MeissenーFacial Expression in Love

1. Monkey Orchestra

Meissen

This work was made in the middle of the 20th century, based on models dating back to the middle of the 18th century.

The original models were created by Johan Joachim Kändler, a modeler who joined the Meissen porcelain manufactory in 1731.

Around that time, a form of satire known as singerie—in which monkeys were used to poke fun at the stupidity of humans—was popular in France.

One of its leading exponents was Christophe Huet, who published a series of prints entitled “Singerie, or monkeys performing various human activities,” and Kändler is thought to have been inspired by Huet when creating these models.

The orchestra here comprises 22 pieces: monkeys playing keyed, stringed, and percussive instruments; a choir of monkeys; a monkey conductor; and a music stand.

The music stand features a miniature score of the German folk song “Wohlan, die Zeit ist gekommen! (Well, the time has come!)”

2. Chinese children

Meissen

In the 17th century, large quantities of porcelain made in the East were imported to Europe, where it found popularity among the nobility.

In its early years, the Meissen porcelain manufactory imitated these Eastern products—a stylistic trend known as Chinoiserie—and significant East Asian influence can be found in its works.

In time, this imitation of Eastern porcelain was combined with traditional Western design into an eclectic style, and its popularity boomed.

The two, porcelain bobblehead dolls before you depict Chinese children.

They are thought to be modeled on dolls created by modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler in the mid-18th century, when Chinoiserie was at its peak.

Both children wear leaf-like hats, and their kimonos are decorated with colorful oriental flower patterns.

The right legs of both children are raised high, as if they are about to step forward.

With their plump childlike faces and protruding bellies, they look adorable

3. Allegories of the Four Continents

Meissen

The Allegory of the Four Continents personifies as women what were thought to be the four continents of the world—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America—and became a popular subject in Western art from the 17th century onward.

In the middle of the 18th century, the Meissen porcelain manufactory received an order from Empress Elizabeth of Russia to create a series of works based on this allegory.

This work shown here is a 19th-century work based on that 18th-century original.

In this work, each of the four women is partnered with an animal that represents their continent: the horse for Europe; for Asia, the camel; a caiman—a type of crocodile—for America; and a lion for Africa.

Each of the four pieces is ornate and richly colored, but the clothing of the women and the objects that surround them are indicative of a Eurocentric point of view.

Europe features a globe, a book, a bust, and a palette—objects that signify a position of leadership when it comes to scholarship and the arts—while the armor and shield symbolize dominance in warfare.

Europe’s supremacy in all things is starkly underscored.

4. The four elements

Meissen

The “classical elements” are “earth,” “water,” “wind,” and “fire”—they are the four fundamental substances from which all of nature is constituted.

The elements are a common theme in classical Western art and are often depicted allegorically, using figures from the Greek myths.

Around 1741, the Meissen porcelain manufactory created a series of pitchers based on the theme of the classical elements, following designs by the German sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler, and presented them to the French court.

The two pitchers before you—depicting “wind” and “water” respectively—are modeled after those works.

The “wind” pitcher features the goddess Hera, accompanied by a peacock; Zephyr, the god of the West wind, bagpipes-playing putti, birds, and other wind-related motifs are also present.

The “water” pitcher is adorned by the Poseidon, god of the sea, and his minions: the half-horse half-fish hippocampi, the Nereids, a number of ships, and dolphins.

A combination of bonding and relief carvings was used to create both pitchers, and their dynamic forms, and diverse motifs have been shaped with great skill.

5. Table

Meissen

This porcelain table comprising a round tabletop and column supported by thee, short cabriole legs.

Encircled by a gold arabesque, an ornamental window in the center of the tabletop shows a group of four are enjoying a game of backgammon, depicted in bright colors.

The column is embellished with hand-sculpted flowers and small birds that look like goldfinches, glazed in chromatic colors.

In the 19th century, in the face of intensifying competition, the Meissen porcelain manufactory was forced to improve its technologies.

It began to follow the technologies and styles of its French rival, Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, and this change of path can be seen in the vivid azures and gold patterns of the tabletop.

In contrast, the elegant decorations of the column are in the Rococo style, and hark back to a time when Meissen was in its pomp.

This blending of contemporary French and Rococo provides a glimpse into Meissen’s search for a new style.

The scene depicted on the tabletop is based on a painting by the 18th-century French artist Nicolas Lancret entitled, “The Four Times of Day: Afternoon.”

The tabletop scene is back-to-front when compared to Lancret’s painting—perhaps indicating that the Meissen artist was working from a print reproduction.

6. Resting the chin on the hands

Taro Okamoto

Taro Okamoto declared that “art is an explosion.”

His spheres of creative activity encompassed painting, sculpture, monuments such as “Tower of the Sun,” glass, watches, neckties, and even furniture.

Okamoto disliked the fact that art was limited in its reach to a small circle of connoisseurs; he wished his works to be seen by the masses.

For this reason, he created works of public art, designed everyday objects, created art installations for film and theater, and actively sought to appear on television.

This chair is one of Okamoto’s furniture designs.

His goal was not to make a comfortable seat, but to create an artwork that could be placed in the home and also sat upon.

Although nominally a chair, the work’s circular backrest depicts a human face with eyes and nose, and its frame is organic in form—as such, it might accurately be described as a chair replete with the vitality of art.

7. Clown

Kotaro Migishi

Kotaro Migishi first became interested in clowns in 1926, when he saw a circus while on vacation in Shanghai.

Evidently impressed, he recorded the gorgeous sights he saw in prose poems.

But the flamboyance of the circus is nowhere to be seen in this work, replaced instead by a sense of sorrow; the clown stands alone and in silence, surrounded in darkness.

Migishi was influenced by the clowns of Georges Roualt; like the Frenchman, Migishi sought to uncover the interior nature hidden behind their comedic exteriors.

8. Drunk of my village

Rei Camoy

Rey Camoy is known for his portraits of Spaniards.

In 1971, he began living in a small Spanish village called Valdepeñas; he became friendly with the locals, who formed the inspiration for his lifelong themes of “the drunkard” and “the old lady.”

Indeed, Camoy received particular praise for the series of paintings entitled “The drunkard in my village” he showed as part of a solo exhibition in 1973, and they became his most famous works.

In this painting, the whitened hair and dark-red face of a drunkard emerges from a dark background.

He stands hand on his hips, his chest thrust out, as if showing off some badge of honor.

Camoy exhibited this painting at a solo exhibition in Paris in 1974, when it was entitled “Chocolate Medal.”

Perhaps the drunkard is a former war-hero who, after a few drinks, talks endlessly about his past exploits.

9. Prayer

Yasuo Kazuki

Yasuo Kazuki’s “Siberia Series” of paintings is based on his experiences as an internee in Siberia.

Having been mobilized to Manchuria during the Second World War, he was taken by Soviet forces in 1945 to the bitterly cold region of Siberia.

During his internment, whenever a fellow internee died, Kazuki would sketch their face in the corner of a piece of paper—but in the end, these drawings were confiscated by the Soviets.

He served two years of forced labor before returning to Japan.

The center of this painting shows a human face and hands painted in coarse black paint.

The flesh has fallen from his face, his eyes have hollowed, his cheekbones protrude, and his hands are joined in prayer.

It is closely related to another in the Siberia Series, entitled “Nehan (Nirvana).”

“Nehan” depicts many of his former fellow internees on a single canvas, but this painting, “Prayer,” focuses on just one of them.

In it, we can see Kazuki’s profound grief and sorrow for his former friends.

10. Two Bodhisattvas screen

Shiko Munakata

Shiko Munakata created his own artistic language: for the Japanese word for woodblock prints, he uses “banga” instead of “mokuhanga”; and instead of the standard word for Japanese art, “Nihonga,” he uses “yamatoga.”

The sequence of words in the Japanese title of the work—”Banda myoin honshi ryosatu—means “lots of plants,” “beautiful colors,” “Buddha,” and “Samantabhadra Bodhisattva and Manjushri Bodhisattva.”

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva represents Buddha’s reason, while Manjushri Bodhisattva represents Buddha’s wisdom.

This work is the only pair of folding screens that Munakata painted.

The left screen shows Samantabhadra Bodhisattva with green hair and purple dress; the right screen shows Manjushri Bodhisattva with blue hair and red dress.

Both Bodhisattvas are attended to by celestial maidens.

The background is filled with multicolored branches, leaves, and flowers, as well as a peacock and other creatures.

Munakata was adept at creating easy-to-understand icons from the sometimes impenetrable world of Buddhism.

In this work, too, he shows that the world we inhabit is permeated with the teachings of Buddha.

11. Prince of Lan Ling

Heizo Oki VII

This work features a costumed doll and large drums from “The Prince of Lan Ling,” a piece of classical Japanese song and dance.

Set in 6th century China, the song tells of Gao Changgong, better known as the Prince of Lan Ling of the Northern Qi.

According to legend, he possessed great physical beauty and, fearing that this would affect the morale of his soldiers, he took to wearing a mask of the dragon in battle.

The song and dance are often performed at Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture, and the costumes worn by the performers are extremely distinctive.

The Prince of Lan Ling wears a sleeveless ryoto poncho fringed with red and white hair, a gold obi belt adorned with red cords, and a form of long traditional Japanese clothing known as sashinuki hakama.

His gold mask has a hanging jaw and is adorned with a small dragon on top.

Behind the Prince of Lan Ling stand two large flame-decorated kaendaiko drums.

They serve to accentuate the imposing figure of the Prince of Lan Ling, who holds a drumstick as he dances.

12. Purple bouquet

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was one of the 20th century’s leading artists.

He is known for his many paintings inspired by his love for his first wife, Bella.

And for Chagall, a bouquet of flowers came to have a special meaning.

On July 7, 1915, on Chagall’s birthday, Bella celebrated his birthday by giving him a bouquet of flowers from the rowan tree.

The two married soon after, and a bouquet of flowers became for Chagall a symbol of love.

He often painted bouquets alongside scenes of his hometown of Vitebsk, Russia, or of embracing lovers.

A vase of purple flowers stands in the center of this painting.

The blue of the background represents the color of the sky and the sea in the south of France, where Chagall had an atelier.

A red donkey, a memory of his hometown, and a person, likely Bella, lie side-by-side in the bottom-left of the canvas.

Although his beloved Bella passed away during the Second World War, she lived on in his memory—and Chagall continued to paint her with artistic effects and colors that elicit great emotion.

13. David and Bathsheba, after Lucas Cranach

Pablo Picasso

The Old Testament story of David and Bathsheba has been depicted countless times in Western art.

Wearing a crown and holding a harp, the man in the upper part of the picture is David, King of Israel.

He looks down on a lady who is having her feet washed—this is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a soldier in David’s army.

After seeing this beautiful woman bathing, David lusted after her, courted her, and made her pregnant; and, in order to hide his misdeeds, he ultimately had Uriah killed.

His actions displeased God, who inflicted great suffering on David.

Here, the figures in the peripheries of the work exude an air of menace, as if hinting at the denouement of the story.

This work is one of a series of prints that Pablo Picasso created after paintings by the Renaissance artist, Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Distortion plays a key part in these prints.

Picasso has created decorative, caricature-like line drawings of figures clothed in Biblical attire, and the unique world he has created can be understood as either abstract or as classical.

14. Head of a girl

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani was a leading artist of the School of Paris.

Within the traditional portrait format, he developed his own unique style, characterized by well-defined noses, pupil-less eyes, and lengthened necks.

He sought to uncover the inner lives of his sitters.

His painting was informed by his sculpture.

Soon after arriving in Paris, Modigliani encountered the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, and began to fully immerse himself in sculpture.

Around this time, Modigliani was influenced by African masks and non-Western-European sculpture, and he incorporated their primitive, powerful forms into his artworks.

This bronze head is a cast of a stone sculpture Modigliani had recently created.

It features his characteristic pupil-less eyes and long nose and neck.

Modigliani’s foray into sculpture did not last long, both due to the difficulty of procuring materials, and due to the physical effort it demanded.

However, by drawing on his experiences in this artform, Modigliani founded a new mode of expression for 20th-century painting.

15. May

Léonard Foujita

Léonard Foujita is famed for his love of cats.

However, he also painted dogs, and in this work he has depicted a black poodle.

As the inscription shows, Foujita painted this work in Les Eyzies, in southwest France, in 1939.

This was his first visit to France for eight years, and he spent the summer in Les Eyzies, with his friend Genichiro Inokuma, due to the outbreak of the Second World War.

A mother dog lies in the center of the painting, while two small pups run and play beside her.

The painting is almost monochrome, and the painter has focused instead on accurately portraying the various textures—the hardness of the floor, for example, and the variations in the dogs’ fur.

While the mother attends watchfully to the unsteady steps of her pups, she also appears to have half a cautious eye on the viewer; perhaps her caution reflects Foujita’s own anxiety about the coming war.

16. Lion

Seiho Takeuchi

Seiho Takeuchi has powerfully captured the lion’s ferocity.

Imaginary lions known as “kara jishi” had been depicted in Japan since ancient times, but Takeuchi was the first Japanese to draw a real lion from life.

Takeuchi exhibited at the 1900 Paris World Expo, and traveled to Paris for the event.

During his sojourn, he visited a zoo in Belgium, and sketched the lions there with great enthusiasm.

After returning to Japan in 1901, he submitted pictures of a lion (shishi) to the “Shinko Bijutsuhin Tenrankai” exhibition, and astonished visitors with the realism of his works.

The work before you is one of the pictures Takeuchi submitted to the 1901 exhibition.

The lion’s head dominates the long, thin picture plane, with just the tip of its tail poking in from the bottom-right; the composition well suggests the immense size of the beast.

Takeuchi has drawn every piece of hair individually—on its mane and on its fur.

It is an interesting coincidence that in 1902—the year this painting was finished—Ueno Zoo acquired its first lion.

17. Cat-shaped Pottery

Emile Gallé

In addition to glass art, Emile Gallé also practiced a form of pottery known as “faience”—a tin-glazed pottery suitable for painted decoration.

He created wide-ranging faience works, including vases, decorative plates, candlestick holders, and animal-shaped ornaments—and their sheer variety reveals the richness of Gallé’s imagination and the depth of his inspiration.

Perhaps the most well-known of his faience pieces, are his cat-shaped fireplace ornaments.

Gallé is thought to have created the work before you while working as a design assistant to his father, Charles.

Records show it was titled “Japanese cat” and, for this reason, it is thought to have been modeled after Arita or Satsuma ware porcelain cats.

Gallé created several cat figurines with different designs.

This work features a bright yellow base color interspersed with indigo-and-white spots and hearts; the cat’s emerald-green glass eyes contribute to a cute, smiling design.

Simose Art Museum also owns a faience dog made by Gallé.

18. Dancer in a blue tutu

Henri Matisse

A dancer in a blue tutu sits on a bench. Drawn in thick black lines, her crossed legs are depicted with greater vigor than her upper body and give off a sense of immense power.

A vase filled with purple and yellow flowers stands beside her, adding color to the scene.

In 1941, at the age of 71, Henri Matisse underwent major surgery.

Resulting complications meant that he was frequently bedbound, but this by no means diluted his creative passions.

Around this time, Matisse predominantly created charcoal and pencil drawings that he could draw from his bed, rather than the more physically demanding oil painting.

Even when painting in oils, he gradually simplified the elements he included, and the lines and speed of his brushwork becomes more noticeable.

Matisse painted this work in the year after his surgery.

In contrast to the imposing figure of the dancer, he captures the texture of the tutu through vigorous, rhythmic brushwork, so bringing a sense of nimbleness and energy to the canvas.

19. Dicentra Spectabilis

Emile Gallé

Thought to have been created by Emile Gallé in his later years, this rare work is themed on the Asian bleeding heart flower—from its overall shape to the bold relief decoration on the front and the patterns engraved on the back.

Distinctive for its heart-shaped flowers, the Asian bleeding heart was often used by Emile Gallé in his designs, and the elaborateness of this vase’s design powerfully suggests just how taken he was by the flower’s unique ecology and lovely form.

Gallé died of leukemia on September 23, 1904, at the age of 58.

The following week, L’Illustration carried an obituary of Gallé together with a photograph of one of his Asian bleeding heart-themed vases.

The Shimose family called this work “The heart-shaped tear,” after the German name for the flower, and displayed it with great care in the middle of a large, altar-like cabinet made by Gallé.

20. Girl

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

A lone girl wears a lace hat, a white blouse, and red skirt, and she has a red ribbon in her long hair.

Holding a stick-like object, she looks at something outside the picture space.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was patronized by affluent Parisians, and frequently commissioned to paint their families, including their children.

Renoir was 44 when his eldest son Pierre was born in 1885, followed by Jean and Claude, and he had three sons in total.

He asked not only his own sons to model for him, but the children of his friends and neighbors, too.

In this gem of a painting, Renoir has captured the gentle features of the unnamed girl with great care.

The hat and clothes, in contrast, are depicted with swift brushstrokes—such that the girl appears to melt into the green of the background—while the white underground shows through in places as well.

21. Meadows at Bazincourt, Autumn

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was one of the central figures of Impressionism.

He resided in various small, country towns across France—such as Pontoise and Montfoucalt—before moving permanently in 1884 to Éragny, a small village on the banks of the River Epte, where he devoted himself to painting.

This oil painting depicts Bazincourt, a village that stands on the opposite bank of the Epte.

To the bottom of the painting, a female farm-hand can be seen gathering hay, while houses can be seen dotted in the distance.

In this tranquil rural scene, Pissarro captured various conditions, including the season, time of day, and the weather—the reddening leaves, for example, hint at the imminent autumn.

After moving to Éragny, Pissarro dabbled in pointillism, influenced by younger painters.

However, realizing that this technique prevented him from capturing the ever-changing forms of nature, and from expressing the emotion it inspired in him, he soon turned back to Impressionism.

The way the canvas is built up with dabs of paint harks back to his pointillist experiences.

22. Family

Henri Rousseau

In the 20th century, the art world began to recognize the artistic achievements of self-taught artists who had not received formal art education.

Known as “naïve art,” this type of art was pioneered by the Frenchman Henri Rousseau.

Rousseau long worked as a tax collector for the City of Paris—hence his nickname of “Le Douanier,” or “the custom’s officer”—and only started painting seriously in his 40s.

Thereafter, he portrayed Parisian cityscapes and tropical forests in a simple, flat style that was unconstrained by perspective, creating fantastical worlds in the process.

In this mysterious scene, Rousseau has depicted a family having a party in the forest.

Surrounded by greenery, the children hold flowers and the adults wineglasses, and they almost all face the viewer.

Rousseau lost his wife and seven children at a young age, and it may be this painting reveals his depth of feeling for the idea of the happy family.