Lecture: Curating Golden Fantasies
January 29, 2004
Lecture: Curating Golden Fantasies
Rosina Buckland (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Kress Room, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
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Musashino at Sunset
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In early seventeenth-century Japan, as the warrior class settled down to life in the cities, and as the merchants began to establish themselves as a powerful economic force, demand arose for new subject matter for paintings in the folding screen format. These included episodes taken from well-known narratives, both courtly romances (Tale of Genji) and warrior tales (Tale of the Heike), scenes of life in the city together with its entertainments, as well as the symbolic use of natural motifs that possessed emotional resonance through literary allusions. Not just gorgeous images on a grand scale, these works carried meanings and messages related to the changing social climate of the day.
Rosina Buckland, curator of Golden Fantasies: Japanese Screens From New York Collections at the Asia Society, will use works from the exhibition to illustrate this relationship between history and art in early modern Japan.
