Arts and Crafts

Today I went to see the Life and Art: Arts & Crafts from Morris to Mingei exhibition at the Tokyo City Museum in Ueno. I met up with my friend Naoko. I met Naoko in Australia when I was studying homoeopathy and we became dear friends. Since I have come to Japan we seem to have trouble actually meeting up all that time but whenever we do it is wonderful. It is so nice to spend time with someone I actually know well. Naoko lives in Yokohama, which is on the opposite side of Tokyo from Saitama and hence we are pretty far away from one another.

I received tickets to the exhibition from my Japanese teacher so we got in for free, yay! The exhibition was really well put together. There was some explanation in English and more in Japanese but more than this it was the way it was put together that gave a real sense of the development of the movement itself. I have seen a couple of Arts & Crafts Movement exhibitions in Australia but never managed to grasp the philosophical meaning of their work. It just seemed pretty. This exhibition really emphasised the artists vision of nature and a kind of romantic reaction to industrialisation. In looking at the exhibition from this point of view though, I have to say that I lost a lot of my admiration for their work.

Arts & Crafts is mostly just that, arts and crafts which are functional. Furniture, tapestries, tableware, wallpapers, books, clothing, stained glass windows, vases, crockery etc. One of the first things that struck me was the obvious expense of the objects, even when they were made. They were clearly not accessible to most people and their were many photos of the expensive manners for which large interior design commissions were created. There is a profound opposition in the works to the idea of modernity. Human figures are draped in high feudal dress robes, nature is exhalted and in one particular series of works on the four seasons there was an intensely romanticised image of country peasant life. One gets the impression that in the face of the horrors of late nineteenth century industrialisation the artists could conceptualise of little else than a flight into a mythic, idyllic past. There are many references to mythology in the works, such as to the myth of St. George and the dragon. The irony is that only the winners in the industrial revolution could possibly have been able to afford these pieces.

The incredible beauty of many of the works is seen in the roundness of lines and the use of colour. The salute to nature is also infectious. There is one tapestry in the exhibition of a woodland scene filled with animals which bears a motto commanding to gaze upon nature with wonder and not to interfere. This beautiful idealism is certainly one of the admirable qualities of this body of work. I'm not sure how to describe the colours. There is a lot of use of bright colour as well as pastel greens and blues in some of the nature scenes.

An interesting feature of this exhibition was the connection made to the Mingei crafts movement in Japan which was directly influenced by Arts & Crafts. These pieces were predominantly traditional Japanese in style with a nuance of Arts & Crafts style. If they had not been presented as part of the exhibition I would never have made the connection. Nevertheless, I didn't realise that Arts & Crafts had such a wide influence. There was a section on Arts & Crafts influence in Europe too. I particularly liked some of the German pieces which included many posters. There seemed to be a slightly more Art Deco feeling to the German stuff where the English work is overwhelmingly Art Nouveau.

This analysis is based entirely on my own feelings. It may not be accurate historically.

After the exhibition we went to Koenji and had dinner at Yoyo-san's delicious vegetarian cafe Vege Shokudou (べじ食堂）. Then we had coffee at this cool coffee bar I have wanted to visit for ages. Once again my love of Koenji has been reaffirmed!