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THE GREAT EASTERN TEMPLE: TREASURES OF JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART FROM TODAI-JI by Yutaka Mino Review by: Nancy S. Allen Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 1987), p. 44 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of North America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947733 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:33:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE GREAT EASTERN TEMPLE: TREASURES OF JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART FROM TODAI-JIby Yutaka Mino

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THE GREAT EASTERN TEMPLE: TREASURES OF JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART FROM TODAI-JI byYutaka MinoReview by: Nancy S. AllenArt Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 6, No. 1(Spring 1987), p. 44Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947733 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmerica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:33:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

44 Art Documentation, Spring 1987

dates, and the students who took these professors and courses, an invaluable resource for those studying either the institution or its graduates. Two more appendixes reprint two short statements by Mies himself, the 1923 "A Demand on our Building Methods" and the 1937-38 NT prospectus "Ex planation of the Educational Program."

Kathleen James University of Pennsylvania

PIRANESI, EARLY ARCHITECTURAL FANTASIES: A CATA LOGUE RAISONNE OF THE ETCHINGS / Andrew Robison ?

Washington : National Gallery of Art; Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.?ISBN 0-226-72319-4; 0-894-68-081-1 (pa.) : $65.00.

Numerous catalogs and analyses have been published of the prints of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, eighteenth-century Italian architect and engraver whose detailed views of the ruins of Rome have been a source of fascination and stimula tion for many generations. Even more captivating are Pi ranesi's imaginary views or fantasies, images from his own

imagination which were firmly rooted in the classical Roman tradition. These series of fantasies are the focus of Andrew Robison's exhaustive study. Robison, Curator of Prints and Drawings and Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Art (Washington), has compiled the most extensive and detailed catalog to date of all known states of the three main series of Piranesi's fantasies: Prima Parte di Architetture e Prospettive, etchings of imaginary buildings and ruins with a pronounced link to Baroque stage sets; Grotteschi (the grotesque), with images of mythological figures, broken and falling statues and buildings, bones and skulls; and Le Carceri (the prisons), containing fabulous and bizarre dungeons, arches, bridges, staircases, and instruments of torture. Several single plates, also part of the fantasies, are included in the catalog.

Robison's extended introduction provides a context for each of the series with extensive notes on technique, sources of influence, and events in Piranesi's life which are critical in dating the prints. The catalog itself reproduces each state of the forty-four etchings, with careful notes on editions, issues, dates, locations, and revisions between states. Reference is also made to the two major catalogs of Piranesi's prints by Henri Focillon (1918) and Arthur M. Hind (1922). Robison ac cords special attention to the first and second editions of Le Career/ since the revisions between the two are dramatic. Ad ditional sections illustrating the watermarks and describing the composition of the various editions of Piranesi's combina tion volumes complete the work.

Robison's catalog will be of most interest to specialized collections and to those working with the identification and dating of specific Piranesi prints.

Robison does not attempt a general biography of Piranesi, nor does he give more than a brief mention to his Vedute di Roma, Antichit? Romane, and other series. In his intentionally narrow focus, however, Robison is highly successful. The number of states illustrated for each print along with the de tailed analyses are simply not available in any other source. The quality of the illustrations is excellent, revealing more detail than found in most other reproductions of the prints. Robison's catalog is and will remain an important addition to Piranesi scholarship.

Judy Dyki Cranbrook Academy of Art

I 1 ASIA?AFRICA?NEAR EAST THE GREAT EASTERN TEMPLE: TREASURES OF JAPANESE BUDDHIST ART FROM T?DAI-JI / Organized by Yutaka Mino.?The Art Institute of Chicago in Association with Indiana University Press, 1986.?ISBN 0-253-20390-2 (pa.) ; ISBN 0-253-32634-6 (cloth) : $20.00; $45.00.

Between June 28 and September 7,1986, visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago were treated to an extraordinary exhibi tion of works, never before shown in the United States, from

Japan's T?dai-ji temple. The show was organized with the

hope of furthering Western understanding of Japan's cultural and spiritual heritage through examination of the history of the 1200-year-old temple and its treasures. Todai-ji is a Bud dhist monastery dedicated in 752 by the Emperor Sh?mu and located in Nara, the eighth-century capital of Japan. Sh?mu found in T?dai-ji a sanctuary to serve as headquarters for the Buddhist church and seminary for monks in training. Basic unity between the spiritual and physical realm was professed by the monastery's Kegon sect; the diety Vairocana sym bolized this unity and protected the kingdom, and its ruling families, with its limitless power. Strong state patronage therefore fostered the growth of the monastery's spiritual in fluence as well as its remarkable repository of religious treasures.

The opening essay of the catalog, written by Harvard schol ar John M. Rosenfield, places T?dai-ji in Japanese history and art, describing the establishment of state Buddhism, the founding of the monastery, and the ceremonies which utilize the sculptures and ritual implements exhibited in the Chicago show. The following three chapters are dedicated to the archi tecture, sculpture, and painting of T?dai-ji. Included in Samuel

Morse's architectural essay are maps and cross-section and

elevation diagrams which illustrate his concise explanation of the compound's original buildings and numerous reconstruc tions. Catalog entries for the exhibition's eighty objects are divided into sections covering sculpture, painting and calligra phy, and decorative arts. A bibliography of English and Jap anese sources concludes the work.

The scope and writing of this catalog provide unique ac cess in English to information on a religious, architectural, and artistic monument central to the understanding of Jap anese art. Unfortunately, the reproductions are of inconsi stent quality and in general fall far short of the standard set in the related exhibition catalog, H?ry?-ji: Temple of the Exhalted Law: Early Buddhist Art from Japan, by Kurata Bunsaku, New York, Japan Society, 1981. Both catalogs, however, offer a level of scholarship unlikely to be surpassed by any publication in the foreseeable future and should be acquired by libraries covering Japanese art.

Nancy S. Allen Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

RADIANCE FROM THE WATERS; IDEALS OF FEMININE BEAUTY IN MENDE ART / Sylvia Ardyn Boone.?New Haven : Yale University Press, 1986.?ISBN 0-300-03576-4 ; LC 85-19077 : $35.00.

Sylvia Boone has kept us waiting for this book since it was

completed as a doctoral dissertation at Yale in 1979; she built up suspense by not releasing her material piecemeal in pub lished articles or through University Microfilms. She now

presents us with a book which will please multiple audiences, a book in which there is a happy convergence of subjects:

women's arts, African art, women's associations in Africa, es

thetics, feminism, patronage. The heart of the book deals with the familiar but not-very-well-understood Sowo mask, symbol of Sande, the women's secret society of the Mende of Sierra Leone. The Sande society, which regulates day-to-day ac tivities and controls all female artistic expression, is unique in Africa as the solitary example of women's masquerades. The

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:33:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions