NEW YORK, NY.- Erik Thomsen Gallery announces an exhibition of masterpieces by Japan’s most outstanding masters of bamboo basketry. Nearly all the 30 works on display were made by members of craft dynasties that flourished during the early and middle years of the twentieth century.
The primary focus of the exhibition is a large group of baskets by Iizuka family, in particular Rokansai (1890–1958), who worked in Tokyo and is widely judged to be the greatest of all bamboo masters. Well versed in painting, calligraphy, and poetry, Rokansai devoted his life to elevating basketry to the same level as those prestigious disciplines. He was the first not only to develop a theory of bamboo art, classifying his works as shin (informal), gyo (semi-formal), and so (“grass” or informal), but also to make the naming of his baskets central to his artistic practice, signaling his conviction that bamboo art should be a medium for personal expression.
Our Iizuka-line selection includes major works by Rokansai, such as Magaki (“Rustic Fence”), a flower basket from the 1930s that exemplifies so (“grass”), the most liberated of the three modes pioneered by Rokansai. Also featured are large works by his elder brother and teacher Hosai (1872-1934) and his son Shokansai (1919-2004), named a Living National Treasure in 1982.
A group of works from the city of Sakai (now part of Osaka) is dominated by a Cabinet for Tea-Ceremony Utensils from the hand of the first Tanabe Chikuunsai (1877–1937), its front and sides formed from rows of antique gilded and lacquered bamboo arrow shafts and its base trimmed with part of an antique bow. These vintage elements, held in place by elaborately knotted rattan, give the cabinet an extraordinary sense of samurai formality and poise. The Tanabe Chikuunsai line is perhaps the most revered of all bamboo dynasties in western Japan and our exhibition includes baskets by Chikuunsai I and his son Chikuunsai II alongside works by members of other leading local families including the closely connected Maeda Chikubosai line.
2017 is a pivotal year for the worldwide appreciation of Japanese basketry. In March Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, great-grandson of the maker of the Cabinet for Tea-Ceremony Utensils, was formally named the fourth head of the Chikuunsai dynasty. To mark this milestone in an already stellar career, he has installed room-sized artworks in two major cities of the Americas: São Paulo, where a new Japan House was inaugurated in May with “Bamboo” as the theme of its first displays; and New York, where on June 13 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens its exhibition “Japanese Bamboo Art, The Abbey Collection.” This month also sees the publication of a catalogue of 323 works from the Naej Collection, one of the world’s finest private holdings of Japanese baskets.
Ever since our first New York exhibition eleven years ago, Erik Thomsen Asian Art has regularly presented masterpieces by bamboo geniuses of the caliber of Rokansai and Chikuunsai. This new selection establishes Japanese basketry as one of the great East-Asian art forms and affirms our confidence in the important role it is set to play in the international art market, with major collectors active throughout the Americas, Europe, and China, as well as in Japan itself.
