi

D.T. Suzuki Museum, Kanazawa, Japan, 2011, Yoshio Taniguchi

Years ago there was a cute "preacher joke" involving KISS. I won't repeat it here, but the letters have come to be an abbreviation for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Oriental art lovers seem to admire this quality greatly. There has always been a tendency in Oriental art, especially the Japanese variety, toward Minimalism. That's especially the case when Oriental artists study abroad, as happened between the two world wars. Their styles and content change, becoming more westernized, but at the same time their minimalist tastes tend to mitigate the worst excesses of Western art. We see this in the work of Japanese artists such as Fujishima Takeji, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Kaii Higashiyama, and others from this period. In admiring such works, we often take little note of the museums housing them, and with good reason. In designing them, the same minimalist aesthetics also have been absorbed by many Japanese architects. In an age when museum architects routinely design works-of-art buildings, whether intentionally or not, they tend to compete with the art they house. I won't name names, but I think most of us know whom we're talking about.

 

The Suzuki Museum illuminated, Yoshio Taniguchi. Minimalist architecture
tends to benefit from changes in seasons and illumination more than other styles.

Yoshio Taniguchi

Yoshio Taniguchi is a Japanese museum architect. Though it would be an injustice not to consider his museums as works of art, they are of such deeply restrained design as to lead the visitor to feel a sense of walking into a 1970s era Minimalist painting. Thus, the art, even that which is, itself Minimalist, is accentuated like an elegant chocolate truffle on a white platter. Taniguchi was born in 1937, the son of a modernist architect by the same name. He was trained both in Japan as well as Harvard, an associate of Walter Gropius, a major influence in his style. If you're going to be a museum architect, there's nothing like starting at the top. In 1997 Taniguchi won a competition involving ten other internationally known architects for the redesign and remodeling of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

 

New York's MoMA from the street--modern but not minimal.

Best known for his Japanese museums, the MoMA commission was Taniguchi's first work outside his homeland. As any architect will tell you, re-designing an existing structure is much more difficult than starting from "scratch" in creating a new building. As a result, despite his Minimalist ideals, his newly designed MoMA is not what anyone would consider Minimalist. Aside from the fact that the streets of New York simply do not lend themselves to anything minimal, the complex existing structure demanded a design complexity far beyond anything the Oriental aesthetic might allow. Like virtually all museums of long standing (in this case as far back as 1939), the MoMA is, in fact, a complex in every sense of the word.

Taniguchi's Minimalist instincts are plainly evident in this aerial illustration
of the MoMA complex. However, it's not as simple as it looks from above.
From the street, the Minimalism is minimal.

First designed by the famed American architect, Phillip Johnson, the museum was refurbished in 1958 following a fire, then doubled in size in 1983 with the addition of a 53-story museum tower. Pulling all this together, Taniguchi had his work cut out for him. The design work began in 1997. The remodeling was not completed until 2006. It added an entrance for school groups, a 125-seat auditorium, an orientation center, workshop space for teacher training programs, study centers, and a new, larger lobby with double-height views into the Sculpture Garden. As the mass of what's deemed to be Modern Art grows, the museum now had plans to add another fifteen thousand square feet of exhibit space to be completed during the next ten years.

Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan, 1995, Yoshio Taniguchi
--minimal to the point of austerity.

Taniguchi's Sea Life Park, Tokyo, 2000

In Japan, Taniguchi's museums include the D.T. Suzuki Museum (top), and the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art as well as Tokyo's Sea Life Park. Each is stunning in its own, Minimalist way--the Suzuki is contemplative, the Toyota so restrained as to seem otherworldly, while the Sea Life Park, with its emphasis on transparency, is daring almost to the point of intimidation. Though the Western influences of the Bauhaus, and what's come to be known as the International Style are present, it's as if they've been translated into Japanese. Today, Taniguchi has just completed construction in the museum district of Houston, Texas, his first free-standing, designed-from-scratch, building in the United States, the Asia House for the Texas branch of the Asia Society (below)

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Asia Society, Texas Center, Houston, Texas, 2014, Yoshio Taniguchi.