Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Shukado Newsletter No.24 Matazo

Dear customers & friends,

This is Chiaki Tanaka of Shukado sending Shukado Newsletter No.24

First of all, check our updated works...
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New coming works!!

Recently, we undated two lovely works of Kobayashi
Kiyochika,
Yasui Nobukazu of "Victory of Pyongyan", three
Sumo brocade pictures and other special ukiyo-e.
We are sure when you click on our new arrivals

CLICK HERE
>>> http://www.japanese-finearts.com/item/list/35/

you will absolutely discover a "Great BUY!!"

Please check it out!

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Today, I would like to introduce an artist to you.

His name is Kayama Matazo.
He passed away five years ago in 2004.


We can call him the last great artist of the modern art.
If the feature of his artworks can be described in a single phrase, it
would be "cold" paintings. And also, the catch-phrase to be given to his
artworks would be "a passion of minus 40 degrees".
Anyway, please click below so that you can get the image.


http://www.kayamaten.jp/midokoro/chapter3.html



The model looks as if she has been drained her blood and dressed a
velvet knit rather than a living woman. For people who get used to see
well-rounded body and eroticism in ordinary nude, this artwork would
look strange.


It seems Kayama defined his beauty as the one transformed in his way
from a traditional ukiyoe beauty which lines are particular as you
could see in the ukiyoe painted by Harunobu and Utamaro.

And this is what I think Kayama's representative artwork, Folding
screen of four seasons.

http://www.kayamaten.jp/midokoro/chapter2.html

There is an original folding screen created around 14-16 century that
Kayama could have referred to, which is called “Jitsugetsusansuizu”and
designated as an important cultural property.

http://rakutyuurakugai.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/01/biombo_390d.html


Please look at his other artworks in "the exhibition of Kayama Matazo" on
the website.
http://www.kayamaten.jp/

You could see his art style in which east and west culture strongly
conflict but at the same time get fused with tension.

The sense of worth supporting Kayama's art is I think "impermanence of
worldly things".

Japanese people traditionally respect the thought that all of things
should be changing without staying in the same state.

Glory of a prosperous family doesn't last long, flowers fall, and even a
beautiful woman dies, decomposes and becomes skeleton.

Probably Kayama's artworks express that human being is nothing more than
one of flowers which bloom in a destiny nothing can escape. Otherwise,
that would be his life philosophy reflected in his expression.

That's why his art world is separated from that of Renoir in which
beautiful girls or sunlight warm viewers. Such chilly cold but sharp
fineness invites us to the world of beauty beyond life and death.

It may be because of the difference in social background between Renoir
and Kayama, the former lived in wartime and the latter reached to the
top during the time of rapid economic growth and bubble economy. Renoir
longed for sunlight while Kayama watched the time of economic boom a
short distance away.

I wrote here because I would like to let you know there was Kayama at
one of tops in the Japanese modern art.

Chiaki Tanaka

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