Event
Rimpa 2015 Celebrating 400 Years of the Rimpa School The Raku lineage and the legacy of its Hon’ami and Ogata family ties
Mar 7, 2015(Sat) – Aug 2, 2015(Sun)
Admission: Adults ¥900
Student Concessions: university ¥700 high school ¥400
Under junior high free admission
http://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/museum/exhibition/index.html
Venue
Raku Museum
http://www.raku-yaki.or.jp/e/
Access: 84 Aburanokôji Nakadachi-uri agaru, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto,
602-0923, Japan
Tel: 075-414-0304
Hours: 10：00 ~ 16：30
（entry up to 30 minutes before closing.）
Closed: Monday (Open: if the Monday is a national holiday)
Description
The Raku tradition has been transmitted over 450 years since when Raku Chôjirô set its fundamentals at the founding years. However the Raku tradition is not what Chôjirô’s descendants merely accepted to defend but to be challenged and be innovated in order for them to create new expressions in their own right.
Spurred by the ideal advocated by Sen Rikyû, Raku Chôjirô created teabowl with decorative elements as well as any stylistic variation kept at their minimum and restraint to enhance the artless beauty. All the Raku generations thereafter took over the essence inherited from Chôjirô to challenge themselves to find their own creative approach.
The Rimpa School on the other hand expanded the decorative dimension.
To respond to an impact from this artistic trend, Raku generations gradually started taking their steps towards embracing decorativeness in realization of teabowl even if essentially being loyal to their aesthetic stance for non-decoration. It is to seek after the decorative possibilities allowed within the realm wherein the essential core set by the tradition should be protected and respected in the first place. It is to struggle in the pendulum between `restraint’ and `freedom’ within a decorative boundary choosing either to step beyond or to stay within.
This exhibition showcases how Raku generations, upon a legacy from Chôjirô’s ideal of non-decoration, respectively and differently dealt with `the Embracing of Decoration’.
Raku Dônyû III inherited a free creative spirit from Hon’ami Kôetsu, the founder of the Rimpa School, with whom he had a close friendship.
The fourth generation, Raku Ichinyû, applied motifs in primitive manner.
While his son Sônyû V explored a three-colour glazing though limited to such vessels as food bowl and mukôzuke dish.
Later on, Raku Kakunyû XIV harmonized the traditional with the modern.
The current head Kichizaemon dared his diversified decorative expressions, which could be interpreted as an exponent of the living Rimpa School.
