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明治政府のお雇い外国人として来日していたアーネスト・フェノロサ（1853-1908）は、当時、日本国内で目にした絵画を総じて “Japanese Painting”と呼び、この英語を日本人通訳が「日本画」と翻訳したことから、明治以後に「日本画」という概念が社会的に定着していったと言われています。

「日本画」は日本の伝統的な絵画と西洋画の接触により、新しい表現形式として確立されましたが、日本という近代国家の形成期における文化的混沌の中で画家たちは、近代とは、西洋とは、国家とは何かという不断の問いと向き合うことを余儀なくされました。第二次世界大戦後は、画壇において日本画滅亡論が唱えられましたが、近代日本画を超克し「新しい日本絵画の創造」を目指した現代日本画の担い手たちの活躍によって、「日本画」は新たな段階へと進みました。

グローバリズムが加速し、西洋と東洋という二分化がもはや意味をなさず、主題や形式、画材などが多様化する21世紀のアートシーンにおいて、現在の「日本画」にはいかなる可能性が秘められているのでしょうか。本展覧会は、近代の「日本画」を牽引した明治、大正、昭和前期の画家たちや、杉山寧をはじめとする戦後の日本画家たちの表現方法、そして現在の「日本画」とこれからの日本の絵画を追究する多様な作家たちの実践の数々にあらためて注目し、その真髄に迫るものです。

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While visiting Japan as a foreign advisor hired by the Meiji government, the art historian Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908) referred to all of the paintings he came across as “Japanese paintings.” This term was translated by a Japanese interpreter as Nihonga (Japanese pictures), which, it has been suggested, subsequently led the Nihonga concept to take root in Japanese society.

In other words, after coming into contact with Western-style painting, traditional Japanese painting became established as a new form of expression known as Nihonga. As the genre emerged during a period of cultural chaos as Japan was formed a modern state, Nihonga painters were inevitably dogged with questions about what it meant to be “modern,” “Western,” and a “nation.” Following the Second World War, Nihonga was in some quarters declared dead, but the work of contemporary Nihonga painters, who strove to create a new form of Japanese painting that would transcend modern Nihonga led to a new phase in the genre’s history.

What is the potential for present-day Nihonga in this age of accelerated globalization, which has rendered meaningless the distinction between East and West, and the 21st-century art scene, which has grown increasingly diverse in terms of subject, form, and material? In this exhibition, we reexamine leading Nihonga figures of the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras, the expressive methods of Yasushi Sugiyama and other postwar Nihonga painters, and the diverse practices of artists who are currently exploring the essence of the Japanese pictures of today and tomorrow.

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