A TRANSCULTURAL MOSAIC

1993. 168 pages. 92 color photographs by Lynton Gardiner except as noted. Introduction, design and editing by Martha Longenecker, Director. Quotation from The Way of Tea by Soetsu Yanagi. Commentary by Robert Bruce Inverarity. ISBN No. 0-914155-03-2.

From our previous exhibition, curated by Martha Longenecker. A TRANSCULTURAL MOSAIC was a wide representation of the contrasting, yet similar, cultures of the world. It included a rich variety of objects from Japan, Mexico, Poland, China, Austria, India, Ethiopia, Africa, Great Britain, and the United States. All objects share in common the use of natural materials and techniques. Jewelry, clothing, toys, furniture, household utensils, terracotta animals, and a turn-of-the-century rickshaw were among the many objects of clay, wood, fiber, glass, stone and metal on view.

Excerpt from the book

Introduction by Martha W. Longenecker

"A picture is worth a thousand words," and this is a picture-book of arts created by people from many times and places throughout the world. It invites you to look and see, reading the visual language of line, form and color. The pictures acquaint you with selections from MINGEI INTERNATIONAL-Museum of World Folk Art's permanent collection - ninety pieces from over five thousand.

This book also invites you to come to MINGEI INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM and see the real objects - the seeing of which is worth countless words.

These are useful arts that are satisfying to the human spirit. Made by hand, they are created from common and readily available materials of our earth - clay, wood, fiber, metal, stone, bone, shell, pigment and other natural substances. Their value is not in the intrinsic worth of the material - as in the case of jewelry made of precious metals and stones - but in the unique, expressive way their creators transcend materials and techniques with honest expressions of enduring value.

The arts of the people are simple and unassuming. Easily understood, they do not burden us psychologically. Although they may inspire intellectual curiosity - fulfilled through reading and research - the joy in seeing and using these arts is not dependent on knowledge.

Mingei is a special transcultural word meaning "arts of the people" combining the Japanese words for people (min) and art (gei).

It was coined in the early part of the twentieth century by the late Dr. Soetsu Yanagi, revered and visionary scholar of Japan. As a visiting professor lecturing on Japanese art history at Harvard University from September 1929 to August 1930, he observed that many articles made by unknown craftsmen of pre-industrialized times were of a beauty seldom equaled by artists of modern societies. He questioned why this might be, until he gained insight regarding the nature of things which are integrally related to life - and born of a state of mind not attached to a conscious idea of beauty or ugliness. He recognized that unsurpassed beauty was the flowering of a unified expression when there is no division of head, heart and hands. He further realized that in the contemporary world of increasing mechanization and fragmentation of activities, more and more people seldom perform an act of total attention. During the early industrialization of Japan he awakened people to the essential need to continue making and using handmade objects which express the whole being - body, mind and spirit.

To communicate this profound insight, Dr. Yanagi, together with the potters Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai, founded the Mingei Association and in 1936 established in Tokyo the first Folk Art Museum in Japan. A second museum in the city of Kurashiki, was founded by K. Tonomoura in 1948. As the meaning of the word mingei was increasingly understood, other museums followed. Living art traditions of Japan that have endured unbroken for thousands of years were not lost to present and future generations as is happening throughout much of the industrialized world.

Dr. Yanagi's inspiring teachings maintain that creative, aesthetic capacity is normal and natural for all people and that it was only in abnormal, degenerate times that people were singled out as socalled geniuses and artists by the masses who were not actualizing their own innate creative power.

Illustrating his point he said, "Let us suppose that I speak English exceedingly well. All my Japanese friends would say, 'He is very good in English,' I should be a genius as far as English goes, a hero and an artist of language. But let us remember that, however excellent my command of English may be, I should be a poor English speaker compared to native Englishmen. On the other hand, all Englishmen are born good, we might say, especially talented, in the language. In England even a fool may speak English fluently, and dogs understand spoken English. However good an Englishman may be in speaking English he is not given recognition for that alone. Rather, it is quite usual to speak English well, because all Englishmen speak English, However good he may be, he is not considered a genius. In other words, all Englishmen are only artisans as far as speaking English is concerned. But if they should suddenly become as poor as the Japanese in speaking English, then some few of them would be singled out as artists. But these artists are likely to speak no more proper English than they did when they were mere artisans, that is, before their friends lost command of the language."*

Many of the contemporary craftsmen who were nurtured by Yanagi's teaching became "Living National Treasures of Japan," and their work possesses qualities of naturalness and beauty akin to that of the unknown craftsmen of prior days. The stencil dye designs by Keisuke Serizawa are notable examples.

The world-renowned wood block artist, Shiko Munakata, emphatically proclaimed "I'm not a genius - just a remnant!"

*from Folk Arts of Japan by Soetsu Yanagi