JAPANESE QUEST FOR A NEW VISION: THE IMPACT OF VISITING CHINESE PAINTERS,1600–1900 by Stephen AddissReview by: Nancy S. AllenArt Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 6, No. 2(Summer 1987), p. 94Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947760 .

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94 Art Documentation, Summer, 1987

During World War I, while in the Corp of Army Painters, Lebasque produced savage landscapes and scenes of war. Unfortunately, there are no illustrations of these images to contrast with the bucolic scenes from the years preceding and following the war. Other examples of the artist's work which are regrettably absent from the monograph, are repro ductions of Lebasque's ceramics, tapestry designs and murals.

During the period between 1925 and 1926 Lebasque turned from domestic subjects to a series of nudes. These paintings on the odalisque theme offered a vehicle for Lebasque to create sensuous images that concentrated on plastic model ing of the figure, often set against a patterned background. All of the plates in the book contain title, size, signature and

data information as well as provenance, exhibition history and references to literature. The works are further annotated by the authors' comments that place a particular piece within the context of the artist's oeuvre.

The majority of the reproductions are in color which, along with the text, are printed on a heavy stock of paper and laid out in a generous format. The only objectionable aspect of the presentation is the wide spacing of the typeface used for the section titles, which renders it almost illegible.

The appendices provide a rich source of information which include: a chronology of the artist's life with notes on signifi cant historical events; Lebasque's patrons and his commis sioned works; lists of exhibitions in the United States; museum, salon and gallery exhibitions in France and abroad; plus a bibliography and index to the plates. Of particular inter est is a 1985 interview in Nice by Donia Appoline with Madame Marthe Carlos-Reymond, the ninety-one-year-old

daughter of the artist. Madame Carlos-Reymond recalls events and anecdotes about her father which serve to illumi nate details of his character as well as his career as an artist among family and friends.

The clearly written essays, handsome illustrations and full set of appendices in this book constitute useful information which would be appropriate for general and academic reader ships. Lebasque 1865-1937 is a welcome addition to the small amount of materials currently available on this artist.

Lisa M. Kamisher The Aga Khan Program,

Harvard University and MIT

JAPANESE QUEST FOR A NEW VISION : THE IMPACT OF VISITING CHINESE PAINTERS, 1600-1900 / Edited by Step hen Addiss.?Lawrence, Ka. : The University of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art, 1986?ISBN 0-913689-24-6 (pa); LC 86-60919 : $17.95.

This catalog documents an exhibition of selections from the Hutchinson Collection of the Spencer Museum of Art. It is a modest publication, more notable for the lack than presence of high-quality photographic reproductions, but it has merit in another vein. Japanese Quest fora New Vision takes the study of bunjinga, or the interchangeable nanga painting in Japan to a new level of documented scholarship. It has as raw material the fascinating collection of Mitchell Hutchinson who studied Chinese painting in the late 1940s and thereupon commenced a lifetime of collecting. Excited by the obvious impact of the literati school of Chinese painting on the Japanese bunjinga, literally "scholar-paintings," he searched for works which

would actually document the links between the two cultures. The catalogue is a testament to the success of his en

deavor. Each of the fifty-two works of art is described by a one-page entry headed with the standard catalogue infor mation of artist, title, date, measurement, translations of signature, seal and inscriptions, medium and support. Bio graphical discussion of the artist, his contacts with Chinese artists in Japan, and complete translations of inscriptions, poems and letters on the paintings enrich the body of the catalog entries with primary source information. One lamen table lack is the absence of the Japanese characters for proper names and titles, leaving the serious student with only the all too ambiguous romanization.

Earlier catalogs on nanga have relied heavily on stylistic comparison. Here previously unpublished concrete evidence of the interaction between Chinese and Japanese artists opens the possibility and suggests the fruitfulness of addi tional research on this period of Chinese influence in Japan. For libraries with other sources on nanga or bunjinga^ and extremely limited budgets this is not a must but any library which attempts to meet more serious research needs will find this a necessary, and affordable, purchase.

Nancy S. Allen Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

1Stephen Addiss, The World of Kameda Bosai, New Orleans and Lawrence, Kansas: New Orleans Museum of Art/The University Press of Kansas, 1984; Stephen Addiss, Zenga and Nanga : Painting by Japanese Monks and Scholars; Selections from the Kurt and Millie Gitter Collection, New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1976; James Canili, Sakaki Hyakusen and Early Nanga Painting, Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1983; James Canili, Scholar Painters of Japan : The Nanga School, New York: The Asian Society, Inc., 1972; Calvin L French, The Poet-Painters : Buson and His Followers, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art.

I I PORTRAITS OF THE ARTISTS CHILLIDA / Peter Selz; postscript by James Johnson Sween ey.?New York: Abrams, in association with J. M. Tasende, 1986?ISBN 0-8109-0799-2 ; LC 85-20146 : $65.00.

JORGE CASTILLO, DRAWING, PAINTING, SCULPTURE / Car ter Ratcliff?New York: Rizzoli, 1986?ISBN 0-8478-0753-3 ; LC 86-42723 : $60.00.

These books introduce a pair of Spanish artists com paratively little known in North America, though familiar enough to the European art world. Eduardo Chiliida (b.1924) is a Basque sculptor whose powerful pieces in wood, marble, iron, alabaster, steel, and reinforced concrete can be seen in

major North American museums and private collections, as well as in the museums and public spaces of Europe. Jorge Castillo (b.1933), a painter and draughtsman, Spanish-born, Argentinian-raised, now lives and works in New York City.

Though alike in intention?to offer to English-speaking readers the work of a single artist and a context in which to set that work?the books differ in approach. ChilHda is a schol arly monograph, carefully and closely written by an art histo rian known for his perceptive contributions to the art history of this century, replete with illustrations, themselves inte grated with the text, and equipped with an admirably thor ough and useful critical apparatus. Individual chapters focus on Chiliida's materials and processes (including, for example, his disdain for preparatory sketches and maquettes), his pub lic commissions, and his place in twentieth-century sculpture.

The appendices contain an exhaustive chronology, a list of one-person exhibitions and related catalogues, an inventory of sculptures in public collections, and a bibliography com

posed of articles by the artist himself, a tally of publications illustrated by him, as well as the more usual enumeration of articles, books, and exhibition catalogues. Chiliida's concep tual and philosophical concerns are dealt with by Selz as they fit into the text, and specifically, in relation to individual pieces.

Ratcliff's book on Castillo, weightier and thicker than Selz's on Chillida, bills itself as a monograph. In fact, it is a gathering of plates, 469 of them, with a slim volume of prose prefacing the illustrations. The text is a series of brief essays, poetic in tone, on such subjects as the artist's early life, his artistic debts, and recurrent motifs in his work. Some are cast as dialogue between artist and author, some are Ratcliff's reflec tions. Ratcliff's prose is respectful, tending to the adoring, and, one suspects, deliberately styled to match the artist's vision. The result, as far as factual material goes, is rather thin on the ground; the book's success is due to its profusion of images, beautifully rendered and displayed. Even this would seem

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