Closed | Mondays, except May 4 |
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Hours |
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.(last entry: 4:30 p.m.) 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. May 12-17 (last entry: 6:30 p.m.) |
General admission | Adult 1300 yen, Student 1000 yen |
Gallery | 1/2 |
In his Irises folding screens, Ogata Kōrin (1657-1716) depicted clusters of irises on a large gold-foiled picture plane using only azurite blue and malachite green pigments. These three colors, blue, green, and gold (or yellow), are often combined; together they have a distinctive tradition in Japan and in the East in general. The vigorous color sense of this work also reflects an aesthetic characteristic of the Edo period. This exhibition also includes a sutra copied in gold pigment on indigo-dyed dark blue paper, Buddhist paintings from the middle ages to which gold has been added to a design with blue and green as the dominant colors, and a kinpeki sansui (Chinese: jinbi shanshui) or landscape in gold and blue-green, a genre that dates back to the Tang period (618-907). They are joined by ceramics from the Momoyama through the Edo periods in which these three colors play key roles, including innovative ko-kutani and ki-seto wares. With the addition of several other golden folding screens using the same colors, this exhibition attempts to shed new light on the Irises screens.