Modernism and Tradition Jostle at the Asia Society

I always enjoy exhibitions at the Asia Society on Park Avenue and 70th Street. It’s a research center and promotes cultural exchange, both vast enterprises, but I visit for its enlightening, enchanting art shows. New York’s Asia Society is one branch of this international organization. It’s a museum that collects art and also collaborates with other museums and scholars to enrich the public’s understanding of Asian art. Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is the Society’s new exhibition. I loved it.

It starts with a vase, not a petite thing I’d use to display lilacs from my yard but a nearly six-foot-tall cloisonné killer with a nocturnal blue background and cherry blossoms and wisteria cascading down the neck and shoulders, and white and pink chrysanthemums decorating the body and base. The Yokohama ceramicist Goto Shozaburo (active 1860–1910) made it in the mid 1890s on commission for an American, building a special oven to accommodate a form this big. Shozaburo had exhibited his work at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. By 1900, Vase with Blossoming Flowers was in the Yale Art Gallery, the first work of Asian art in its collection.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I always enjoy exhibitions at the Asia Society on Park Avenue and 70th Street. It’s a research center and promotes cultural exchange, both vast enterprises, but I visit for its enlightening, enchanting art shows. New York’s Asia Society is one branch of this international organization. It’s a museum that collects art and also collaborates with other museums and scholars to enrich the public’s understanding of Asian art. Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is the Society’s new exhibition. I loved it.

It starts with a vase, not a petite thing I’d use to display lilacs from my yard but a nearly six-foot-tall cloisonné killer with a nocturnal blue background and cherry blossoms and wisteria cascading down the neck and shoulders, and white and pink chrysanthemums decorating the body and base. The Yokohama ceramicist Goto Shozaburo (active 1860–1910) made it in the mid 1890s on commission for an American, building a special oven to accommodate a form this big. Shozaburo had exhibited his work at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. By 1900, Vase with Blossoming Flowers was in the Yale Art Gallery, the first work of Asian art in its collection.