Event
James McNeil Whistler Retrospective
September 13 2014(Sat) – November 16 2014(Sun)
http://www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionArchive/2014/405.html
Venue
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
http://www.momak.go.jp/English/
Access: Okazaki Enshoji-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8344,
Japan
Tel: 075-761-4111
Hours: 9:30 ~ 17:00/Tuesday ~ Thursday・
Weekend, national holiday（entry up to 30 minutes before closing.）
9:30 ~ 20:00/Friday
（entry up to 30 minutes before closing.）
Closed: Monday (Open on September 22 (Mon.), October 14 (Tue.) and November 4 (Tue.))
Description
Born in the city of Lowell, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was a representative painter and print artist in the latter part of the 19th century who based his activities in London while maintaining close ties with impressionist artists in Paris. Internationally acclaimed as a pioneering artist of Japonism, Whistler established his unique style, greatly inspired by Japanese art and crafts, which had produced a great sensation at world expositions in the western countries.
Whistler criticized the mainstream idea of art in those days, which regarded art as a mere medium of conveying history or teachings, and attempted to pursue the expressive power of paintings, specifically the pure, visual effects that can be found in such paintings. As a leader of Aestheticism, he emphasized the intrinsic value of art, expressing it as “art for art’s sake.” He produced works which valued harmony between color tones and composition, and eventually exerted a great influence on artists in the same period. Furthermore, he tried to define his own philosophy behind creating artworks, by utilizing music terminology such as “symphony” and “arrangement” in the titles of his paintings.
This exhibition introduces in chronological order the development process of Whistler’s artwork, ranging from his initial artistic career as a realist triggered by his encounter with the work of Gustave Courbet in Paris, to establishing his unique style of art as an aesthete painter, through the 2 main motifs he used in his paintings – portraits in the 1st section and landscape paintings in the 2nd section. In the 3rd section, we introduce Japonism, which was the most important element in the development of his artistic style, how it influenced his work and the masterpieces he achieved.
As the first large-scale retrospective exhibition held in Japan in 27 years, this exhibition features the whole gamut of Whistler’s works, including 130 oil and watercolor paintings, and prints gathered from the United States, Britain and France. It also includes reference materials and related works such as ukiyo-e prints that greatly influenced Whistler, whose charm thoroughly captivated Western art circles in the latter half of the 19th century.
