"This show is an extremely rewarding kind of free-for-all, with Rosanjin being especially adept at conflating aspects of different styles." ROBERTA SMITH
4 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now
Kitaoji Rosanjin’s graceful pottery; a dual show of Martin Wong and Aaron Gilbert paintings; the group exhibition “Latinx Abstract”; and Hou Zichao’s pixelized landscapes.
April 21, 2021
ROBERTA SMITH
‘Tradition Redefined: Rosanjin and His Rivals’
Through May 5. Joan B. Mirviss Ltd., 39 East 78th Street, Manhattan. 212 799-4021; mirviss.com.
The polymathic Kitaoji Rosanjin (1893-1959) — widely known as Rosanjin — was arguably the greatest Japanese potter of the 20th century. He was also a painter, engraver, lacquer artist and a master of calligraphy, as well as an antiques dealer and restaurateur who served his guests on tableware he made himself. In 1954, he traveled to the United States for an exhibition of over 200 works at the Museum of Modern Art (which has seven in its collection) and then on to Europe where he met Picasso and Chagall. In 1955, he was selected in Japan to be a Living National Treasure for his mastery of Oribe ware. But he refused it, miffed that his former apprentice Arakawa Toyozo had already been so designated, for Shino ceramics.
“Tradition Redefined: Rosanjin and his Rivals,” is thus an aptly titled exhibition. It presents some 30 works by the irascible artist and another 14 by six eminent potters with whom he maintained often prickly friendships. Together they helped bring the old styles of Japanese pottery into the 20th century, researching and experimenting with clays and glazes while ferreting out the ruins of ancient kiln sites for shards. Arakawa — the first to replicate such late 16th-century, Momoyama period styles as Oribe and Shino — is represented here by a classic Shino-type tea bowl, straight-sided, thick-walled, with a rounded lip and touches of iron oxide beneath a white glaze. Rosanjin’s version is comparatively anemic in form but flamboyant with the orange tones.
This show is an extremely rewarding kind of free-for-all, with Rosanjin being especially adept at conflating aspects of different styles. He evokes traditional blue and white porcelains, but with a large vase sparsely scrawled with akimbo calligraphy. He decorates an Oribe scalloped platter, glazed a traditional deep green, with a subtly loose grid of incised lines seemingly set aflutter by wind or waves. Similar combed lines randomly crisscross the shoulders of two vessels that resemble large storage jars. There is something postmodern about the liberties Rosanjin took, and, going by this show, he may not have been alone. ROBERTA SMITH
