Chōjirō (Raku I), Tea Bowl named 'Tarobo', 16th century
Good morning art reads:
1. LACMA currently has one of the best art exhibitions I've ever seen in Los Angeles, Raku: The Cosmos in a Tea Bowl. Raku is style of quick fire ceramics developed by one family in Kyoto, Japan in the 16th century and that same family has carried on the tradition, passing the mastery of the style from father to son, all the way into the present. There have been 15 Raku Masters and in the LACMA show, you see examples from almost all of them. While technical knowledge of the kiln (in constant operation for over 400 years), stylistic knowledge about the shape and form of the bowl, and general knowledge about harvesting Kyoto's very unique clay have all been passed down, the masters do not teach their sons any secrets about glazing. Each master has to discover their own glazes, making for a rich diversity of experimentation, texture, and color of each tea bowl. Furthermore, the masters do not confine themselves to tea cups: it is actually expected that they take on larger and more complex ceramics. It is only by technical mastery of all forms, even the most exaggerated, that the master finds the restraint and calm to make the simplest tea cup. This is a wonderful show. Make sure to catch the video at the end, it adds to the richness of the experience.
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/raku-cosmos-tea-bowl
2. I featured recent departed Chris Burden last Monday and had the pleasure of seeing a performance of Burden's latest and perhaps last work, Ode to Santos Dumont, at LACMA on Saturday. William Poundstone recognized that flight has long been an interest of Burden's and catalogues many of Burden's projects involving flight here:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/2015/05/17/the-flying-machines-of-chris-burden/
3. Andrew Berardini and Sarah Williams have been quietly running the L.A. Art Book Review for years, and it is a wonderful site where you can find books reviews on items that are unlikely to ever be reviewed and sometimes hard to find. You are equally likely to find a text on the new John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonne as you are to find a text on a zine published in a run of only a few hundred copies. In an art world sore for reviews on books, they do a great service:
http://theartbookreview.org/
4. Great stuff from Philip Kennicott on Shirin Neshat's new show at the Hirshhorn D.C.:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/its-written-all-over-their-faces/2015/05/15/7bc9bcac-f99e-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html
Video of the week:
5. I found an old series of videos on the history and technique of Japanese ceramics that is delightful both for its information and its low production value:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raIwUJpeu8o
Poem for the week:
6. Walking through the Raku exhibition, I couldn't help but think of the most famous of all Japanese Haiku, Basho's 17th century masterpiece The Old Pond, also referred to as The Frog Poem or Basho's Frog or any other variation on the original 7 word poem. The link below takes you to 11 different translations, but there are countless more attempts to capture the poem, it may be one of the most translated poems in history. Like the Raku style of ceramics, Basho's original text sets limited parameters, yet the poem, both in the complexity of its meaning and its ability to inspire so many different translations, appears limitless in effect. I've had profound experiences with this poem, and I recommend giving it a change and letting it go to work on you.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-pond/
One click deeper:
7. In trying to go a little deeper with Raku, I stumbled upon this article from the Japan Times about “innovation embodied by the terms kufū, the practice of skillfully creating through innovation, and kaihen, the transformation of objects.” The article refers to objects in Japan that have been damaged or destroyed and, subsequently, recreated or mended through artistic intervention. In the article, a 16th century tea bowl by the original Raku master, Chōjirō , is recreated by the 13th master, Seinyu, out of a single, existing shard. This is a completely different way of thinking about cultural artifacts that doesn't exist in the West. Could you imagine Christie's assigning value to a Chippendale cabinet that had been skillfully remade by a contemporary master furniture builder? They would get sued for fraud. Yet, why not assign value to it? Is it not a loving extension of a tradition based in both history and care for culture?
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/09/25/arts/transforming-the-splendor-of-japanese-art/#.VVn9UvlVhBc
8. Finally, this book was all the rage in the 1970s and it is still wonderful today:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Tea-Kakuzo-Okakura/dp/0486200701/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431961157&sr=8-1&keywords=book+of+tea
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