Kaikodo Journal XXXI Spring 2015

Elegant Solutions

Corresponding to the exhibition held between March 13 and April 30, 2015. 47 Chinese and Japanese paintings; 31 Chinese and Japanese objects (85 color plates). Preface by Howard Rogers. 255 pages.

Includes the essays:
John Vollmer:
    “Once Lost, Now Found at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto: A Ninth-century
      Dhow Cargo of Tang Wares”
Richard Barnhart:
    “A Chinese Painter’s Reaction to the Manchu Invasion of China: Zhang Gu
      and his Ancient Masterpieces”
Ellen Johnston Laing:
    “The Depiction of Mulan Testing her Bow in the Chinese Print Medium”
Kazuko Kameda-Madar:
    “Shokunin Zukushi-e, “Pictures of People of Various Occupations in Their
      Workshops” in Early Modern Japan”
Carol Conover:
    “Robert Hatfield Ellsworth (July 13, 1929-August 3, 2014)“
Claudia Brown:
    “Chu-tsing Li: In Memoriam”
Howard Rogers:
    “James Cahill (1926-2014)”
Mary Ann Rogers:
    “Jim Cahill”

The term “elegant solution” is normally used in scientific contexts where it refers to a solution in which the maximum desired effect is achieved with the smallest or simplest endeavor.  An elegant solution solves a given problem with the least possible waste of material and accomplished with appropriate methods and materials. We have here extended those concepts to art, to the objects and paintings which range in the present exhibition from a miraculously crafted light-as-a-feather Neolithic black pottery stemcup to a white porcelain liquor bottle with cobalt blue bubbles floating beneath the silky glaze of its surface to an album of landscapes where ink was brushed delicately on paper to produce images of great refinement and serenity to a pair of six-fold screens depicting artists and craftsmen at their work, some arriving at, within the confines of the painting, elegant solutions of their own.  Our understanding and appreciation of such creative processes and their results are enhanced in enlightening essays by Richard Barnhart, Ellen Laing, and Kazuko Kameda-Madar and John Vollmer, and our deep gratitude to those teachers and mentors, friends and colleagues who have sadly passed on since the publication of our last journal and who are remembered in a number of tributes by members of Kaikodo’s immediate family and by their friend, Claudia Brown.