Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Yasumasa Morimura, Miran Fukuda et al.
This exhibition examines the reception of Edouard Manet (1832-83), a leading 19th-century French painter, in Japan.
The painter and art critic Hakutei Ishii was inspired by Manet's "Lunch on the Grass" (1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) to create a work titled "A Little Rest on the Grass" (1904, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Other works by Nobunori Yamawaki, Sotaro Yasui, Kanae Yamamoto, Kaita Murayama, and Ryohei Koiso also show the influence of Manet. These influences include copying, similarity of brushstrokes, and borrowing of compositions and motifs. It can also be said that it was the critics who particularly strongly asserted their understanding of Manet. Ishii and Mokutaro Kinoshita, a physician, poet, novelist, and art critic asserted in their critical remarks that an understanding of Manet was essential to the acceptance of modern Western painting.
However, the influence of Manet on artists and critics in the early days of Western-style painting in Japan has never been presented in a coherent manner, although it has been pointed out in fragments. This exhibition looks back on "encounters with Manet" in Japan through works and criticism from the Meiji period to the early Showa period.
How has the understanding of Manet changed from these early encounters to the present day? Although we are already aware of Manet in the context of modern Western art history, we do not necessarily see his works in the same light as people in the West or in the Meiji period. In exploring the Manet image in contemporary Japan, we will present works by artists Yasumasa Morimura and Miran Fukuda, each of whom has developed his own interpretation of Manet from his own unique perspective.
The exhibition will focus on seven of Manet's 17 oil paintings (including pastels) in Japan, as well as about 100 Impressionist and modern Japanese Western-style paintings and documents, to explore Manet's image in Japan from the Meiji period to the present day.
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