192 Pages, jacketed hardback 291 x 217 mm, 130 colour illustrations
PRICE: £80.00
ISBN: 978-962-7502-40-1
This book explores the surprising heights of the idiosyncratic lone Japanese artist, the odd man out, experimenting his way through the fine arts and laying his own pathway forwards as he did. It is intended as a joyous celebration of his genius. Old Japan was a culture of incredibly diverse artistic directions, and fabulously entertaining and creative individuals. In many cases their personal lives were as disordered and as wild and woolly as any Left Bank Impressionist or Soho Bohemian loft addict, and as often their art was better.
Dating from the late 17th to the early 20th century, 69 special and individual works of painting, sculpture, ceramic, lacquer, fancy metalwork and a striking selection of pipecases and their sagemono, inro and netsuke in various materials, are catalogued with beautiful photography and detailed descriptions.
There is an excitement to eccentric netsuke, and a dimension of an artistic personality and vision which raises these creations from the level of craft to art. The simple fact is that individual, experimental netsuke are much more difficult to understand than identifiable hack work – even great hack work – and are therefore much more gratifying when one does understand them. More
The purpose of this catalogue is twofold: to bring to the notice of the Western collecting public a random selection of what constitutes a true Chinese connoisseurship in real Chinese art; and to give notice to that same shy public of the directions being taken and interests indulged at the Sydney L. Moss gallery. Apart from painting and calligraphy, included are bamboo carving, I-hsing wares, wood, ivory, bone, rhinoceros horn, jade, soapstone and hardstone carving, textile, lacquer and metal-work, several examples of the seal-carvers' art and a very few ceramic items. More
Made from scraps and slivers of wood, ivory, bone, stag-antler and metal, netsuke developed from a simple utilitarian toggle worn at the belt into a fine art. Some of it made geniuses. This book brings together prime examples of these delightful treasures – a rare and perfectly formed horse by Masanao of Kyoto; an extraordinary Ashinaga and Tenaga by Totenko; a fine study of a running boar with a snake upon its back, a masterpiece by Naito Toyomasa. More
Amongst the netsuke in this catalogue are many 18th-century rarities, including several large, mostly anonymous, figures in ivory and wood from Japanese legend, as well as important examples by Tametaka, Koyoken Yoshinaga, Tomotada and Masanao of Kyoto. Amongst masterpieces from the 19th century are four Otoman, two Ikkyu and a Tomokazu group of three rats. There are 17 ojime in various materials, many of them signed; pipecases of rare quality; some unusual spectacle cases; and inro in laquer and metal. The catalogue is rounded off by five extraordinary lacquer boxes by Ritsuo, the others by Koami Choko, Koma Kyuhaku and Oyama. More
Literati painting of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties was created in, essentially, four forms: hanging scrolls, handscrolls, albums and fans. Many of the leading artists, both calligraphers and painters, set out to produce their most important and extensive works in the almost infinitely expandable linear format of the handscroll. However, it is in the smaller formats that the subtleties of literati brushwork are better appreciated and discerned. Many painters did their best work in the small, intimate formats of fan and album painting. More
A selection of the finest works from the well-known Willi G. Bosshard collection, the one hundred netsuke are extraordinarily strong in Kyoto school animals, particularly rats and tigers, of which there must surely be enough masterpieces for anyone at all interested. Works by Masanao, Tomotada, Okatomo and virtually every worthwhile follower form a richly varied, comprehensive overview of the period from the mid to late 18th century and of the repertoire of subjects. More
A comprehensive survey of the major schools and masters in 66 fine examples, this catalogue is an indication of the developing serious interest in netsuke. Several full-colour photographs of each work, taken from every useful angle, accompany educative and entertaining text. More
This book examines how with the Japanese craftsman's intuitive sense of aesthetics and design the tsuba's utilitarian origins reached into the realms of fine art. The collection paints a picture of the Japanese tsubako, successfully representing both classic and everyday tsuba and fittings, work of the exacting levels demanded by the Daimyo and their samurai. More
Literati material finds its way into parts of the brain which regular works of antiquity cannot reach; the convoluted twists of cunning poetic allusions, themselves referring back and further back, to old writings, inscriptions on stone, legendary heroes and their mottoes, and not infrequent misquotes, can catch the unwary seeker after meaning in their complex web, causing him to lose all sense of afternoons and sometimes days. While one can admire Chinese literati works for their purely visual appeal and intimate, personable presence, it is their literary content that renders them so endlessly individual and subjective of interpretation. More
The first of two unique catalogues of Japanese art to complete Sydney L. Moss's 2010 First Centenary celebrations this book features Elinor Nordskog's collection of inrõ ensembles, pipecases and netsuke, a selection formed over four decades, starting in the 1960's, and using exacting criteria and exquisite taste. Every object is beautifully illustrated and in life-size, and almost every ensemble of inrõ, ojime and netsuke is photographed both as a composite creative whole on its cord, and also with seperate reproductions of both sides of the inrõ alone. More
The third and last in the series of catalogues and exhibitions on the endlessly diverse subject of artworks which reflect the culture of the Chinese scholar class and some of the individuals who comprised it. It follows on the heels of Documentary Chinese Works of Art in Scholars' Taste and Emperor Scholar Artisan Monk. Over 160 fine examples of painting, calligraphy and desk or scholastic objects, dating from the 15th to the 20th century, are presented with colour photographs and detailed, educative entries. More
The biggest, the best and theoretically the final volume in Sydney L. Moss gallery's trilogy of superior netsuke publications, regarded by some authorities as the finest offering of select netsuke in living memory. Over 300 colour photographs of consistently excellent works. More
The main attraction of the handscroll for the artist is that it is virtually infinite in terms of the development of an idea, or series of ideas. Whether painting a landscape or writing drunken poetry, you go on until you reach a logical conclusion, then you stop. For this reason, most of the finest Chinese artists produced their most important works as handscrolls. More
The extensively researched, in-depth, full-colour catalogue features a painstaking selection of 19 paintings and 47 'literati-taste' objects. The emphasis of all of them is on the extraordinary range of Chinese figural representation, with its tendency to humanize divine images and idealize secular figures, so that they meet somewhere in the middle as 'informal icons'. More
‘One Hundred Years of Beatitude’ surveys varied highlights of the Sydney L. Moss gallery’s idiosyncratic taste across aspects of mostly Edo period painting, calligraphy, sculpture, lacquer, netsuke and the smoking paraphernalia of ‘tonkotsu’ and ‘tabakoire’. It contains an unmistakable flavour of the Chinese influence and especially of a Confucian content in Japanese art, in both literary and socio-political regards. The survey begins with twenty-plus paintings and calligraphies. More
The second in the series of catalogues and exhibitions on the endlessly diverse subject of artworks which reflect the culture of the Chinese scholar class and some of the individuals who comprised it. Amongst the works presented here are a group of signed and superb rhinoceros horn carvings; imposing stone desk objects, including unusual and fine examples by metalworker Hu Wen-ming; an interesting group of Chin Hsi-yai bamboo carvings from the carver's own collection; and a group of imperially-related objects centering around the K'and-hsi Emperor's Tour of the South handscroll. More