Feature Articles

October Issue 2002

Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Three Exhibitions on Japanese Art

The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro, in Greensboro, NC, is presenting, The Floating World and Beyond: A Trio of Exhibitions, which will be on view through Oct. 27, 2002.
The exhibitions include: Inside the Floating World: The Lenoir C. Wright Collection of Japanese Prints; Floating World Redux: Yasumasa Morimura and Gajin Fujita; and Tradition and Innovation: Contemporary Textiles from the NUNO Studio, Tokyo.

Inside the Floating World: The Lenoir C. Wright Collection of Japanese Prints is the first substantive showing of selected prints from a collection of more than 600 works given to the Weatherspoon Art Museum. Lenoir C. Wright, an emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has studiously assembled this collection over the last five decades, ensuring that the major artists, important images, and key themes were included. The exceptional quality of the collection has been recognized by two leading scholars in the field who were brought in to assess: Professor Roger Keyes of Brown University and Professor Alan Hockley of Dartmouth University. It is now the only collection of its kind, in quality and scope, in the State of North Carolina and is counted amount the Weatherspoon's most valued holdings.

Floating World Redux: Yasumasa Morimura and Gajin Fujita, pairs two contemporary Japanese or Japanese-American artists whose work addresses, in today's terms, some of the themes and motifs found in traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Based in Osaka, Japan, Morimura is represented in the exhibition by a group of uncanny photographic self-portraits in which he assumes the guise of female Hollywood movie icons posed in roles for which they are famous. Morimura's striking portrayals are akin to the historical actor prints of the Ukiyo-e genre, which were produced in tandem with kabuki theatres and sold to fans to commermorate their favorite stars. A majority of these actor prints (a selection of which will be presented in the Weatherspoon concurrent "Inside the Floating World exhibition) featured their subjects striking exaggerated poses from climactic moments on stage.

The young Los Angeles-based Japanese-American painter Gajin Fujita creates contemporary adaptations of the landscapes and scenarios depicted in the traditional wood-block prints. His paintings are jarring collections of the old and the new, stylized conflations of spray-painted graffiti, gold leaf and renderings of icons familar from Asian art history. His work reflects the jumble of contemporary American visual culture and its innumerable subcultures, and celebrate the diverse popularity of such ubiquitous historical figures as the geisha, the dragon, and the samurai.

The exhibition, Tradition and Innovation: Contemporary Textiles from the NUNO Studio, Tokyo, is being offered to extend discussions about continuing traditions in Japanese art and the melding of fine art and popular culture.

The Weatherspoon will present several critically acclaimed Japanese films in conjunction with a trio of Japanese exhibitions. Seen as a blending of tradition and innovation, the films, like the works of art, provide a way to explore the complexity of a culture through its history, religion, literature and its art. Each film will be followed by a short discussion led by area scholars.

Unless noted, films are not rated. Parental guidance is recommended. Films are shown in the Weatherspoon auditorium on VHS or DVD. Admission is free and open to the public. Post-screening talks immediately follow each film.

On Oct. 10, at 7pm - Lower Depths, directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1957, 125 min.
Japanese with English subtitles. A rework of the classic play by Russian Maxim Gorky about a group of destitute people living in a rooming house during the late Edo period.

On Oct. 17, at 7pm - Princess Mononoke, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 1997, 135 min.
Animated. Rated PG-13. A highly acclaimed animated feature of a classic epic battle between civilization and the gods of the forest.

On Oct. 24, 6:30pm - The Makioka Sisters, directed by Kon Ichikawa, 1983, 140 min. Japanese with English subtitles. Based on the classic novel by JunichiroTanizaki, the film traces the lives of four sisters of an old merchant family living in Osaka in 1938.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, contact the Museum at 336/334-5770, or at (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).

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