Date: Thursday, September 7, 2017 (All day) to Tuesday, October 31, 2017 (All day)
Location: Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse Gallery, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
September 27 (Wednesday) Special Events:
3:00 - 4:00pm Gallery Tour with Artist Yoshiaki Shimizu
Location: Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse Gallery
4:00 - 5:00pm Presentation by Curator Yukio Lippit, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, in conversation with Artist Yoshiaki Shimizu
Location: Tsai Auditorium S010
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Read more about Art Exhibition: IRRESOLUTION: The Paintings of Yoshiaki Shimizu 
Seasonal celebrations have been a popular subject in Japanese painting since the Heian period (794–1185). Elite cultural practices of Heian court society slowly filtered into the lives of the general populace, and by the Edo period (1615–1868) a popular and highly visual culture of festivals and seasonal observances flourished. The paintings in this gallery reflect both the role these observances played in people’s lives, as well as the importance of the display of paintings in the celebration of seasonal festivals.
The Zhou was a powerful state in the region of modern-day Shaanxi province in northern China. It came to power after overthrowing the area’s Shang rulers in the mid-11th century BCE. In an effort to establish its cultural legitimacy, the Zhou adopted its predecessors’ religious rites; the result was the uninterrupted manufacture of the kinds of ritual bronze vessels and jade implements that had been the sacred tomb furnishings of the Shang elite.... 
In the late sixth century BCE, the northern Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama chose to abandon a life of worldly pleasure. He sought release from the suffering he believed inherent in samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.... 
“Nanga” literally translates as “Southern painting.” It is the Japanese rendering of the original Chinese term used to refer to intentionally unpolished amateur painting. In China these paintings were produced by scholar-gentlemen (Ch. wenren; Jp. bunjin) who shied away from politics and commerce to immerse themselves in mastering classical literature, calligraphy, music, painting, poetry, and philosophy, and to cultivate deep friendships. The paintings they produced aimed not at re-creating a superficial visual likeness, but at capturing the very essence of a subject.... 
The educated scholar has long held a position of high esteem in East Asia. As early as the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), men who wished to serve in government were required to pass rigorous civil service examinations that demanded, among other things, a mastery of classical Confucian texts.... 
By 1750, the city of Edo, known today as Tokyo, was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of more than a million. Its inhabitants lived within a tightly regulated class system that favored the ruling warrior class and relegated merchants to a position just above outcast. Almost every aspect of daily life, from occupation and residence to the items of clothing a person could wear, was dictated by these class divisions. Nevertheless, radical imbalances developed as merchants accrued financial wealth inaccessible to the ruling class. In response, vibrant theater and red-light districts emerged, providing outlets from the regulated austerity of everyday life in the capital.... 
As subjects in Chinese and Korean paintings, women appear in numerous guises—from deities and mothers to court ladies and courtesans. The goal of figure painting in East Asia was not the celebration of the human form, as it was in Western art, but the presentation of paragons of wisdom and virtue whose noble deeds and lofty attainments might inspire emulation.... 
For more than a thousand years the most admired works of art in China and Korea have reflected a deep appreciation of nature. The subjects of East Asian secular paintings are diverse, ranging from landscapes to flora and fauna, figures, and narrative scenes. Among these, landscape paintings have claimed pride of place.... 
