「かたち」をめぐる日本美術史の可能性―西洋美術史からの視点―

機関リポジトリ Web Site

書誌事項

タイトル別名
  • The Potential of Katachi [Form] in the History of Japanese Art: Thoughts from a History of Western Art Viewpoint
  • 「 カ タチ 」 オ メグル ニホン ビジュツシ ノ カノウセイ : セイヨウ ビジュツシ カラ ノ シテン

この論文をさがす

抄録

I was a coordinator at the International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property “Reconsidering ‘Form’: Towards a More Open Discussion” held in January 2014, and was extremely stimulated by my interactions there with scholars from outside the field of art history. In a closed environment where research has become overly specialized and one’s focus turns to the narrowest of subjects, I felt that this symposium experimented with ventilating this compartmentalized research through debate with researchers from other fields. The results from such cross-disciplinary exchange are not inconsiderable. Thus I thought to propose one possibility in the study of the history of Japanese art from the viewpoint of the study of Western art, which I conceived after this symposium. Erwin Panofsky’s iconology study set a new course from the use of conventional stylistic analysis in the history of Western art, but it is less well known that, in fact, Panofsky’s theory was basically indebted to Aby Warburg’s crossdisciplinary research methods. Warburg utilized a massive amount of historical material and endeavored to decipher an artwork from a certain viewpoint. Amongst his methods, his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne was intended to measure the bearings of art history. And yet, even after filling 63 panels with many photos and cuttings from advertisements and magazines, he left it unfinished, without explanation. Because there was no explanation, the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne became a richly suggestive visual tool, and continues to greatly stimulating scholars today as an alternative model for art historical thought. Warburg’s own thoughts on the Bilderatlas were diverse, and he succeeded in formulating the concept of Pathosformel out of the fact that ancient human body expression lives on, undying, through the ages. I also think that this Pathosformel concept can be applied to the study of the history of Japanese art. The symposium presentation made by waka researcher Watanabe Yasuaki made me realize that the standard 5-7-5-7-7 form of the waka poem both bears the emotions of the Japanese people, as well as continuing on, unflaggingly, from antiquity to today. Indeed, because waka have served since antiquity as the shared cultural memory of Japan’s educated classes, then surely when such people face a painting, even across the eras, it would evoke in them their own waka verse. In the kana preface to the Kokinwakashû imperial waka anthology, Ki no Tsurayuki pronounced the following secret to the creation of waka, to paraphrase, “The human heart is the seed of the Yamato poem, which grows into myriad words.” While in the West inspiration is said to come from the heavens, in Japan it is found in the human heart. Waka was clearly recognized as a human-centric art at the beginning of the 10th century. And indeed, this philosophy can also become an important key when considering Japanese art. While waka and Japanese art are already being researched in the sub-field of uta-e, a type of painting with poems rendered in calligraphic form within the painting, there is yet to be a systematic cross-disciplinary study between literature and the visual arts. While iconographic research on waka lies concealed within the genre themes of Japanese art, it is probably still impossible for scholars from the fields of Japanese literature and art history to conduct crossdisciplinary, joint research. In that regard the NRICPT can play a major role as the locus for such research. I anticipate a bud sprouting from such cross-disciplinary studies in Tokyo from the seeds sown by Warburg’s research model.

収録刊行物

  • 美術研究

    美術研究 (415), 32-42, 2015-03-20

    東京 : 国立文化財機構東京文化財研究所

詳細情報 詳細情報について

問題の指摘

ページトップへ