THIRD THURSDAY LECTURE - SAINSBURY INSTITUTE

Dr Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer (Associate Professor in Japanese Arts, Cultures, and Heritage, Sainsbury Institute)

About the Talk

The talk “Unpacking the Archive” in its experimental format invites the audience to discover a private archive of leading Japanese calligrapher of the twentieth century, Morita Shiryū (1912-1998), which documents his efforts to internationalize Japanese calligraphy in the postwar years. Morita Shiryū was instrumental in bringing the art worlds of European and American abstract art and Japanese avant-garde art closer to each other and, throughout his career spanning almost fifty years, created a global network of abstract artists, curators, art critics, Zen scholars and philosophers. In dialogue with artists such as Franz Kline, Pierre Soulage, Pierre Alechinsky, Hasegawa Saburō, Yoshihara Jirō, and Zen scholars including Hisamatsu Shin’ichi and Suzuki Daisetsu, Morita redefined modern Japanese calligraphy, merging and innovating traditional arts with cutting-edge ideas and art practices.

The artist’s personal archive, meticulously assembled over almost forty years, has not been accessible to researchers until now. This will be the first opportunity to bring its content to a broader audience. Streaming from within the archive which is situated in Uji, Japan, together we will look at the letters from artists and galleries in Europe, international exhibitions, artworks, postcards, and sketches, which reflect the zeitgeist and networks of global postwar art, but also provide an intimate insight into one artist’s creative process and life as it was unfolding. This talk will invite for reflection about the role of an archive in art history, and about the connection between the material traces and artistic creativity in the art of calligraphy.

Online lecture via Zoom.
50 min lecture followed by Q&A.
Free and open to all, booking essential.