The exhibition, "Japan: Form & Function," fills the Crow Museum of Asian Art with nearly 250 items. Drawing on the extensive, private collection of Jeffrey Montgomery, "Form & Function" is the largest show of Japanese art the museum has ever shown: All six of its galleries are filled — and will stay that way for a full year.
Despite the exhibition's scope and variety (it contains statues and futons, sake jars and clothing), "Form and Function" has a distinct focus and a very Japanese one: It highlights not courtly art, but the homespun, the humble, the everyday items that have a clarity and beauty of their own.
Many of these were fashioned for a daily task or need. A farmer's jacket. A water jar. A backpack. And those that might fit into traditional genres of art — statues, portraits, battle scenes — their creators weren't 'artists' in the modern, Western sense. They most often lived in villages and remain nameless. These are the 'folk' in folk art.
The Japanese have several, related terms for this entire aesthetic of what we might call "traditional craftsmanship." Wabi-sabi, for instance, means to value the offhand, the unfinished. There are ceramic bowls and jars here which look as though they were hastily made or simply left charred.
At the same time, many objects have the breathtaking clarity and finish of modern minimalism. Yet both the supposed carelessness and the almost machine-like precision actually draw on Japanese traditions of what is beautiful, what is "natural."
The specific term that "Form and Function" highlights is mingei, which is usually translated as "folk art" or "art of the people." It gave name to the Mingei Movement, a 20th century appreciation and advocacy of such handiwork.
In fact, Luigi Zeni, curator of the exhibition, has organized "Form and Function" according to different provinces, locating different styles with areas that developed their own techniques. But another way of looking at all this is according to material: There are any number of wood, metal or stone objects here, but there are entire galleries devoted just to ceramics or just to fabrics.
In particular, the exhibition has three galleries that are almost immersive showcases. The first is devoted to textiles. Visitors are greeted with futons lining the walls while rows of kimonos are suspended, arms outspread, like a welcoming crowd that fills the room.
One is struck not only by the variety of designs and colors but also the specific purpose of many: an under-garment, a fireman's quilted jacket. As Zeni pointed out during the press preview, it was common for the Japanese to find different ways to use and reuse a piece of fabric until its final purpose was a cleaning rag.
The second impressive gallery displays two, brightly-colored, large-scale banners devoted to legendary conflicts in Japanese history: the battle of Ichi no Tani(1184) and the battle of Imjin River (1592). The battles have inspired stage plays, folding screens, woodblock prints, even videogames.
So the images and narrative were well-known to the typical Japanese viewer, but this may be the first time these two banners have been shown together — and to such effect. They sprawl across three walls in the gallery. In contrast to the pristine minimalism that reigns elsewhere, the visitor here is surrounded by crowded, clashing, rushing swirls of color: early Japanese Cinerama.
The third gallery features a wide assortment of housewares: lanterns, statues, futons, ceramics. With mingei, Japanese craftsmen could turn a pot hook into a bold, blocky, wooden sculpture.
Some of the principles of the Mingei Movement may sound like the Arts and Crafts movement of 19th-century England. They both valued the clarity and the dignity of handmade design — even as some products were also richly decorated. Yanagi Soetsu, the philosopher-critic who developed the ideas behind Mingei in the '20s, advocated for simplicity, anonymity and "honesty." The title of his collected essays: The Beauty of Everyday Things.
Soetsu also denied any Western influence. But the Mingei Movement, much like Arts and Crafts, rose partly as a counter to modern, industrialized goods and partly as a form of back-to-roots nationalism (against an eagerly Westernising Japan).
There is almost always an ascetic quality to minimalism, a pursuit of purity. So the movement was inspiring in its rejection of the courtly and the imperial. But it was also conservative in locating the "authentic" in Japanese village life.
In America, think of the blues or country music. Every so often, artists look back to find a supposed purity, an original truth.
Or often, just a fresh inspiration.
"Japan: Form and Function" at the Crow Museum of Asian Art through April 2024.
