U.C. Berkeley History of Art

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COURSES FALL 2008

Histart 35

ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN JAPAN (4 units)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2-3:30
425 Doe Library, CCN: 05451
Greg Levine

This introduction the art and architecture of Japan poses a challenge: to look closely and think critically about objects and monuments. I'm not going to require you to memorize names and dates of countless works, feed you answers about what they really mean, or accept the sound-bite substitutes for knowledge often found online. You will be asked to interrogate rather than absorb passively; take issue with representation, rhetoric, and built environments rather than accept the thin veneer of popular notions of Japanese art, Japan, and Asia.

We will consider a range of artistic/architectural categories and styles across a broad historical span: works dating from Neolithic and Tumuli eras; pictorial and calligraphic works related to the spread of the brush arts and Buddhism across East Asia; figural and landscape works of the medieval to early modern eras (narrative paintings, portraits and woodblock prints); ceramic and lacquer arts' Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, castles; modern and contemporary art in a transnational context; and so on.

We will engage their "visuality," material and spatial presences, and social-political rhetoric. Ask: how and why were these objects and buildings "empowered," gendered, exposed to the gazes of particular viewers; and how do we identify them as "Japanese art and architecture?" To be more provocative: why do images of the Buddha seem to all look alike (do they really?); why are rough earthenware tea bowls among the most treasured artistic objects in Japan: what's up with the representation of "Geisha," are manga and anime the only things that matter.