Jakuchu, Superflat and the Price Collection

Based on the magazine cover, of what later turned out to be a byobu- folding screens painting, I somehow got it into my head that this 18th century, Edo period painter was a contemporary artist. And not without a reason, as the paining represented on the cover has a digital age quality has a touch, if it was not anachronistic, Takashi Murakami’s superflatness. To intrigue the potential audience and to popularize the show, it was a well chosen, but perhaps not the most representative Jakuchu work. The original, depicting a phantasmagoric scene, pictures centrally an elephant and some smaller animals and plants, is made of couple of thousands of painted mosaic-like squares. At the museum, it turned out that this tedious in execution work, so representative of this exhibition is ironically not even signed by Jakuchu Ito. Yet, the audience is being reassured that that Jakuchu was most likely the author, being the only possible artist to used such technique.

Knowing the scale of the show, I expected the exhibit to be popular. Hoping to beat the crowds, I chose to go to the museum on a weekday. Still, the galleries resembled the rush hour train and I had hard time getting close enough to the works. Regardless the inconvenience, there are at least three reasons to try to make it to the museum.

First, show does not only consist of Jakuchu works, but gives a historical context to his paintings, in the form of selected works from the painting schools preceding, contemporary to and following Jakuchu.

Second, it’s a good background source to anyone interested in the Superflat “school” led by Takashi Murakami. He named Jakuchu and the Edo period Eccentrics inspiring figures from the history of Japanese art, for his theories of Superflat. I dug out an old entry on Superflat by Momus. Here is Murakami, talking about “superflat” in the Edo period art of Japan: “From as early as the Era of Azuchi Momoyama, through to the early Edo period, latter part of 16th century to early 17th century, some artists qualified as “eccentric” emerged in the expressionist Japanese painting wave. Their ways of expression were characterized by pictorial compositions that were both eccentric and fantastical. From their pictures, one can feel a very typically Japanese engagement with the visual sense that wants resolutely to remain planear (denying perspective)”

Finally, one just needs to be there to sigh at the incredible collection that largely belongs to a non- Japanese collector, an American Joe Price. The Price collection is quite a story that started in New York in the 1950s. A recent college graduate then, Joe Price decided to make his graduation gift, in a wonderful company of a collector of Asian art, no other than the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a Japanese painting and not on a sport car. Today, the collection consist largely of “forgotten by art historians”- funny that those words come from Tokyo National Museum- works by late 18th Kyoto painters, most prominently Jakuchu. “Today they are once again attracting attention, as Japanese art collectors and scholars follow Price’s lead in their rediscovery. The Price Collection is a powerful, intriguing collection that transforms existing views of Edo period paintings.”