Synopses & Reviews
Traditions Unbound focuses on the work of eight innovative painters who broke new ground in Japanese art. Released from the repressive constraints of the shogunate in Edo and inspired by a new merchant market, they created sometimes radical work that expressed the new freedom enjoyed in the thriving eighteenth-century arts scene of Kyoto. The artists are Watanabe Shiko, Yosa Buson, Matsumura Gekkei (Goshun), Ike Taiga, Maruyama Okyo, Nagasawa Rosetsu, Soga Shohaku, and Ito Jakuchu. Traditions Unbound is a collaborative project of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Agency of Cultural Affairs of Japan, and the Kyoto National Museum. Matthew P. McKelway, principal author and guest curator of the exhibition ÒTraditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters of Eighteenth-Century Kyoto,Ó is Society for the Promotion of Science Visiting Scholar at Gakushuin University, Tokyo. He has taught the history of Chinese and Japanese art at the University of Pittsburgh and New York University.