Carleton professors Katie Ryor and Katie Sparling and staff member Jim Smith will be part of a panel titled “Reflections on Beauty: A Discussion of Chikanobu’s Jidai Kagami (‘Mirror of the Ages’) Album” at 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 25 in the Carleton College Art Gallery. The discussion accompanies the Gallery’s recently opened exhibit “Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints.” Both the exhibit and the discussion are free and open to the public.
Yoshu Chikanobu (1838-1912) created richly colored, elaborately detailed images in response to the dramatic changes sweeping Japanese society under the Meiji emperor (1868-1912), who came to power after centuries of military dictatorship. Chikanobu, along with other print artists, took advantage of the influences that came about when the Japanese market was forcibly opened to the West. His work represents both an advocation of modernization and a nostalgia for traditional values.
In Jidai Kagami or “Mirror of the Ages” the artist represents Japanese history from the Keanu (1334-36) to the Meiji periods, with each print including a bust-length portrait detailing clothing and hairstyles and a smaller illustration displaying customs and manners. The Jidai Kagami, presenting portraits of ideal beauties, is replete with the nostalgia for pre-modern Japan that characterizes Chikanobu’s late work.
Several years ago Carleton acquired a deluxe folio of 30 prints (out of 50) from the Jidai Kagami. This folio is highlighted, along with other late prints, in the small gallery within the Art Gallery. Other Meiji–era prints from the Carleton art collection are on view in the Gould Library Athaneum.The panel discussion “Reflections of Beauty” brings together Carleton experts of Japanese art and culture to explore myriad meanings of the Jidai Kagami. Katie Ryor, an expert in Asian art, is chair of the art and art history department; Jim Smith, Carleton’s art collection registrar, has deep knowledge of Japanese woodblock prints; and Katie Spalding, a specialist in Japanese literature, is the Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Japanese.
The Chikanobu show and catalog were produced by art history professor Bruce Coats of Scripps College, where the show was first exhibited. Carleton is the second stop for the exhibit, which will later travel to four other U.S. colleges and one Japanese venue.
The exhibit is funded by grants from the Blakemore Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies.
The Carleton College Art Gallery is open Monday through Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday from noon to 10 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, call Carleton Art Gallery curator Laurel Bradley at 507-646-4342.