Orientations Magazine (Jan/Feb, 2020)

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VOLUME 51 – NUMBER 1

January/February 2020

The focus of this issue is the exhibition ‘Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection’, to be held at the recently renovated Harvard Art Museums from 14 February to 26 July 2020. The show features more than 120 works from the collection of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg, who first became attracted to the subject in the 1970s. Rachel Saunders introduces Edo period painting within the context of the exhibition, while Yukio Lippit talks to the Feinbergs about the background to the collection, followed by a discussion of ‘Eccentricity’ in Edo painting. Meanwhile Wai Yee Chiong presents examples of ‘collaborative’ works between artists, patrons and mounters, such as paintings mounted with others to produce meaningful juxtapositions.

Also including collaborative works—this time between female embroiderers and male painters serving the Korean court, and between male elite painters and male working-class embroiderers working together beyond the court—is the exhibition ‘Golden Needles: Embroidery Arts from Korea’, taking place at The Cleveland Museum of Art from 8 March to 26 July 2020. Sooa Im McCormick explains how embroidery served to empower women to overcome social constraints, and how men and women cooperated across class and gender to produce works of pictorial beauty.

Pictorial elements were also integrated into the tradition of Chinese cartography, and Diana Lange introduces a large pictorial map of the pilgrimage site Wutaishan in the collection of the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg. Meanwhile, John R. Finlay identifies a previously unknown map of the ‘Garden of Perfect Brightness’, the Yuanmingyuan, which reflects a different cartographic style.

Finally, Fletcher Coleman explores the important role that pictorial ink rubbings of Buddhist sculpture at the Chinese cave site of Longmen played in the early study of Asian art in the US.