During the early modern period in Japan, peace and prosperity allowed elite and popular arts and culture to flourish in Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. The historic first showing outside Japan of Itō Jakuchū's thirty-scroll series titled Colorful Realm of Living Beings (ca. 1757–66) in 2012 prompted a reimagining of artists and art making in this context. These essays give attention to Jakuchū’s spectacular series as well as to works by a range of contemporary artists. Selected contributions address issues of professional roles, including copying and imitation, display and memorialization, and makers’ identities. Some explore the new form of painting, ukiyo-e, in the context of the urban society that provided its subject matter and audiences; others discuss the spectrum of amateur and professional Edo pottery and interrelationships between painting and other media. Together, they reveal the fluidity and dynamism of artists’ identities during a time of great significance in the country’s history.Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press

Zen art poses a conundrum. On the one hand, Zen Buddhism emphasizes the concept of emptiness, which among other things asserts that form is empty, that all phenomena in the world are illusory. On the other hand, a prodigious amount of artwork has been created in association with Zen thought and practice. A wide range of media, genres, expressive modes, and strategies of representation have been embraced to convey the idea of emptiness. Form has been used to express the essence of formlessness, and in Japan, this gave rise to a remarkable, highly diverse array of artworks and a tradition of self-negating art.In this volume, Yukio Lippit explores the painting The Gourd and the Catfish (ca. 1413), widely considered one of the most iconic works of Japanese Zen art today. Its subject matter appears straightforward enough: a man standing on a bank holds a gourd in both hands, attempting to capture or pin down the catfish swimming in the stream below. This is an impossible task, a nonsensical act underscored by the awkwardness with which the figure struggles even to hold his gourd. But this impossibility is precisely the point.

This richly illustrated volume features expressive paintings by three East Asian and Asian American painters whose lives were fundamentally shaped by the major conflicts of the twentieth century. Internationally recognized Hong Kong artist, Chao Shao-an, shaped modernist approaches to Chinese ink painting. Through the metaphorical subjects of bird-and-flower paintings, he ruminated on events from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 to the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Keisho Okayama, son of a high-ranking Japanese Buddhist priest, arrived in the United States with his family to help proselytize Buddhism, only to spend several formative childhood years incarcerated in a WWII internment camp. His large-scale paintings contemplate these and other deeply affecting experiences from his life. Vietnamese American painter Ann Phong’s work reflects on her escape from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, as well as the experiences of the Vietnamese immigrant community in the United States. Published to accompany a national traveling exhibition, this elegant book will be of interest anyone exploring conflict, trauma, and healing through art.

Kenzo Tange (1913 - 2005) is a peerless figure among twentieth-century Japanese architects, unmatched in his talent, influence, and versatility. This collection of essays represents a new generation of original research that reframes Tange in the context of Japan's unique embrace of modern architecture as well as global discourses of cultural identity, technology, and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on celebrated works clarify Tange's wide-ranging interests and design methodology through collaboration with allied fields such as art, engineering, furniture design, and photography. The book will appeal to both specialists and general readers with an interest in the visual culture and built environment of modern Japan.

During the early modern period in Japan, peace and prosperity allowed elite and popular arts and culture to flourish in Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. The historic first showing outside Japan of Itō Jakuchū's thirty-scroll series titled Colorful Realm of Living Beings (ca. 1757–66) in 2012 prompted a reimagining of artists and art making in this context. These essays give attention to Jakuchū’s spectacular series as well as to works by a range of contemporary artists. Selected contributions address issues of professional roles, including copying and imitation, display and memorialization, and makers’ identities. Some explore the new form of painting, ukiyo-e, in the context of the urban society that provided its subject matter and audiences; others discuss the spectrum of amateur and professional Edo pottery and interrelationships between painting and other media. Together, they reveal the fluidity and dynamism of artists’ identities during a time of great significance in the country’s history.Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press

Zen art poses a conundrum. On the one hand, Zen Buddhism emphasizes the concept of emptiness, which among other things asserts that form is empty, that all phenomena in the world are illusory. On the other hand, a prodigious amount of artwork has been created in association with Zen thought and practice. A wide range of media, genres, expressive modes, and strategies of representation have been embraced to convey the idea of emptiness. Form has been used to express the essence of formlessness, and in Japan, this gave rise to a remarkable, highly diverse array of artworks and a tradition of self-negating art.In this volume, Yukio Lippit explores the painting The Gourd and the Catfish (ca. 1413), widely considered one of the most iconic works of Japanese Zen art today. Its subject matter appears straightforward enough: a man standing on a bank holds a gourd in both hands, attempting to capture or pin down the catfish swimming in the stream below. This is an impossible task, a nonsensical act underscored by the awkwardness with which the figure struggles even to hold his gourd. But this impossibility is precisely the point.

This richly illustrated volume features expressive paintings by three East Asian and Asian American painters whose lives were fundamentally shaped by the major conflicts of the twentieth century. Internationally recognized Hong Kong artist, Chao Shao-an, shaped modernist approaches to Chinese ink painting. Through the metaphorical subjects of bird-and-flower paintings, he ruminated on events from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 to the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Keisho Okayama, son of a high-ranking Japanese Buddhist priest, arrived in the United States with his family to help proselytize Buddhism, only to spend several formative childhood years incarcerated in a WWII internment camp. His large-scale paintings contemplate these and other deeply affecting experiences from his life. Vietnamese American painter Ann Phong’s work reflects on her escape from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, as well as the experiences of the Vietnamese immigrant community in the United States. Published to accompany a national traveling exhibition, this elegant book will be of interest anyone exploring conflict, trauma, and healing through art.

Kenzo Tange (1913 - 2005) is a peerless figure among twentieth-century Japanese architects, unmatched in his talent, influence, and versatility. This collection of essays represents a new generation of original research that reframes Tange in the context of Japan's unique embrace of modern architecture as well as global discourses of cultural identity, technology, and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on celebrated works clarify Tange's wide-ranging interests and design methodology through collaboration with allied fields such as art, engineering, furniture design, and photography. The book will appeal to both specialists and general readers with an interest in the visual culture and built environment of modern Japan.