New Book | Heritage
Available from Blackwell’s:
James Stourton, Heritage: A History of How We Conserve Our Past (London: Apollo, 2022), 496 pages, ISBN: 978-1838933166, £40.
Heritage is all around us: millions belong to its organisations, tens of thousands volunteer for it, and politicians pay lip service to it. When the Victorians began to employ the term in something approaching the modern sense, they applied it to cathedrals, castles, villages, and certain landscapes. Since then a multiplicity of heritage labels have arisen, cultural and commercial, tangible and intangible—for just as every era has its notion of heritage, so does every social group, and every generation. In Heritage, James Stourton focuses on elements of our cultural and natural environment that have been deliberately preserved: the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattersall Castle, and the works of art inside them. He charts two heroic periods of conservation—the 1880s and the 1960s—and considers whether threats of wealth, rampant development, and complacency are similar in the present day. Heritage is both a story of crisis and profound change in public perception, and one of hope and regeneration.
James Stourton is a British art historian, a former Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, and the author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorized biography of Kenneth Clark. Stourton frequently lectures for Cambridge University History of Art Faculty, Sotheby’s Institute of Education, and The Art Fund. In addition, he is a senior fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, and he sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel that decides what constitutes heritage and thus what should be saved for the nation.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
Introduction
1 The First Threats
2 The Search for Arcadia
3 Assembling a National Collection
4 The Exodus of Paintings
5 Brave New World
6 Birmingham and Anti-Heritage
7 The Backlash: The Heroic Period of Conservation
8 Rescuing a City: York
9 The Sack of Bath
10 The Archaeologists
11 Beyond the Town
12 The Fall and Rise of Country Houses
13 The Enthusiasts: Canals and Railways
14 Regeneration: Mills, Housing, and Power Stations
15 Regeneration: Cities, Docklands, and Basins
16 Liverpool Story
17 Margate Sands
18 The Heritage Industry and the Lottery
19 Churches
20 Museums
21 Heritage: An Unfinished History
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Select Bibliography
New Book | Portraits of Resistance
From Yale UP:
Jennifer Van Horn, Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art during Slavery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 344 pages, ISBN: 978-0300257632, $60.
A highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center
This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait’s importance as a site of resistance. Moving from the wharves of colonial Rhode Island to antebellum Louisiana plantations to South Carolina townhouses during the Civil War, the book illuminates how enslaved people’s relationships with portraits also shaped the trajectory of African American art post-emancipation. Van Horn asserts that Black creativity, subjecthood, viewership, and iconoclasm constituted instances of everyday rebellion against systemic oppression. Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the reexamination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.
Jennifer Van Horn is associate professor of art history and history at the University of Delaware.
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Neptune Thurston’s Portraits
1 Making Portraits
2 Fleeting Portraits
3 Haunted Portraits
4 Viewing Portraits
5 Destroying Portraits
Epilogue: Archibald Motley’s Portraits
Notes
Illustration Credit
Index
New Book | Adam Smith’s America
From Princeton UP:
Glory Liu, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0691203812, £30 / $35.
The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free markets
Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America’s founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith’s ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention.
Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher.
Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith’s America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.
Glory M. Liu is a college fellow in social studies at Harvard University. Her work has appeared in publications such as Modern Intellectual History, The Washington Post, and Aeon.
New Book | Adam Smith Reconsidered
From Princeton UP:
Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-0691210834, £28 / $35.
Adam Smith has long been recognized as the father of modern economics. More recently, scholars have emphasized his standing as a moral philosopher—one who was prepared to critique markets as well as to praise them. But Smith’s contributions to political theory are still underappreciated and relatively neglected. In this bold, revisionary book, Paul Sagar argues that not only have the fundamentals of Smith’s political thought been widely misunderstood, but that once we understand them correctly, our estimations of Smith as economist and as moral philosopher must radically change.
Rather than seeing Smith either as the prophet of the free market, or as a moralist who thought the dangers of commerce lay primarily in the corrupting effects of trade, Sagar shows why Smith is more thoroughly a political thinker who made major contributions to the history of political thought. Smith, Sagar argues, saw war, not commerce, as the engine of political change and he was centrally concerned with the political, not moral, dimensions of—and threats to—commercial societies. In this light, the true contours and power of Smith’s foundational contributions to western political thought emerge as never before.
Offering major reinterpretations of Smith’s political, moral, and economic ideas, Adam Smith Reconsidered seeks to revolutionize how he is understood. In doing so, it recovers Smith’s original way of doing political theory, one rooted in the importance of history and the necessity of maintaining a realist sensibility, and from which we still have much to learn.
Paul Sagar is senior lecturer in political theory at King’s College London and the author of The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith (Princeton).
Exhibition | A Japanese Bestiary
Co-organized with the Edo-Tokyo Museum, this exhibition brings together more than a hundred ukiyo-e prints, paintings, and everyday objects to explore the relationship between humans and animals in Japan during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Un bestiaire japonais: Vivre avec les animaux à Edo-Tokyo, XVIIIe–XIXe siècle
Maison de la culture du Japon, Paris, 9 November 2022 — 21 January 2023
La gentillesse avec laquelle les Japonais traitent les animaux surprend les premiers Occidentaux qui se rendent dans l’archipel. Les liens entre les humains et le monde animal sont cependant plus complexes comme en témoigne une remarquable réplique d’une paire de paravents de 1634 représentant un panorama détaillé d’Edo et de ses faubourgs. Outre des scènes avec le shogun poursuivant cerfs et sangliers, ou chassant au faucon, on y remarque des montreurs de singes, des chiens errants, des bœufs de labour, des chevaux sacrés…
Dans la section suivante sont présentés les différents rôles des animaux, en lien avec la vie de la noblesse guerrière, des paysans et des commerçants. L’établissement d’Edo comme capitale des guerriers explique une forte présence de chevaux militaires dans les premiers temps. Avec la paix durable, le nombre de chevaux de trait, soutien de la vie citadine, se met à croître. Les bœufs sont utilisés pour le transport des marchandises à Edo ainsi que pour le labour dans les zones rurales à l’extérieur de la ville. Les activités culturelles connaissent un essor important et on s’entoure volontiers d’animaux de compagnie : petits chiens et chats, rossignols et cailles, poissons rouges, ou encore grillons et criquets dont on apprécie le chant. Nombre d’estampes et d’ouvrages sur la façon de s’en occuper sont publiés.
Dans les zones périphériques d’Edo où vit une abondante faune sauvage, la noblesse guerrière pratique régulièrement la chasse. On chasse au faucon des grues, des oies et des canards. Organisées par le shogun, les grandes chasses au cerf visent les cervidés, sangliers, lièvres et faisans. Certains animaux sauvages sont associés à des croyances religieuses, tel le renard, connu pour être le messager d’Inari, dieu des moissons. Les habitants d’Edo, ville riche en collines, rivières, et ouverte sur la mer, vivent profondément en lien avec la nature.La vie des animaux sauvages est un élément familier, étroitement lié aux croyances religieuses et aux rites saisonniers.
À partir du début du XVIIe siècle, Edo s’urbanise rapidement et la population devient friande de nouvelles attractions. Des animaux rares, notamment les paons et perroquets provenant de Chine ou de Hollande, sont exposés dans des lieux spécifiques, ancêtres des zoos, avec des boutiques proposant nourriture et boissons. Très vite, la mode des animaux exotiques connaît un boom sans précédent. Avec l’entrée dans l’ère Meiji (1868–1912), période de modernisation et d’ouverture à l’Occident, le Japon construit des installations sur le modèle occidental, tels que zoos et hippodromes.
À l’époque Edo, la puissance financière nouvelle de la classe commerçante stimule la naissance d’une véritable culture citadine et le raffinement des objets du quotidien: les motifs décoratifs représentant des animaux évoluent vers une plus grande liberté de conception et des variations plus riches. Vers la fin du XIXe siècle, la symbolique des motifs animaliers commence à s’estomper et l’accent est mis de plus en plus sur le côté «kawaii» des animaux de compagnie.
New Book | Buddhist Art of Tibet: In Milarepa’s Footsteps
With postings, I typically aim for editorial invisibility, allowing the marketing materials of an exhibition or book to do the talking. In this case, however, I would also point readers to Erin Thompson’s review “Sex Tourism with Statues: Buddhist Art of Tibet: In Milarepa’s Footsteps Is a Cringe-worthy Display of ‘Spiritual Colonialism’,” Hyperallergic (3 January 2023). As an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), Thompson holds a JD from Columbia Law School and a PhD in art history from Columbia University (both 2010). Lots of interesting questions about lots of things; I can imagine using the review in class next time I teach my introduction to Chinese art. –CH
From Rizzoli:
Etienne Bock, Jean-Marc Falcombello, and Magali Jenny, Buddhist Art of Tibet: In Milarepa’s Footsteps, Symbolism and Spirituality (Paris: Flammarion, 2022), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2080280947, $50.
Fascinated by Buddhist art and Asian spirituality, Alain Bordier has spent more than forty years building a unique collection of religious objects from the Himalayas (Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan). On display today at the Tibet Museum in the heart of the medieval city of Gruyères, Switzerland, some six hundred works offer visitors the rare opportunity to discover an endangered world heritage. This volume presents a general historic and artistic framework of Tibetan art through narratives, anecdotes, and commentary from Bordier on the different subjects and the collection itself. Beyond the artistic aspect, this work demonstrates the symbolism and spirituality that emerge from each object and offers an interpretation of the themes from a Buddhist viewpoint. The highlight of the book is the presentation of an unpublished manuscript retracing the life of Milarepa, the great eleventh-century Tibetan yogi, whose analysis provides an excellent introduction to the great Buddhist principles.
Etienne Bock is a specialist in Himalayan art and literature. Jean-Marc Falcombello is a cultural journalist and a disciple of Lama Teunsang, one of the oldest living Tibetan masters, for four decades. Magali Jenny is an ethnologist.
Note: The image used for the cover of the book is a Tibetan depiction of Milarepa, from the 18th century, pigment on cloth, 24 × 16 inches (Gruyères: Tibet Museum: Fondation Alain Bordier).
Exhibition | Jean Bardin (1732–1809)
Jean Bardin, Tullia Driving Her Chariot over the Body of Her Father, detail, 1765, oil on canvas, 114 × 146 cm
(Landesmuseum Mainz)
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Now on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Orléans:
Jean Bardin (1732–1809), le feu sacré
Le musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, 3 December 2022 — 30 April 2023
Curated by Frédéric Jimeno
Le musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans présente la première exposition rétrospective consacrée à l’un de ses grands hommes : le peintre Jean Bardin (1732–1809).
L’exposition Jean Bardin (1732–1809), le feu sacré réunit pour la première fois le corpus de l’artiste. Des tableaux provenant de cathédrales et églises françaises (Bayonne, Mesnil-le-Roi, Charmentray…), récemment restaurés, seront présentés aux côtés d’œuvres provenant des grands musées français (Louvre, Nancy…) et européens (Albertina à Vienne, Mayence…) ainsi que de collections particulières. L’un des temps forts sera le cycle monumental des Sept sacrements, réalisé entre 1780 et 1791 pour la chartreuse de Valbonne et aujourd’hui conservée à la chartreuse d’Aula Dei à Saragosse. Cette série monumentale est exposée en France pour la première fois.
Cette exposition, initiée en 2016 avec Frédéric Jimeno, spécialiste de l’artiste et commissaire scientifique de l’exposition, est le fruit de plusieurs années de recherches. Elle révèle un artiste parmi les principaux de son temps, dans les premières lueurs du néoclassicisme. Le catalogue de l’exposition constitue la première monographie du peintre et propose également une synthèse sur la naissance des institutions artistiques orléanaises sous son égide. Jean Bardin (1732–1809), le feu sacré déploie ainsi un parcours allant de ses débuts dans l’atelier de Jean-Baptiste- Marie Pierre jusqu’à sa mort, qui laisse en héritage les fondements du musée des Beaux-Arts actuel qui ouvrira en 1825. Cette exposition est par ailleurs l’occasion d’évoquer l’entourage familial du peintre, à commencer par la figure de sa fille, Ambroise- Marguerite (1768–1842), artiste formée par son père, seconde femme peintre orléanaise connue après Thérèse Laperche (1743–1814), elle-même révélée au public en 2020 dans le cadre de l’exposition Jean- Marie Delaperche.
Mehdi Korchane, ed., Jean Bardin (1732–1809), le feu sacré (Paris: Les éditions Le Passage, 2023), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-2847424973, €38.
Additional information and more images can be found here»
Exhibition | Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt
Mummy bandage of Aberuait, linen, Egypt, Ptolemaic Period 332–30 BC (Paris: Musée du Louvre / photo: Georges Poncet). This bandage was a souvenir from one of the earliest ‘mummy unwrapping events’ in the late seventeenth century, where attendees would witness a mummy’s unwrapping and receive a piece of the wrapping linen, preferably inscribed with hieroglyphs.
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From the press release (July 2022) for the exhibition:
Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt
The British Museum, London, 13 October 2022 — 19 February 2023
Curated by Ilona Regulski
Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt, a major exhibition at the British Museum, marks one of the most important moments in our understanding of ancient history: the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The exhibition explores the inscriptions and objects that helped scholars unlock one of the world’s oldest civilisations 200 years ago.
At the exhibition’s heart is the Rosetta Stone, amongst the world’s most famous ancient objects and one of the British Museum’s most popular exhibits. Before hieroglyphs could be deciphered, life in ancient Egypt had been a mystery for centuries with only tantalising glimpses into this forgotten world. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799, with its decree written in hieroglyphs, demotic, and the known language of ancient Greek, provided the key to decoding hieroglyphs in 1822—a breakthrough that expanded the modern world’s knowledge of Egypt’s history by some 3,000 years.
This immersive exhibition brings together over 240 objects, including loans from national and international collections, many of which will be shown for the first time. It will chart the race to decipherment, from initial efforts by medieval Arab travellers and Renaissance scholars to more focussed progress by French scholar Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) and England’s Thomas Young (1773–1829). The Rosetta Stone is on view alongside the very inscriptions that Champollion and other scholars studied in their quest to understand the ancient past. The exhibition also features stunning objects that highlight the impact of that breakthrough.
Star objects include ‘the Enchanted Basin’, a large black granite sarcophagus from about 600 BCE, covered with hieroglyphs and images of gods. The hieroglyphs were believed to have magical powers and that bathing in the basin could offer relief from the torments of love. The reused ritual bath was discovered near a mosque in Cairo, in an area still known as al-Hawd al-Marsud—‘the enchanted basin’. It has since been identified as the sarcophagus of Hapmen, a nobleman of the 26th Dynasty.
Rarely on public display, the richly illustrated Book of the Dead papyrus of Queen Nedjmet is over 3,000 years old and more than four metres long. A recitation of the texts demonstrates the power of the spoken word, with ritual spells there to be pronounced. The papyrus is presented alongside a set of four canopic vessels that preserved the organs of the deceased. These were dispersed over French and British collections after discovery, and this is the first time this set of jars has been reunited since the mid-1700s.
Among the exceptional loans to the exhibition is the mummy bandage of Aberuait from the Musée du Louvre, which has never been shown in the UK. It was a souvenir from one of the earliest ‘mummy unwrapping events’ in the 1600s where attendees received a piece of the linen, preferably inscribed with hieroglyphs. The exhibition also brings together personal notes by Champollion from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and by Young from the British Library. A 3,000-year-old measuring rod from the Museo Egizio in Turin was an essential clue for Champollion to unravel Egyptian mathematics, discovering that the Egyptians used units inspired by the human body.
The striking cartonnage and mummy of the lady Baketenhor, on loan from the Natural History Society of Northumbria, was studied by Champollion in the 1820s. In correspondence with colleagues in Newcastle, Champollion correctly identified the inscription on the mummy cover as a prayer addressed to several deities for the soul of the deceased only a few years after he cracked the hieroglyphic writing system. Baketenhor lived to about 25–30 years of age, sometime between 945 and 715 BCE.
From love poetry and international treaties, to shopping lists and tax returns, the exhibition reveals fascinating stories of life in ancient Egypt. As well as an unshakeable belief in the power of the pharaohs and the promise of the afterlife, ancient Egyptians enjoyed good food, writing letters, and making jokes.
Many people in ancient Egypt could not read or write so language was enjoyed through readings, recitations, and performances. The exhibition includes digital media and audio to bring the language to life alongside the objects on display. As part of the interpretation, the British Museum has worked with Egyptian colleagues and citizens from Rashid (modern day Rosetta), with their voices featured throughout the exhibition.
Ilona Regulski, Curator of Egyptian Written Culture at the British Museum, said: “The decipherment of hieroglyphs marked the turning point in a study that continues today to reveal secrets of the past. The field of Egyptology is as active as ever in providing access to the ancient world. Building on 200 years of continuous work by scholars around the globe, the exhibition celebrates new research and shows how Egyptologists continue to shape our dialogue with the past.”
Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, said: “Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt marks 200 years since the remarkable breakthrough to decipher a long-lost language. For the first time in millennia the ancient Egyptians could speak directly to us. By breaking the code, our understanding of this incredible civilisation has given us an unprecedented window onto the people of the past and their way of life. I would like to express my gratitude to our long-term exhibition partner BP. Without their support, the British Museum would not be able to present such exhibitions, allowing visitors to discover the art, culture and language of ancient Egypt through the eyes of the pioneering scholars who unlocked those ancient secrets.”
Ilona Regulski, Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt (London: The British Museum, 2022), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0714191287 (hardback), £35 / ISBN: 978-0714191294 (paperback), £20.
Exhibition | Kimono Style
From the press release (1 June 2022) for the exhibition:
Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 7 June 2022 — 20 February 2023
Curated by Monika Bincsik, with Karen Van Godtsenhoven
Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection traces the transformation of the kimono from the late 18th through the early 20th century, as the T-shaped garment was adapted to suit the lifestyle of modern Japanese women. The exhibition features a remarkable selection of works, including a promised gift of numerous modern kimonos from the renowned John C. Weber Collection of Japanese art, as well as highlights from The Costume Institute’s collection. More than 60 kimonos, including men’s and children’s wear, are displayed alongside Western garments, Japanese paintings, prints, and decorative art objects.
“This outstanding exhibition presents the kimono from a transnational perspective, highlighting the artistic conversations between Japan and the West, and the garment’s continued impact on designers around the world,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “We are extremely grateful to John C. Weber for his promised gift, his loans to this exhibition, and his long-term support of Asian art at The Met.”
青竹色地輪宝瑞雲模様唐織, Noh Costume (Karaori) with Dharma Wheels and Clouds, Edo period (1615–1868), mid-18th century, twill-weave silk with silk supplementary weft patterning, 158 × 136 cm (John C. Weber Collection).
Monika Bincsik, the Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, said, “The kimono has served for centuries as a tableau on which to describe and record the histories of women. The variety of patterns and colors and the often-changing trends reveal much about Japanese culture and society when we shed light on the circumstances of the owners of these intricate garments and their production techniques. For many Western couturiers and designers, the kimono was a catalyst to inspire new motifs and novel cuts and to provide freedom to the wearer by creating space between the body and the clothes. At the same time, Western manufacturing techniques and materials along with artistic trends contributed to the modernization of the T-shaped garments and helped to create fresh styles.”
The weaving, dyeing, and embroidery techniques for which Japan is so well known reached their peak of artistic sophistication during the Edo period (1615–1868). Members of the ruling military class were the primary consumers of sumptuous kimonos, each one being custom made. At the same time, a dynamic urban culture emerged, and the merchant class used its wealth to acquire material luxuries. One of the most visible art forms in daily life, kimonos provided a way for townspeople to proclaim their aesthetic sensibility. The kimono-pattern books and ukiyo-e woodblock prints used during that time are comparable to modern fashion magazines and provide evidence of a sophisticated system of production, distribution, and consumption.
Depictions of kimonos in Japanese woodblock prints were widely studied by Western couturiers in the late 19th century who were first inspired by the garment’s decorative motifs. Later, the kimono’s comparatively loose, enveloping silhouette and its rectilinear cut would have a most profound and lasting influence on Western fashion, with couturiers like Madeleine Vionnet and Cristóbal Balenciaga taking inspiration for their avant-garde creations from the kimono’s construction and geometric lines.
In the Meiji period (1868–1912), Western clothing was introduced to Japan. Simultaneously, modernization and social changes enabled more women to gain access to silk kimonos than ever before. Later, some of the kimono motifs were even inspired by Western art. Around the 1920s, affordable ready-to-wear kimonos (meisen) became very popular and reflected a more Westernized lifestyle. These were sold in department stores modeled on Western retailers, following Western-style marketing strategies.
Katsukawa Shunshō (Japanese, 1726–1792), 勝川春章画 二代目中村傳九郎, Kabuki Actor Nakamura Denkurō II, Edo period (1615–1868), ca. 1770s, woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper, 29 × 14 cm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1914, JP125).
Kimono Style is organized thematically and largely chronologically across 10 galleries. A number of the textiles were rotated in October. The exhibition begins with a look at the costumes worn for Japan’s traditional forms of theater, Noh and Kyōgen, to highlight earlier traditions of clothing from which these elaborate costumes derive. While the two theater forms share roots, they grew from different stage conventions: Noh is solemn drama, while Kyōgen is comic and emphasizes dialogue. They developed together in the 14th century, with Kyōgen pieces performed during interludes or between acts of the main Noh play. The costumes—ornately decorated silk weaves, often made in the Nishijin district of Kyoto, for Noh, and simpler dyed fabrics for Kyōgen, such as the Kyōgen suit with rabbits jumping over waves—were integral to distinguishing the age, social status, and gender of the different characters, all played by male actors. Deriving from actual garments, these costumes preserved past traditions of apparel and shed light on Japanese textile history.
In the early days of Noh theater, during the Muromachi period (1392–1573), audience members often gave their own richly decorated clothing to actors in appreciation. These precious gifts subsequently were transformed into costumes, a tradition that likely led to the creation of exquisite garments specifically for the stage, such as the elegant Noh costume (nuihaku) with orchids and interlinked circles on view in the exhibition, decorated with refined gold foil and silk embroidery patterns
During the Edo period (1615–1868), the military government’s strict control of society meant that dress was not an entirely free or personal choice. Many aspects of clothing, such as the use of gold and expensive techniques, were regulated by the Tokugawa shogunate. At the top of the social hierarchy were the samurai. On the rare official occasions when elite samurai women were seen in public, they wore finely crafted silk garments rooted in conservative traditions, like the Summer robe (hito-e) with court carriage and waterside scene from the late Edo period, made for a woman in the Tokugawa shogun family. Of the three tiers of commoners who followed the samurai in the social order—farmers, artisans, and merchants—merchant-class women had the most freedom in deciding what to wear. Although their choices were supposed to reflect their class position and conform to sumptuary laws, they often disregarded such rules in order to be fashionable and to show off their families’ wealth. Their distinct looks will be illustrated through a number of Edo-period woodblock prints and fashion books depicting the patterns and dye techniques.
茶緑段蘭七宝模様縫箔, Noh Costume (Nuihaku) with Orchids and Interlinked Circles, Edo period (1615–1868), 18th century, plain-weave silk with gold- and silver-leaf application and silk embroidery, 168 × 136 cm (John C. Weber Collection).
Specialized apparel worn to conduct dangerous tasks—whether fighting enemy warriors or battling fires—exemplified the fusion of function and fashion in Japanese textiles. High-ranking samurai had access to the finest materials, including wool imported from Europe, and used boldly decorated battle surcoats (jinbaori) to project status and individual taste. Jinbaori, produced from about the 15th through the mid-19th century, were sleeveless garments originally worn over armor as protection from the weather that eventually became ceremonial wear, such as the Battle surcoat with tattered fan. Firefighters also enjoyed respect in Japan, especially in Edo (present-day Tokyo), where wood architecture led to frequent outbreaks of fire. Samurai firefighters wore expensive garments made of imported wool. The townsmen’s coats were reversible and made of thick, quilted cotton with a plain indigo-dyed exterior and an elaborately decorated interior, usually depicting warrior heroes and mythical creatures that instill bravery or are related to water. One example portrays a legendary warrior, Tarō Yoshikado, who acquired magical skills to be able to morph into a toad.
Access to cotton for commoners, especially those living in the north, increased in the late 17th century with the establishment of the kitamaesen, a commercial shipping route between northern and central Japan, which enabled the secondhand clothing trade to flourish. Castoff cotton clothing was brought from Edo to Osaka and dispersed to the north. Nothing was wasted. The respect for and ingenious use of scarce materials led to the emergence of regional folk textile traditions. On view will be sturdy working clothes for farmers and fishermen as well as lightweight indigo-dyed cotton kimonos for women intended for summertime.
After the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the abolition of the class structure, the modernization of the Japanese fashion system occurred first in textile production. Global trade and industrialization in the second half of the 19th century vastly expanded Japan’s access to expensive or restricted wool, cotton, and machine-spun silk. Kimono patterns in the early to mid-20th century increasingly drew from Western art movements, including the organic style characteristic of Art Nouveau and the bold, geometric forms of Art Deco, as can be seen in the Summer kimono (hito-e) with swirls. At the same time, Western couturiers looked to Japanese art and clothing. Kimonos were first reinterpreted as dressing gowns, and later, primarily their fabrics, became a source of inspiration for the creations of couture houses such as Worth. By the early decades of the 20th century, the garment’s rectilinear form and loose shape revolutionized Western fashion: couturiers gave up the S-shaped, corseted bodice for a flat, straighter, modern line. Parisian innovators such as Paul Poiret, Callot Soeurs, and Madeleine Vionnet borrowed Japanese ideas and draped their garments from the shoulder, rather than tailoring the fabric to follow the shape of the body. For example, Poiret’s modernist ‘Paris’ coat from 1919, one of the highlights from The Costume Institute’s collection, was constructed using a single 15-foot length of silk velvet with minimal cutting, recalling the concept of creating a kimono from a single bolt of fabric without any waste and using only rectilinear elements.
In the Edo period, dry-goods stores or fabric merchants (gofukuten) sold high-quality, made-to-order kosode (the predecessor of the kimono, with small sleeve openings) of silk or fine hemp to men and women of the samurai and wealthy merchant classes. Precursors to the department store, the best-known gofukuten all had branches in multiple cities, including Kyoto, from where they ordered the fabrics. Around the early 20th century, these gofukuten gradually transitioned into modern department stores, adopted Western retail practices, and promoted a modernized lifestyle.
Affordable, stylish kimonos made from meisen, an inexpensive silk woven from predyed yarns, a technique known as ikat (kasuri), became popular in the early 20th century. By the 1920s and 1930s, working- and middle-class women from high-school students to shop assistants could buy these casual, bright-colored, ready-to-wear modern kimonos with bold, graphic patterns. Department stores frequently released new designs to spark trends and inspire purchases. Many meisen kimono patterns were inspired by avant-garde art movements, such as Italian Futurism and the Dutch ‘De Stijl’. Piet Mondrian’s compositions were particularly influential, as demonstrated by a large ikat (ōgasuri) kimono in bright yellow, teal, and raspberry red.
Since the second half of the 20th century, the kimono’s iconic structure has been a source of inspiration in both Japanese and Western fashion. Some modern designers use its shape as a starting point for architecturally constructed garments, as seen in the work of Issey Miyake and Cristobal Balenciaga, whose Evening wrap from 1951 will be on view. Others play with the kimono’s symbolic associations. Remixed and reinterpreted by Japanese designers active in the West, including Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, the kimono dynamically reflects Japanese culture both to the world and back onto itself as evident in Rei Kawakubo’s Ensemble for Comme des Garçons featuring a manga figure. Through all these iterations, the kimono has gestured toward a future beyond fashion trends, cultural boundaries, and gender norms.
Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection is curated by Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, with guest co-curator Karen Van Godtsenhovenk. The exhibition is made possible by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation Fund, 2015. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, it is made possible by the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund for Asian Art Publications. Additional support is provided by the Richard and Geneva Hofheimer Memorial Fund.
Monika Bincsik, Karen van Godtsenhoven, and Masanao Arai, Kimono Style: Edo Traditions to Modern Design (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1588397522, $35.
Monika Bincsik is the Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts in the Asian Art Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Karen Van Godtsenhoven is an independent curator based in Belgium. Arai Masanao is a textile historian based in Japan.
Basile Baudez’s Inessential Colors Wins the 2022 Hitchcock Medallion
The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) recently announced its award winners for 2022.
We are pleased to congratulate the winners of this year’s SAHGB awards. The Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion has been awarded annually since 1959 to a monograph that makes an outstanding contribution to the study or knowledge of architectural history. This year’s winner is:
Basile C. Baudez’s Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press), which the panel commend as a landmark work, beautifully written, methodologically innovative and which will have significant impact on future studies.
Elizabeth McKellar, on behalf of the judging panel, commented: “The judges praised this as an original, complex and ambitious work which examines changes in architectural drawing c. 1500–1800. The author skilfully weaves an investigation of the changing use of colour in architectural representation to argue for new understandings of draughtsmanship and its place in architectural practice. Furthermore, Baudez reveals how histories of the practice of architecture are inextricably interwoven with those of painting, engineering and cartography as well as the professional, commercial and institutional networks that shaped its activities. The book is to be commended for its mastery of a huge range of secondary literature across the broad chronological and geographical sweep of both southern and northern Europe (including Britain) in an integrated approach. The book is beautifully and generously illustrated incorporating a breath-taking range of sources, many of them little-known. The quality of this visual material together with the clarity of the writing combine to produce a powerful re-assessment of the role of coloured maps, plans and drawings in communicating and defining early modern architecture in Europe.”
The shortlist is available here, with the full announcement of winners here.
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