It will be obvious to everyone who has seen exhib. that Jap. ptg. of century after Meiji Restoration cannot be neatly divided into schools & currents, even to degree that earlier Jap. ptg can. School divisions always problematic, although valid & useful; become more so when country suddenly opened to so much from outside at the same time that it is going in so many dif. directions internally.
Category assigned to me, Nanga or Bunjinga (and one of many things I'm not going to attempt in this talk is to distinguish between them) has less "shape," coherence, than, for instance, Shijô-ha (Prof. Sasaki's subject) or Rimpa (Prof. Guth's) or even Ukiyo-e, in same period. When we say these names, something comes into mind's eye. But say Nanga-Bunjinga, and images of Taiga & Buson, Gyokudô and Chikuden, are projected onto our mental screens. Then look at ptgs by artists I'm going to talk about: except for Tessai, and perhaps late Kagaku, not a lot of immediate resemblance. Of course, the divisions are in some part arbitrary; but I'm certainly not criticizing the categorization, espec. as I end up with group of artists & ptgs that on the whole I like, and enjoy talking about.
One thing everybody will agree on: just as dealing with western-style ptg in Meiji-Taishô period immediately raises issue of Japan-and-Europe cultural interactions, so does talking about Nanga raise issue of Japan-and-China. But I assume that that's what I was brought here to do. Nakamura Tanio, in list of school definitions in modern Jap. ptg, defines Bunjinga as: "Ptgs by scholars of Chinese and Japanese literary classics, usually in a Chinese style."[1] Again, this raises all kinds of questions, which I don't want to stop and consider now. Standard accounts of earlier Nanga (including my own old one) stress origins in Chinese painting for their styles; and session topic, "Traditional Sources of Nihonga," would suggest that I am expected to do that for my artists. But as you'll see, that's not what I mean to do. Cultural interaction goes both ways.
Nakamura writes, to quote him again: "Though not accepted by the academic schools, bunjinga was in fashion throughout the Meiji era." And he goes on to say, after a brief characterization of earlier Nanga and mentions of Taiga and Buson, "Though no less popular among art connoisseurs, the literati [i.e. bunjinga] art in the Meiji era, excluded from the fires in which Japanese painting was undergoing a rebirth, appeared to have become stagnant and to have lost its creativity. The advent of Tomioka Tessai in Kyoto, therefore, created a sensation in the art world of Tokyo." This is a good summary of the situation; we have to think of artists who somehow followed the Nanga tradition in the late 19th and early 20th cent. as on the one hand inheriting a movement or mode of ptg that for a half-century or so had been in decline, and on the other hand as open to the scorn of powerful people promoting other directions, such as Fenollosa, who wrote of Bunjinga as "scarcely more than an awkward joke." And we should see their art as produced under these conditions.
S,S. (Photos of Tessai). Since Tessai is older by some decades than any of the others (born in 1836), it's more or less unavoidable that I begin with him. Have to resist temptation to use most of my time for him: I've been deeply involved w. Tessai since my Fulbright year in Kyoto, 1954-55, when I originated U.S. exhibition, helped later with others, most recently one in China; I've written & lectured about him. That's all the more reason for not spending much time on him here. I want only to make a few comments that fit into my theme today.
S --. (Noro Kaiseki, 1836.) One major strength of Tessai was in his avoidance of "pure southern school" approach--that is, ptg that followed orthodox Chinese criteria of good brushwork, pure LS as subject, playing down narrative & anecdotal elements, etc. The faithfulness to Ch. models that was possible for some artists in late period of Nanga, 2nd quarter of 19c and beyond, is part of what brings about its decline. Tessai follows the good examples of Hyakusen and Buson & others in refusing to be constrained by this doctrine; he copies and imitates Ch ptgs of all kinds that came his way, w. kind of sinophile voraciousness.
[1]Nakamura Tanio, Contemporary Japanese-Style Painting, Tokyo and New York, 1967, p. 76.
S,S. (Tessai 1923, "Three Old Buddhas in Shrine", Lo P'ing Vimalakirti.) Many of his sources have been identified, either in particular Ch. ptgs or as types. But to do so doesn't account for much of greatness of Tessai, as it doesn't for Buson. Both profoundly original masters.
S --. Tessai develops mode of painting that combines disciplined fine-line drawing, partly learned from Chinese models, with bold, wet strokes of rich ink that lay out a spatial structure, opening hollows within which figural and narrative elements can be set. (Only one of his compositional types; of course.) Can be used for powerful compositions such as this "Listening to the Rain at a Window by Bamboo," ca. 1920? Tessai's air of spontaneity and semi-controlled splashiness can divert us from recognizing the extraordinary technical mastery that underlies it, keeps it from falling into real sloppiness.
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