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Past Special Exhibition 2020

Time to Spend in an Art Museum

  • Shiseido Collection Summer Exhibition
    — Glass art, bamboo art and oil paintings —
    July 21(Tue) — September 22(Tue), 2020
  • Shiseido Collection Autumn Exhibition
    — Lacquer ware, ceramic art and Japanese paintings —
    October 6(Tue) — December 11(Fri), 2020

Over the course of the past six months¬, extending from July to December, we have held two exhibitions: the Shiseido Collection Summer Exhibition and the Shiseido Collection Autumn Exhibition. Both exhibits featured masterpieces of craftwork and painting, with a special selection of bamboo crafts, glass arts and oil paintings displayed in the summer exhibition to evoke the summer season. Later in the year, the autumn exhibition featured a mix of lacquer arts, ceramic arts and Japanese paintings that surely enabled visitors to more intimately experience the aesthetic sensibilities of the traditional Japanese arts.

The craftworks on display mainly consisted of pieces that had previously been exhibited in the Shiseido-sponsored Modern Art Crafts Exhibitions held between 1975 and 1995, and the works of Japan’s Living National Treasures (designated as holders of Important Intangible Cultural Assets) accounted for the vast majority of the bamboo, lacquer and ceramic craftworks on display. Similarly, most of the paintings shown had previously been exhibited in the Third Tsubaki-Kai Exhibition (or Third Shiseido Camellia Association Exhibition) (1974 – 1990), with both oil paintings and Japanese paintings selected mainly from pieces created by recipients of Japan’s Order of Culture. We’d like to believe that all visitors felt a deep sense of gratification at the chance to gaze upon this collection of traditional Japanese craft works and representational paintings from Japan’s world of postwar art.

Poems of Spring
— Japanese and Western–style paintings and art crafts
displayed alongside poems heralding the coming of spring —

January 16(Thu) — April 12(Sun), 2020

The Shiseido Art House has proudly played host to a variety of exhibitions featuring selected works from the Shiseido collection that evoke the coming of spring. The works displayed have included a mix of both Japanese and Western–style paintings, art crafts and contemporary art works.

The first signs of spring are typified by the sun gradually regaining its power, tree branches that had withered in winter beginning to be clothed in vivid new green foliage, and hills and mountains clad in fresh verdure. Just as these signs of the return of life to the ground have brought hope to people since ancient times, so too have a great many works based on the coming of spring been created in the world of art.

For these exhibitions, works associated with the coming of spring have been carefully selected from among a host of Japanese paintings, many of which thematically evoke the coming of the season. These have included Western–style paintings by Japanese painters, lacquer art, pottery and ceramics art and even craft works such as dolls, all displayed together with poems written around the themes of spring. Selected poems have ranged from traditional Japanese waka poetry to haiku poems, Chinese poems and modern poetry.

It has always been our belief that these exhibitions provide opportunities for all visitors to appreciate the pleasures of viewing and reading as thoughts invariably turn toward the coming new season in a space filled with the feelings of spring in full bloom, where both art and literature are put on prominent display.