| Details | In person: Linda Hoaglund, director
View the trailer Partly filmed in the Sackler Gallery, Linda Hoaglund’s documentary reveals the pivotal role Japanese artists of the Edo era (1603–1868) played in setting the stage for the “modern art” movement in the West. During the Edo era, while a pacified Japan isolated itself from the world, audacious Japanese artists innovated stylization, abstraction, minimalism, surrealism, geometric composition and the illusion of 3D. Their elegant originality is most striking in images of the natural world depicted on folding screens and scrolls by Sotatsu, Korin, Okyo, Rosetsu, Shohaku, and many others who left their art unsigned. To capture the dynamism, scale, and meticulous details of the art, Japan’s master cinematographer Kasamatsu Norimichi used a cutting-edge 4K Sony camera to film two hundred works of art in museums and private collections across the United States and Japan. He also visited remote temples and shrines and filmed bamboo groves, misted valleys, and churning waves that inspired these artists centuries ago. Curators (including James Ulak, who recently retired as the Freer and Sackler’s curator of Japanese art), restorers, collectors, and scholars provide insights into the mesmerizing, prescient visions of these artists. (Dir.: Linda Hoaglund, United States/Japan, 2019, 83 min., DCP, English and Japanese with English subtitles) |
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