From September 1 to November 3, 2001 The Ruth and Sherman Lee Center for Japanese Art will host an exhibition of select masterworks of Japanese painting from the Lee Center's permanent collection, with loans from the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, and private collectors.

Ghost of Okiku, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), Hanging Scroll, ink and colors on silk. Lee Center for Japanese Art Permanent Collection, [Click for a larger image (20Kb), then use the Back command in your browser to return to this page]

The exhibition includes 24 paintings of the Edo period (1615-1868), which explore a favorite theme of juxtaposing the gorgeous and the grotesque, and the serious and the humorous. The fragile, ephemeral nature of beauty is heightened when viewed in the context of the beast, the unattractive, the rough, and the uncultured. Featured artists include masters such as Hokusai, Yoshitoshi, and Kawanabe Kyōsai, artists who all reveled in depicting the bizarre and unusual, in addition to painters such as Teisai Hokuba (1770-1844), whose exquisite renderings of beauties provide a foil for the show's beasts.

This delightful and entertaining exhibition explores some of the various ways in which the cultured audiences of Edo Japan, hungry for the novel, the witty, and the sophisticated, interpreted images of beauty and beauties, by coupling them with depictions of beasts and beastliness, whether in appearance, manner, or behavior.