webinar register page

The Tapestry of Literati Landscape: Okuhara Seiko’s Spring Colors on the Sumida River (1887)

The present pandemic has locked our bodies and minds in our homes. Under such circumstances, no topic in East Asian art proves more alluring than that of “roaming while reclining” (Ch. woyou; J. gayū), a concept formulated in early medieval China that came to underlie the production of land-scape paintings throughout East Asia. This talk investigates how the Japanese female artist Okuhara Seiko (1837–1913) adapted this idea to reimagine the famed Sumida River in modernizing Tokyo. Juxtaposing a panoramic view of the river with a sensory poem, Seiko’s work weaves together mind and body, past and present, physical environment and imagined landscape—a tapestry whose threads were quickly unraveling in mid-Meiji Japan.

This event is the 33rd presentation in the annual Michele and Peter Berton Memorial Lecture on Japanese Art series at LACMA. This event will take place online via Zoom.

Dec 6, 2020 03:30 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)