Hello.

I would like to talk about our trip to Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts to see the special exhibition of "Paintings of Korea's Joseon Dynasty and Japan ~The Art of a Neighboring Kingdom that Inspired Sotatsu, Taiga and Jakuchu".
Sotatsu, Taiga and Jakuchu inspired by Korean paintings!
I did not know that! WOW.

As you see, Ms. Ishigaki and I,the imagination friends, were very excited about this field trip like elementary school kids.
Since I was too excited, I sent a text message to our boss that
"A field trip never ends until you go back to home".
I know it does not make any sense.

On the field trip day.

Utsunomiya (Tochigi Prefecture) is about an hour away from Tokyo by Shinkansen.
When we arrived in Utsunomiya was around lunchtime, so we decided to have famous Gyoza dumpling ( Utsunomiya is famous for Gyoza dumpling) for our lunch.
About 10 minutes taxi ride, we arrived to the museum.
Because it was a weekday, there were a few people in the museum.

It is a very luxurious time if you see all those art works at your own pace.

The Exhibition was organized in two divisions.
The first division was called "The essence of Korean paintings"
and it also has four different sections as

1.　The passage of Korean paintings based on SANSUI landscape
2.　Buddhist paintings
3.　A point of agreement between the industrial art and paintings
　　 based on the bird-and flower painting
4.　The beginning of folk art.

Well, because I have just a small knowledge for this field YET, what I could do was to see those Korean master pieces as putting on the artist whom I know such as...

"This is like Chikuden's SANSUI!"
Or

"Taiga's people were drawn carefully" (I see Taiga's people as doodles with charm)

Now go back to the subtitle of this exhibition:
The Art of a Neighboring Kingdom that Inspired Sotatsu, Taiga and Jakuchu.

Do you see how small knowledge and short memory I have?
But I went on and on.
At section two: Buddhist paintings

"Woooooooow, look at this gold leaf painting! How beautiful!".

In the famous subject of painting "The birth of Buddha", I found two white elephant in the corner and simpered.
Of course the design was marvelous.

Here is a quote from a prominent person.

"You do not need any explanation or knowledge when you see art works".

Ok, I do not need to think, just feel. I may be good at it at this point.

As I moved to section three and four, I found the starting points of Jakuchu's famous "Grapes" and Rosetsu's "Tiger and Dragon".

I have a Korean friend in NY. We met in an Art College in New York City,
we used to spend time to talk about many kind of art. And we are still close and talk about what we do over email. She is a very welcome friend.
In this summer I recommended her to check out a web site of the special exhibition in Tokyo National Museum;
"DUELING GENIUSES: THE GREATEST HIGHTLIGHT OF JAPANESE ARTISTS"

And she said to me that
"Those art works are very similar to my country of art, very nice"

Now I know, because her country of art has existed, my country of art was brought out.

I have lots of festinating unknown things of my neighbor country.

I will write about the second division next time.