Past Special Exhibition 2005

Japanese Masterpieces from the Collection

6 October (Thu) to 4 December (Sun), 2005

This exhibition featured a variety of nihonga works from the Shiseido Art House collection.
The term “nihonga,” meaning “Japanese painting,” was coined during the Meiji period to distinguish Japan's traditional pictorial art from Western painting styles. Such Japanese painting includes a variety of techniques and styles, but in general it involves dissolving finely ground pigments into an adhesive and using the resulting colors to create pictures in various genres.
This exhibition featured twenty-seven works by twelve masters who have distinguished themselves in the realm of Japanese painting. These included Okumura Togyu, Takayama Tatsuo and Iwahashi Eien—all members of the Shiseido-sponsored third Tsubakikai exhibition group (1974–90)—as well as Kanashima Keika, known for his pictures in the flowers-and-birds genre, Ito Shinsui, who created series of images of women, and numerous others working in landscape, flower-and-bird, portraiture, and other genres.

Tea Ceremony Utensiles Today — Pieces from the Exhibition of Modern Industrial Arts

8 July (Fri) to 2 October (Sun), 2005

This exhibition featured tea ceremony utensiles, many of which had previously been part of the Shiseido-sponsored Exhibition of Modern Industrial Arts series (1975–1995).
The Japanese tea ceremony, founded in the Muromachi period by Murata Juko and popularized by Sen no Rikyu, has long served as a vehicle for spiritual development and a path by which to cultivate a sense of etiquette and refined companionship.
“Tea utensiles” is the general term for the various accoutrements to the tea ceremony, some of the most well known of which include tea bowls, water jars, and jujube-shaped, lacquered tea caddies. And, since these vary depending on the style of tea ceremony, season, and purpose of the tea gathering, tea utensiles have been developed into a myriad of forms, such that they have played an essential part in the crafts of Japan.
This exhibition featured about forty works by fifteen craftsmen (among them ten living national treasures), including Suzuki Osamu, Shimizu Uichi and Katō Hajime (pottery crafts), Akaji Yusai, Isoi Masami and Taguchi Yoshikuni (lacquer art), Iizuka Shokansai, (bamboo crafts), Naito Shiro (metalwork), and Iwata Toshichi (glass crafts).

Oka Shikanosuke & The Western-Style Painters of the Tsubakikai

25 March (Fri) to 3 July (Sun), 2005

This exhibition featured works by Western-style painter Oka Shikanosuke, known for his uniquely harmonious painting style, and artists who had participated in the Tsubakikai exhibitions that began in 1947.
The Tsubakikai exhibition, named for the camellia (tsubaki) that is Shiseido's company symbol, is an artists exhibition group that over the years has been comprised of five different periods featuring five sets of artists. This group and its exhibitions provided a forum for a wide variety of artistic genres including Japanese and Western painting, sculpture, and contemporary art, but this exhibition focused on paintings in the Western style—thirty in all by fifteen artists—including four works by Oka Shikanosuke and others by Ushijima Noriyuki, Wakita Kazu, Mori Yoshio (Third Tsubakikai), Kanayama Heizo, Kawashima Riichiro, Suda Kunitaro, Somiya Ichinen (First Tsubakikai), Chokai Seiji and Hayashi Takeshi (Second Tsubakikai), and Umehara Ryuzaburo (First through Third Tsubakikai).
This exhibition introduced Shiseido's long-running support of the arts, which it has continued since the early 1900s, even through the hardships of a world war and its aftermath, and highlighted some of the works produced by great Japanese artists of the mid-twentieth century.

Prints, Watercolors and Sketches — Works from the Shiseido Art House Collection: Part 2

12 January (Wed) to 21 March (Mon), 2005

This exhibition featured works on paper from the Shiseido Art House collection, created in a variety of mediums including watercolors, pastels, pen drawings, chalk designs, copperplate prints, woodcuts, and others.
The exhibition space was divided into zones by genre, including Japanese painting, Western painting, woodblock printing, sculpture, and illustration, with forty-seven works by twenty artists on display including: Japanese-style painters Kayama Matazo, Komura Settai and Fukuda Heihachiro, Western-style painters Ono Takao, Kishida Ryusei, Koiso Ryohei, Nomiyama Gyoji, Pablo Picasso and Marie Laurencin; sculptors Funakoshi Katsura, Funakoshi Yasutake, Emilio Greco, Giacomo Manzù, Pericle Fazzini and Marino Marini, print artists Ikeda Masao, Komai Testsuo, Hamaguchi Yozo and Yamaguchi Gen, and illustrator Yamana Ayao.
Presenting the works of these various artists together in a single forum offered many opportunities to see each with a renewed perspective, and highlighted the appeal of the possibilities for artistic expression on paper.