.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Yamazaki Choun was the second recipient, in 1952, of one of Japan's highest honors, Person of Cultural Merit (Bunka Korosha). Established in 1951, the annual prize recognizes an individual for outstanding contributions to Japanese culture.
Choun enjoyed a long career and is more remembered as one of the most eminent sculptors of the early twentieth century. At his first exhibition, he was discovered by Takamura Koun (1852-1934), who took him on as an apprentice in his Tokyo studio the next year. Choun was keen to learn Western techiniques to achieve realistic representation in sculpture. He was one of the first Japanese artists to employ the Pointing Machine, using calipers, to transfer a plaster cast into wood sculpture. He found that the precision of the instruments allowed him to imbue his sculptures with more realistic expression than could be created through the traditional manner of wood carving.
In 1907, Choun cofounded the Nihon Chokokukai (Japan Society of Sculptors) with Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913) and several prominent sculptors, including Yonehara Unkai (1869-1925) and Hiragushi Denchu (1872-1979). They preferred themes adapted from Japanese mythology and history over Buddhist inconography, encouraging an assimilation of Western and Japanese aesthetics that represents the modernization of Japanese sculpture in the early twentieth century.
Choun participated in international and national exhibitions, among them the Japan-British Exhibition, London, 1910, and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, 1915. His 1914 wood figure of a schoolgirl reading, now in the Walters Art Museum (61.183), was published by Harada Jiro in his review of the Panama-Pacific exhibition with the title "Tribute to a Dead Classmate" (Harada Jiro, "Japanese Art at the Panama-Pacific Exposition," The International Studio 57, no. 227 [Jan. 1916]: 175). Choun was appointed an Artist to the Imperial Household (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in 1934.
For other examples of Choun's work, see The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo et al., Nihon chokoku no kindai Modern Age in Japanese Sculpture: From its Beginnings through the 1960s, exh. cat. (Kyoto: Tankosha, 2007), pp. 80-81; and for two figural bronzes, see Meiji bijutsu-kai to Nihon Kinko Kyokai The Era of Meiji Bijutsu-kai and Nihon Kinko Kyokai, in Meiji bijutsu saiken I Reappraisal of Meiji Art I (Tokyo: Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan, 1995), nos. 37-38.
Choun enjoyed a long career and is more remembered as one of the most eminent sculptors of the early twentieth century. At his first exhibition, he was discovered by Takamura Koun (1852-1934), who took him on as an apprentice in his Tokyo studio the next year. Choun was keen to learn Western techiniques to achieve realistic representation in sculpture. He was one of the first Japanese artists to employ the Pointing Machine, using calipers, to transfer a plaster cast into wood sculpture. He found that the precision of the instruments allowed him to imbue his sculptures with more realistic expression than could be created through the traditional manner of wood carving.
In 1907, Choun cofounded the Nihon Chokokukai (Japan Society of Sculptors) with Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913) and several prominent sculptors, including Yonehara Unkai (1869-1925) and Hiragushi Denchu (1872-1979). They preferred themes adapted from Japanese mythology and history over Buddhist inconography, encouraging an assimilation of Western and Japanese aesthetics that represents the modernization of Japanese sculpture in the early twentieth century.
Choun participated in international and national exhibitions, among them the Japan-British Exhibition, London, 1910, and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, 1915. His 1914 wood figure of a schoolgirl reading, now in the Walters Art Museum (61.183), was published by Harada Jiro in his review of the Panama-Pacific exhibition with the title "Tribute to a Dead Classmate" (Harada Jiro, "Japanese Art at the Panama-Pacific Exposition," The International Studio 57, no. 227 [Jan. 1916]: 175). Choun was appointed an Artist to the Imperial Household (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in 1934.
For other examples of Choun's work, see The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo et al., Nihon chokoku no kindai Modern Age in Japanese Sculpture: From its Beginnings through the 1960s, exh. cat. (Kyoto: Tankosha, 2007), pp. 80-81; and for two figural bronzes, see Meiji bijutsu-kai to Nihon Kinko Kyokai The Era of Meiji Bijutsu-kai and Nihon Kinko Kyokai, in Meiji bijutsu saiken I Reappraisal of Meiji Art I (Tokyo: Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan, 1995), nos. 37-38.