Japan in Roman palaces, between doodles and collecting.
Japanese art in a Roman palazzo, where one would expect to see huge, muscle-bound heroic figures hanging from the ceiling frescoes, is somewhat reminiscent of Zen meditation amidst the fireworks of a New Year's Eve party. It is an almost Zenonian paradox that will be repeated twice in Rome this year: at Palazzo Braschi with the exhibition UKIYOE. Il Mondo fluttuante. Visioni dal Giappone (UKIYOE. The Floating World. Visions from Japan), which closed in June, and at the Museo Napoleonico with Giuseppe Primoli e il fascino dell'Oriente (Giuseppe Primoli and the Fascination of the Orient), which was on show until the beginning of September. Both exhibitions succeed in telling the story of a little-known but highly fascinating aspect of Italian collecting. Japan, or rather the idea of telling the story of Japan in a Mediterranean language, was a very creative choice.
The two exhibitions are part of a series of cultural events taking place in various cities (Turin, Florence, Milan, etc.) that focus on the collection of Japanese art in Italy between the 19th and 20th centuries in the context of "the different attitudes of European society towards everything that comes from afar", as Enrico Colle, director of the Museo Stibbert in Florence and organizer of one of the many events, explains. He adds that "non-European artifacts in the interiors of European elites are not only signs of cosmopolitanism and universalism but also stages of our cultural decentralization."
Italy's interest in Japanese culture, which has always been strong, was revived in 2016 to mark the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Italy. Relations between the two countries began in the second half of the 19th century, as always for commercial reasons, when the Lombardy silk industry was looking for cheap silkworms that were not affected by Pebrina disease. The exhibition reflects the twentieth century, the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis, technological innovation and the caricatures of the seventies and eighties, Kenzo Tange and Patty Pravo as geisha at the Sanremo Festival in 1984.
It must also be said that Italy and Japan have had a similar history since the Second World War: the rural past, the earthquakes, the economic boom triggered largely by American support, the dominance of the automotive sector, the long economic recession that began in the 1990s, the national debt. Today, Italian-Japanese relations must be seen above all in the context of the G7/G20 and the European Union's increasing orientation towards the Indo-Pacific region.
But back to us. The curators of the aforementioned events in Rome - Rossella Menegazzo (Palazzo Braschi), Barbara Drudi, and Valeria Petitto (Museo Napoleonico) - seem unable to resist the allure of Baroque splendor, even though they come from very different academic backgrounds. The result is an unusual and, therefore, interesting juxtaposition of two contrasting, oxymoronic artistic traditions.
Let me explain. There is something dystopian about visiting an art museum in Tokyo or Kyoto. You always start on the top floor and end up on the first floor, on your way to the exit. Moreover, there are virtually no permanent collections, just as there are no pictorial supports in this tradition that have anything to do with the structure of the building or its solidity; no plaster for the frescoes, no cypress or cherry wood panels. Instead, over the centuries, materials such as rice paper or silk have been preferred. From time to time, screens, kakemono paintings, scrolls with tales of wandering monks, kimonos, swords, and samurai armor were replaced by similar objects with different decorative themes. The motifs are generally related to the beauty of nature: the sinuous stems and leaves of plants in a pond, the graceful line of the neck and the plumage of certain birds, the elegance of the grazing deer of Nara, the trunks of trees in a forest, reminiscent of ancient Chinese ideograms due to the blackness of the ink. On the walls and in the display cases of the museums, a minimalist approach is taken: you see only a few things displayed at a certain distance from each other to emphasize their essential nature. There is no clutter, no overlap. No decorative excess. What counts in Japanese aesthetics is precisely the idea of emptiness that "fills," as well as concepts such as time, metaphor, and hidden, symbolic meaning, as Gabriele Suma explains in his blog Storia in poltrona:
"The void becomes the fabric that holds the meanings, like an invisible spider's web that carries the trapped particles of matter. […] Thus beauty, understood as absolute perfection, is what surrounds us and not the object itself that we have before our eyes. In the oldest tradition of Japanese art, the subjects are surrounded by colorful or abstract backgrounds; they are immersed in the universe, as if they are aware that the looming background surrounds them. The background is a corner of infinity; it represents the universe and it is full of life. Beauty is expressed with sobriety, focusing on the detail, the fragility of the chosen medium, or the celebration of simple moments of everyday life extrapolated from the passing of time. Rossella Menegazzo, an expert in Japanese art history and culture at the University of Milan, explains: "One characteristic that defines Japanese art, Japanese craftsmanship, and Japanese design and make them instantly recognizable is simplicity. A simplicity that is expressed in the essentiality of form, in the economy of materials, in the respect for the imperfections of nature, and in the attention to the smallest details. It is a concept of simplicity far removed from the rationality that has characterized Western modernism because it has its origins, above all, in the animist and Shintoist thought that underlies the whole of Japanese culture, a concept in which spatial emptiness ("ma") implies the potential presence of the divine. This original idea, closely linked to the power of natural events that constantly shape the life of the archipelago and its inhabitants, was complemented in the 13th century by Buddhist thought from China, particularly Zen, which introduced another concept linked to emptiness ("ku"), for which "emptying becomes as important as filling".
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, 1830-31
Nothing is eternal and immutable because the world we live in is a world of change, a fleeting reality made up of pleasures and fashions, where everything is constantly changing. The idea of beauty that is not permanent is also conveyed by the famous Sakura flower, which, for us in the Western world, is about the only thing that comes to mind when we think of Japan. Toyomune Minamoto, a professor at Kyoto University, told a conference in Tokyo in 1968: "When we look at things, we do not perceive them as substance, but as images free from any sense of space. In other words, we treat things as idealized abstract forms without a sense of space.
Relations with Japan began in Rome with the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier, who in 1548 wrote a letter "to his companions living in Rome" in which he provided information about Japan and its customs based on the report of the Portuguese explorer Jorge Àlvarez. Incidentally, it was the Jesuit himself who was the first to missionize the Land of the Rising Sun. At that time, however, mutual aesthetic influence was still a long way off. The emperors lived in Rome, no one has forgotten that, not even the popes. Since then, the idea of beauty has coincided with the idea of eternity; in this city, art was created in places of representation and was always an expression of power. Every lord and master who ruled the Urbe over the centuries wished that this power would never end. To express this desire, over the centuries, painting techniques such as fresco painting and, in general, materials that were meant to last were chosen. It was Octavian Augustus who taught us that there is nothing more eternal than limestone. Ipse dixit: "I have found a city of bricks, I give it back to you in marble".
The popes of the Middle Ages maintained this view. They covered their churches with the very stones that had immortalized the glory of the Caesars. In the course of time, the eternity that one breathes in Rome has been transformed into something more complex, which has to do with the passing of time and the nature of man himself. The glimpses tell us of distant eras, many and varied. Memories of great stories, popular anecdotes, songs, and natural disasters have been superimposed on so many centuries and so few square meters. Amazingly, all of this can be summed up in a single glance, in a single moment - precisely carved in marble. An impression often found in the diaries of 18th and 19th-century travelers. I would like to quote the words of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt: "Rome, a chaos and a universe of stone, an overcrowding, a mixing, a confusion, a superimposition of houses, palaces, churches, a forest of architecture, where the tops of bell towers, domes, columns, statues, coats of arms of ruins, from the tops of obelisks, bronze Caesars, swords of black angels against the sky. "In this context, the only traces that might remind us from a distance of the idea of a floating world are the various memento mori scattered around the churches. They remind us that life ends sooner or later. One of them is the tomb of Pope Alexander VII Chigi by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in St. Peter's Basilica. A firework of green and pink Sicilian jasper, decorated with a huge bronze skeleton swinging an hourglass. The tomb expresses transience - for a change - in the immortal language of marble. It has nothing to do with the blossoming of the cherry trees.
To return to ukiyo-e, 150 works by 30 different artists were concentrated in the few rooms of the exhibition at Palazzo Braschi, almost more than I have ever seen in Japanese museums. The exhibition consisted of beautiful woodblock prints showing groups of geishas chatting in courtyards, their hair styled elaborately; courtesans strolling on red pillars in colorful kimonos; vassals playing go - an ancient Chinese game similar to chess; strange Kabuki theatre characters reminiscent of 1970s cartoons; sumo wrestlers; men and women washing in public baths; young girls picking persimmons, playing with dogs and cats or standing in the snow with parasols; and, of course, Mount Fuji at sunset. In the West, the most famous work is certainly The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Master Hokusai. Particularly popular in the Edo period (1603-1868), these illustrations capture the charm of the changing or rather growing urban societies in the still great Japanese cities of Edo (now Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto.
The graceful everyday scenes, often crowded with figures, were created as reliefs on woodblocks. Section by section, the exhibition took visitors on a journey through the Japanese arts: painting, calligraphy, music, dance, and Kabuki theater (somewhat reminiscent of the Commedia dell'Arte). Then comes a description of the pleasure districts, luxury, games, and entertainment, ending with old Edo and the most representative places in Japan.
Utagawa Kunisada, The Hour of The Sheep, Eighth Hour of the Day, 19th century
The protagonists of these paintings are often women who are portrayed through their femininity but also through their talents, such as music, calligraphy, painting, strategy, or board games. These were all arts that defined a cultured person in Chinese culture, which had migrated to Japan along with Buddhism. The spread of this knowledge among women testifies to their access to knowledge.
The works come from two important Italian collections from the period of Japonism - the enthusiasm for all things Japanese and Oriental - which experienced a real boom in Europe after the Paris Exposition of 1878: the collection of the engraver Edoardo Chiossone in Genoa and the one of sculptor Vincenzo Ragusa, now in the Museo della Civiltà in Rome. At the end of the 19th century, these two Italian artists had an experience that was unusual for the time: they were invited to Japan by the government as foreign advisors to train young talents in the new printmaking and art schools. During their years as guests in the Land of the Rising Sun, they became collectors and helped build two of the most important collections of Oriental art in Italy.
It felt like more than 150 paintings were hanging on the walls of Palazzo Braschi, concentrated in the few rooms set aside for the exhibition and seemingly separated only by their frames. Every centimeter of the available space was used; at least, that was the impression. As if that were not enough, some of the most famous ukiyo-e were reproduced in large format on fabric and adorned the upper part of the walls or the passageways between the rooms. The idea was to evoke the traditional Noren curtains, the fabric partitions used mainly in shops and restaurants, with the company's name written on them. The result is a triumph of Roman exuberance, of overlapping images - if not in reality, then in the impressions they evoke - of colors, of curved and elegant lines. Kimonos, mirrors, fans, and other small objects typical of the period enriched the exhibition. There was nothing concise or minimalist about the design of the exhibition. Instead, it was a seemingly colorful and wonderful jumble that evoked the cheerful bustle of an Oriental market, as well as the Roman opulence of a 17th-century fresco by Pietro da Cortona. Incredibly, I was reminded of J.W. Goethe's description of Rome in his "Description of Rome". Goethe's description of Rome in his Italian Journey: "One walks or stands, and panoramas of every kind and variety appear, palaces and ruins, gardens and deserts, wide horizons and narrow alleys, huts, stables, triumphal arches, and columns, often so densely packed that one could draw them on a single sheet. It would take a thousand chisels to describe them, why a single pencil? And in the evening, you are tired and exhausted from so much seeing and marveling.”
Kakemono with Blooming Branches, Museo Napoleonico, Rome.
The atmosphere is even more Roman in the Museo Napoleonico, the palace of Count Giuseppe Napoleone Primoli, known to his friends as Gégé, a 19th-century aristocrat descended from the Bonaparte family on his mother's side, hence the grandiose name of his museum. Count Primoli was a fin de siècle figure: old-fashioned, with Roman wit and French taste, a cultivated traveler who enjoyed the company of artists, poets, and intellectuals, elegant and wonderfully decadent. He loved to dress up as an Indian prince at parties and immortalized himself and his chic friends - also dressed as unlikely Orientals - at society balls, carnivals, or tableaux vivants, which they all loved to invent according to the fashion of the time. His photographs and those of his brother Luigi have left us unique images, such as the merchants' shops in the niches of the Teatro Marcello, the fight between Buffalo Bill and the Maremma cowboys in the Prati di Castello, the flooded Via Ostiense or the Temple of the Victorious Hercules, and many others that belong to the context of the vanished Rome, i.e. of districts and corners of the Eternal City that no longer exist.
The exhibition at the Museo Napoleonico focuses on the Primoli family's relationship with the Orient, particularly that of Giuseppe and Luigi, and on the various souvenirs they brought back from their exotic travels or acquired from important collectors or at simple Parisian markets. An important exhibit is the beautiful silk fan that the impressionist Giuseppe De Nittis painted in watercolors for Matilde Bonaparte around 1880, depicting a classic motif of Japanese art: the descent of the wild geese to Katata. An absolute symbol of Japonisme, i.e. a work that is not original but imitates Japanese taste while obeying the dictates of European aesthetics.
The house itself, i.e., the rooms that now house the museum - apart from the busts of the various Napoleonids - are filled with precious artifacts, including the embroidered dancers of Pauline Bonaparte (the maternal great-aunt of the Count and wife of Camillo Borghese, the man who sold the eponymous collection of ancient statues to his brother-in-law, the founder of the First Empire), the curious plaster cast of one of Pauline's breasts, possibly part of a study for the famous statue of Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix by Antonio Canova, and of course a series of murals of the various blessed ladies of the family (Aunt Matilda, Grandmother Zenaide, etc. At the heart of the exhibition are 14 recently restored kakemonos. Sophisticated vertical scrolls made of paper or fabric (mostly silk), which were hung on the walls or rather in specific places in the house (niches) dedicated to them. It is precisely this concept that is taken up in the exhibition because, in kakemono, they are concentrated in a specific place dedicated to them. Of course, they are all shown together, almost attached to each other, creating the effect of an enchanting, imaginative superimposition of shapes and colors, all Roman, which has nothing to do with Japanese sobriety.
Kakemono with bird on a leafy branch with fruits, Museo Napoleonico, Rome.
The subject depicted can be a picture or calligraphy. The images in the Primoli collection depict flowers and birds, a traditional theme in Japanese art. In the land of the rising sun, these vertical silk paintings are not on permanent display, but only on special occasions or when the seasons change. They still play a special role during the tea ceremony, i.e., they determine the topic of conversation during the ritual (e.g., spring). The examples in the Primoli Collection are probably not originals, but copies made in a Parisian workshop at the end of the 19th century in the style of Japonisme. They are coveted works that depict intertwined cherry branches, pink and blue flowers losing their petals in the wind, owls, swimming ducks, and flying birds. Count Primoli used them as a guest book, which was quite extravagant. Scribbles, autographs, and all sorts of jokes from important personalities of the time can be found in the margins and the blank spaces. French intellectuals who frequented the Parisian salon of Mathilde Bonaparte, such as Émile Zola, Paul Claudel, Paul Valery, Pierre Loti, Anatole France, Guy de Maupassant, as well as representatives of the various European royal families, such as Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. The Italians include Eleonora Duse, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Giovanni Verga, Giosuè Carducci, Matilde Serao, Giuseppe Garibaldi and even Benito Mussolini. The scribbles that Gègè asked his guests to make around the paintings are as harmonious as the paintings themselves. Sometimes they are even funny. In the kakemono of an evening dedicated to Duse, it is Primoli himself who introduces the doodling ritual by commenting on the famous actress' performance. Among the painted stalks of what appears to be a pond plant, one can read: "Juliet makes Romeo." Further up is a comment by the playwright Marco Praga, which seems to come from the beak of a flying bird: "In love with Duse". A little further down, Gabriele D'Annunzio himself replies: "I protest against perfidy". Mussolini's signature, on the other hand, looks like that of a fifth grader. It was added after the Count's death at the request of the museum's director, Diego Angeli.
In summary, the effect was exciting in both cases. Unusual. Original. Climbing the grand staircase of a palace and finding yourself in an entirely Roman Orient was hilarious, as was getting lost in the scribblings, flowers, and aristocratic evenings of the Belle Epoque.
Those wishing to delve deeper into the subject can do so in Milan, where the ukiyo-e exhibition The Spirit of Japan: An Immersive Art Experience (Scalo Farini) is on display until September 30, or in Florence, where the exhibition Yōkai. Mostri, Spiriti e altre inquietudini nelle Stampe Giapponesi (Museo degli Innocenti). As someone (Anonymous) said: “Discovering Japan is like stringing a string of pearls across the ocean.
Original version of the Italian online magazine Minima&Moralia:
Il Giappone nei palazzi romani tra scarabocchi e collezionismo | minima&moralia
