The Art of Rinpa as Literary Dreaming

Lecture on Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 6 pm, Lecture Room 001

Timon Screech, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

The Art of Rinpa as Literary Dreaming
 

Abstract
Rinpa is one of the most popular styles of Japanese art, as well as the one probably most readily defined as ‚Japanese‘. But it is seldom asked how and why Rinpa came into being, and what it‘s stylistic features actually mean. This talk will consider these questions, and look at the themes of Rinpa, which are often taken from the ancient literary classics, to investigate why their representation was thought relevant, and how their treatments constructed a past for their first viewers.

 

Prof. Timon Screech
completed his PhD at Harvard in 1991, and has taught beginning that same year the history of Japanese art at SOAS, University of London. In 2006 he was elected to a chair in the History of Art. He is concurrently Permanent Visiting Professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo.
Screech is the author of some ten books on the visual culture of the Edo period. His PhD was published as The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan (CUP 1996, second edition Curson 2002). Perhaps his best-known work is Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820 (Reaktion, 1999; second, expanded edition, 2009). Most recently, he has introduced and edited the writings of two 18th-century travellers to Japan, as Japan Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Shogun’s Realm, 1775-1796 (Routledge, 2005), and Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822 (Routledge, 2006). His writings have been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian.
 

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Art History and the Institute of Japanese Studies and takes place at the Institute of European Art History / Institute of East Asian Art History, Seminarstr. 4, 69117 Heidelberg, Lecture Room 001.