[PUBLIC LECTURE] VISITING SCHOLAR
JOHN CARPENTER
Friday, October 14 / 5:30–7:00 pm / UHM Art Auditorium
The Past as Future in Japanese Contemporary Art
Drawing on his experience as a curator of exhibitions of traditional Japanese art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Carpenter will comment on the works of various contemporary artists, both Japan-born and Western, who incorporate images or concepts from premodern East Asian art. Sometimes, as in the work of Yamaguchi Akira, Hisashi Tenmyouya, as well as the artists featured in Imayō: Japan’s New Traditionists, the citation process is intentional and conspicuous though the artist’s motives are by no means reverential. References to the past in the dazzlingly complex drawings of Manabu Ikeda draw on a collectively shared set of imagery, such as Hokusai’s Great Wave, that for the artist seems to be the foundation for an ecologically aware, forward looking or even prophetic world view.
JOHN CARPENTER is a Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has worked since the summer of 2011. From 1999 to 2009 he taught the history of Japanese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and served as Head of the London Office of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He has also taught courses at the University of Heidelberg. From 2009 to 2011 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo. He has published widely on Japanese art, especially in the areas of calligraphy, painting, and woodblock prints. Among his recent publications is a catalogue of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art (2012).
Carpenter’s lecture is a part of exhibition IMAYO. [ For more information ]