|
 "...draws visitors into a magical world.""... [m]useum has many claims to distinction but few have more popular appeal than the Lloyd L. Cotsen Japanese Basket Collection."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"...draws visitors into a magical world."
–Contra Costa Times
"...amazing works of art."
–The Examiner
"The whole thing glows, like something that's alive."
–Bloomberg News
In comparison with Japan’s other decorative and applied arts, such as ceramics or textiles, bamboo basketry is a relatively small-scale art form that requires decades to learn. A unique aspect of this form of decorative art is that almost every step of production is accomplished by a single person.
However, it is difficult to achieve technical mastery of the bamboo medium without spending the initial years of one’s training under the guidance of a skilled artist. For this reason, at some time in their careers most major bamboo artists have been associated with one of a handful of artistic lineages that have served as the centers of artistic bamboo training for generations.
Masters of Bamboo: Japanese Baskets and Sculpture in the Cotsen Collection is an exhibition that draws on the richness and breadth of the approximately nine hundred works Mr. Lloyd E. Cotsen generously donated to the museum in 2002.
The exhibition is organized around the network of master-disciple relationships through which makers of these baskets are interconnected. The exhibition features one artwork each by 76 bamboo artists representing most of the major lineages in the three key geographic regions—Western Japan, Eastern Japan, and Kyushu—over the past 150 years. Many of the artworks in the exhibition are on view publicly for the first time.
Exhibition Images
|
