The Real Thing

A gathering of ultimately evanescent works

by Robin Rice

Even under glass, original works on paper trump digital reproductions. This truism is brought to mind by the 18th-century brush paintings of Ike Taiga and his wife, Tokuyama Gyokuran, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The artist's hand records its kinetic journey with an immediacy that can't be fully experienced through a catalogue, not even one as fine as the PMA's. Print only hints at the phenomenology of velvety paper saturated or dry brushed with ink and, in the case of Taiga, on occasion finger-painted, even gouged with the artist's fingernails.

Gyokuran's paintings, such as the six-panel screen depicting oversize Plants, are graceful, assured and balanced, but she is not as adventurous as the more prolific and protean Taiga. He developed many styles, often building pattern masses with stabbing brush strokes or finger markings that will remind many viewers of Pointillism. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes deliberately ungainly, Taiga's work is not always "beautiful," but it is immediate and vivid.

A precocious student, Taiga memorized Confucian texts at an early age. He was a professional fan painter by 15, but his artistic studies began and ended with calligraphy. In that field alone, his range is astonishing.

One might imagine that for Westerners, writings in an unfamiliar orthography would command scant attention; but as Mark di Suvero, sculptor of the new red Iroquois on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, aptly observed in a recent address to the Fairmount Park Art Association there is "a resonance of forms behind all these [ideographic] symbols that ... goes way beyond the human being."

Di Suvero grew up in China. His work, like Taiga's and Gyokuran's, reflects Chinese culture. Japanese artists of their day were obsessed with Chinese literature and art. We call it the "Chinese Literati" style. The Japanese call it nanga. Taiga's monumental Landscape with Pavilions (painted on gold paper, unique in the nanga style), is one of two Japanese National Treasures in the PMA show.

The galleries are intentionally dimmed, as light fades sumi ink. A gathering of these ultimately evanescent works may never come here again, so please take advantage of the closing days of this extraordinary show.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush

Philadelphia Museum of Art26th and the ParkwayThrough July 22215-763-8100