Japanese Thunderclap
ART IN PARIS
By BRYAN ROBERTSON
Primavera or Uccello's Rout of San Romano. -....
Facing you on entering the gallery are the por- traits of Taira No Shigemori and Mongaku Shonin from the Kakamura epoch, one on each side, like serenely permissive sentinels. Shigemori will be familiar from reproductions, seated on a mat and holding his scroll of office, dressed in a black robe with sharp, almost explosively angular, contours whose abstract virtues offset against the calm ovals of pale head and ear would have delighted Matisse. The artist, Takanobu, worked from 1142-1205: Shigemori was one of the four friends of the Emperor Goshirakawa, whose pictures were all painted by this artist. It is a consummate portrait : the gentle and reflective nature of his known character is contained, not obscured, by the severity of the composition. The placing of this massive seated figure inside the boundaries of the vertical scroll is enthralling, with the black robe just touching the vertical sides and with subtly balanced hori- zontal spaces above and below. The range of colour is velvet black, gold, and that indefinable ivory-tinged peach-white which Japanese artists create for skin colour—flesh tone is too crude a phrase for it. The other portrait is a comparable masterpiece though softer and more diffused in character.
After you pass by the portraits, the presence of a screen on the far wall makes itself felt: it is impossible to identify the incidents or detail at this great distance and the screen is not immense: it is about eight feet in length by rather less than five feet in height. How is this `pull' exercised? Why is it so dramatic and com- pelling, how does it carry physically with such force down the entire length of the hall? It sug- gests the visual equivalent of distant music and is, factually from that point, a blur of soft rose, gold, lilac, green and black. The answer lies in the extraordinary synthesis the Japanese achieved, in their greatest works, between tender- ness and toughness. There it is, this screen, shim- mering on the end wall like an opalescent sun- rise, but you sense immediately its strength, precise architecture and complexity of content. This can happen without any prior knowledge of the characteristics of Japanese art. The same 1.. true of late Turner: any work seen from afar is merely a blur of seductive light and colour but the drama of an event, in the sky or the sea, is exhaled, as it were, and all our curiosity and sense of involvement is aroused.
Seen at close quarters, for they are small, inti- mate works, three illustrations or scenes from The Tale of Genii contain all the elements that I've described. These paintings by an unknown twelfth-century artist, a contemporary of Lady Murasaki, have a fragility not entirely due to age and partially worn surfaces: here is that gentle, warm sensuality invigorated by the most artful and astonishing perspectival devices which are so seductive in Pompeian art. And like this other ancient European style (which has such disturb- ing oriental undercurrents), the Japanese scrolls for the Genii Monogatari E-Maki combine the most delicately observed gestures and occasions of domestic, in this case imperial court, life (ren- dered with a formality and precision that still yield an informal charm) with abstract and fortifying structures which are also plain, straightforward architecture. The courtyard or balustrade or window is there for a literal pur- pose but so marvellously related to the figures, so completely satisfying as an abstract emblem, that some time elapses before one takes in its descriptive nature. The concert by moonlight scene, which occurs after the Emperor's abdica- tion (Suzumuchi II) takes place on a terrace; and the painting faithfully records this moment, the way in which the black hair patterns of the musicians seen from above rest, seemingly, on the diagonal slopes of the terrace, and vertical shapes of pillars create an image which is exactly like a page of musical notation in itself. It is breathtaking, and further extends the tough- tender principle. The black shapes of the coiffures flicker in space like minims and crotchets: non- sense, of course, since Japanese music isn't writ- ten like ours, but the musicality of this painting is disconcerting, to put it mildly. You can almost hear the flutes.
As I am now irrevocably plunged into what a satirical friend calls the 'sustained rapture' vein of art criticism, I must also describe the equally mysterious impact of another painting: Nawa Noren Zit, the screen of cords, painted much later in the seventeenth century. There are two adjoining vertical panels: the right hand painting shows a young lady with an elaborately convo- luted, tall chignon, clad in a sumptuous kimono, parting with an ineffably rhythmical and flowing gesture a screen of silken cords. A small dog plays at her feet. This composition is based on the most subtle counterpoint of insistent verticals, the screen, with the arabesques of the girl's robe, her coiffure, the sweep of her gesture, and the swirling shape of empty space made between the hanging cords by her action. The left-hand panel has disappeared, for no known historical reason, but some genius at a later date has filled in the vacant area with three tall panels of thin horizontal bamboo strips, tied silken cords with fringes dangling down at the intersections. The literal effect is like a wide door on the left con- cealing part of the event which we see on the right: the lady appearing through the curtain. In essence, the whole is a dialogue between the horizontal bamboo strips on the left and
the vertical, and painted, cords on the right. The final knockout blow is the reality of the silken cords on the left. Rauschenberg's
preoccupation with the area 'between art and life' and his use of real objects dangling on wires or strings on the surfaces of his paintings have
earlier antecedents than Picasso, Duehamp or Schwitters. The whole battery of echoes, in this Japanese masterpiece, is a tour de force.
Elsewhere, legitimate drama conies into play in the great screen paintings containing scenes of the Kabuki Theatre in action, complete with street life outside, backstage activity, the play itself, the audience and the theatre. The range of psychological observations takes about an hour to explore and so does the varied calli- graphy but the impact of the panorama as a whole is instantaneous. So is the equally large screen of a falcon hunt: here one finds those slow-moving serpentine rhythms in the clouds and rivers which have crept into much twentieth- century painting and sculpture, but this particular painting is chiefly memorable for its handling of large areas of totally blank spaces which take on all the eloquence of a changed 'event.' These Japanese spaces looming up through the mists or separating great curving rivers come close to the silences between chords in some of the atonalist music of our time.
This exhibition, in short, resets one's standards for all other art. You cannot impose the com- plexity and love of detail, let alone spiritual and physical grace, of one artistic era on to another which lacks the social faith, and the belief in tradition, to produce masterpieces of this calibre. But I wish that our younger artists could see this exhibition and ponder its meaning. I cannot imagine anyone today giving up half a lifetime to the completion of five or six paintings nor do I wish this to happen particularly. The discipline and sense of time, however, which these Japanese artists possessed, are miserably lacking today. Regrettably, the exhibition is due now to return to Japan; I hope that efforts can still be made to bring it to London.
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