Overview

The Japanese Art Society of America (JASA) promotes the study and appreciation of Japanese art

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

. Founded in 1973 as the Ukiyo-e Society of America by collectors of Japanese prints

Woodblock printing in Japan

Woodblock printing in Japan is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type, but was only...

, the Society's mission has expanded to include related fields of Japanese art.

Through its annual lectures, seminars and other events, the Society provides a dynamic forum in which members can exchange ideas and experiences with experts about traditional and contemporary arts of Japan.

The Society also sponsors exhibitions, such as Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860, which was shown at Asia Society in New York City in Spring 2008.

The society publishes a quarterly newsletter for members as well as an annual journal, Impressions. (ISSN 1095-2136) Impressions was the recipient of the 2009 Donald Keene Prize for the Promotion of Japanese Culture, awarded by the Donald Keene

Donald Keene

Donald Lawrence Keene is a Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene was University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years...

 Center, Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

JASA entered its fourth decade under the direction of Joan Baekeland, well known in the New York art world, as president, and the long-time Chicago collector George Mann as vice president. The current president is Dr. Susan Peters. It is an organization that remains a unique and congenial gathering place—actual or virtual—for collectors, scholars, dealers and Japanophiles. Today, JASA has some 400 members from countries around the world, including Japan.

History

While the Society now addresses all aspects of Japanese art and culture, it traces its origins to a small group of ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

 print collectors in and around New York City in 1973, at a time when Parke-Bernet Galleries (later to merge with Sotheby’s) had begun to develop a market for Japanese art. The first major auction was the 1969 sale of the Blanche McFetridge estate, consisting of ukiyo-e prints once owned by Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...

, followed by the 1972 sale of the estate of Hans Popper (1904–1971), a Viennese businessman who spent time working in Japan. His collection included masterpieces by Harunobu, Utamaro

Utamaro

was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints . His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga...

, Sharaku

Sharaku

is widely considered to be one of the great masters of the woodblock printing in Japan. Little is known of him, besides his ukiyo-e prints; neither his true name nor the dates of his birth or death are known with any certainty...

 and Hokusai

Hokusai

was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting...

, and the sale attracted many of the great collectors and dealers of the era, including Richard Pillsbury Gale

Richard Pillsbury Gale

Richard Pillsbury Gale was a U.S. Representative from Minnesota; born in Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota; attended the public schools of Minneapolis, The Blake School at Hopkins, Minnesota, Minnesota Farm School, and University of Minnesota at Minneapolis; was graduated from Yale...

 (1900–1973) in Minnesota, Felix Tikotin

Felix Tikotin

Felix Tikotin was an architect, art collector, and founder of the first Museum of Japanese Art in the Middle East.Born in Glogau, Germany, to a Jewish family, his ancestors had returned with Napoleon from Russia from a town called Tikocyn. Tikotin grew up in Dresden and became involved with the...

 (1893–1986), a dealer living in Switzerland, and Nishi Saiju (1927–1995), the first Japanese dealer to attend a sale in the United States.

Programs and publications

Programs for members and the public remain the focus of the Society: in 2009, for example, members had tea in the Japanese teahouse at Kykuit

Kykuit

Kykuit , also known as John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room National Trust house in Westchester County, New York, built by the oil businessman, philanthropist and founder of the prominent Rockefeller family, John D. Rockefeller, and his son, John D...

, the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills near Tarrytown, New York; visited private and public collections in Sacramento and San Francisco; and toured the Richard Fishbein and Estelle Bender Collection as well as the mini-museum of the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in New York City. Lecture programs in New York are held at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts

New York University Institute of Fine Arts

The Institute of Fine Arts is one of the 14 divisions of New York University . It offers a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy, the Advanced Certificate in Conservation of Works of Art, and the Certificate in Curatorial Studies...

 and elsewhere.

The programs and publications of the Society were extraordinarily valuable in the 1970s, when ukiyo-e studies and, for that matter, Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

art history had scarcely entered the academic mainstream either in the United States or Japan. The Society communicates with an increasing national and international audience through its quarterly newsletter, currently edited by Susan Peters, and its annual journal Impressions, currently edited by Julia Meech.

External links

• Izzard, Sebastian, Kunisada's World, New York, Japan Society in collaboration with Ukiyo-e Society of America, 1993. ISBN 0913304379
• Izzard, Sebastian, Hiroshige: An Exhibition of Selected Prints and Illustrated Books, New York, Ukiyo-e Society of America, 1983. ISBN 0961039809
• Meech, Julia, and Jane Oliver, eds., Designed for Pleasure, The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680-1860, New York, Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America, 2008. ISBN 9780295987866
• Japanese Art Society of America Web site