March 2, Noriko Murai

Friday, March 2,  4:30 – 6:30 pm, CWAC 152

“Current Encounters: Water Imagery in John La Farge’s Japan-Inspired Works”

Professor Noriko Murai

Associate Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Graduate Program in Global Studies, Sophia University

John La Farge (1835-1910), A Rishi Calling Up a Storm, 1897, watercolor and gouache over graphite. Cleveland Museum of Art.

This paper examines the blending of nature and culture that frequently appears in the Japan-inspired works by the American artist John La Farge (1835-1910). In demonstrating the recurrence of water imagery in these works, it proposes that the natural element of water was not only central to La Farge’s imagination of East Asia, but also enabled the artist to visualize an intermediary realm “where the edges of the real and the imaginary melt.” His exploration of such cross-cultural space where ordinary boundaries became destabilized was moreover mediated by Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉 覚三 (aka Tenshin 天心, 1863-1913), the Japanese art historian and critic who became his lifelong friend. In the existing studies on La Farge, Okakura has typically been assigned the role of a “native informant” who taught the American the principles of East Asian philosophy. This paper challenges this one-sided account and demonstrates that their relationship was more synergetic.