This
is an outstanding exhibition, it’s a knockout, fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable, it’s got just about everything to exhibit from an artist's praxis and the idiosyncratic
societal memory seen manifested through the motif which happens to be a cat or
more precisely the cats of Japan it’s a want to visit show.
The
exhibition has so many images of cats you lick your lips for it is a tasty
visual feast as there is coloured cats, lady cats, mean cats, sexy cats, scaredy
cats, fat cats, slim cats, demon or ghostly looking cats, fighting cats and lucky cats, there is just about every sort of
mood, colour, texture and shape one can imagine, and that’s what makes this show
so important for artists to see, it’s about how the human imagination
transforms the cat into something spectacular to see.
There is in this exhibition cats printed by Ukiyo-e Masters to artists who live in the now and what is so stunning is how all these cats in painting, print, ceramics and sculpture though the last two hundred fifty years, that have been sequentially curated, presents such great viewing pleasure and highly educational in how humans and cats behave.
For example, there is a ukiyo-e print by Hiroshigie titled; 浅草田甫酉の町詣 Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival, c 1857 - 58, the cat peers out of the window from a house above a village or suburb of Tokyo with snow covered Fuji's majestic presence in the distance, directly above the what one might call a snobby postured well off cat, seemingly content in its own existence and upmarket lifestyle, this is no poor cat that's for sure.
For in the bottom left hand corner of Hiroshigies print Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival there is a grouping of four Kanzashi which may well represent the owner of the cat looking out the window in well off, one couldn't imagine a rice farmers wife having so many. The cat is unlike the rice farmers in the middle distant of Hiroshigie's ukiyo-e for there life is hard and the leisure of looking out a window doesn't seem to be in their lifestyle.
(link to Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival here https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/100_views_edo_101.jpg)
There are many stories within the images like the one above as witnessed in Hiroshigie's print but like the cat, take time to study the imagery on show. Lastly, the catalogue is well put together and if you like art and cats its a must buy, the amount of imagery within it supports the exhibition extremely well, so if you're in Kobe don't miss this stunning exhibition at Rokko Island link is below.
http://www.city.kobe.lg.jp/culture/culture/institution/yukarimuseum/index.html
