Fans of art and Japanese culture have an exhibit of extreme interest at their fingertips for almost the entire month of September. Mississippi State’s Department of Art gallery is kicking off their 2006-2007 season with Images of the Floating World, a collection of Japanese woodblock prints from Laurel’s Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.
The prints are a very unique form of art which involves carving a negative into a block of wood, filling it with ink and pressing the ink onto paper, thus enabling the artist to generate many prints, rather than the single work of art resulting from a painting.
“It’s a fascinating show,” assistant gallery manager Jacques Murphree said. “The Japanese prints are awesome. You just have to see them yourself.”
The more than 50 prints were selected from the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art’s print collection, which was given to the museum by Lauren Rogers’ father in 1926. The prints were produced in 17th and 18th century Japan.
“When they were created they were really not considered artwork in Japan,” George Bassi, director of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art said. “They really became collectors’ items in Europe in about the mid 19th century. A lot of artists loved them and collected them. Monet had them hanging in his house. Their style really influenced impressionist painters.”
The collection includes a variety of scenes to cater to many moods and tastes.
“There are landscapes, beautiful women, kabuki theater and scenes of nature,” Bassi said.
“I’ve been down (to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art) a number of times and was very impressed with their collection,” gallery director William Andrews said. “This is work that our students need to be exposed to, we feel, and we wanted to get it up here and have it available for our students as well as the Starkville community.”
The show will be located on the ground floor of McComas Hall. The gallery’s hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The exhibit opens on August 28th, and its opening reception is from 5:30 to 7:30 on Thursday, Sept. 7th. The exhibit will close Sept. 21st. Both the exhibit and the opening reception are free and open to the public.
“We encourage people to attend the show,” Andrews said. “The opening reception is a good time for people to come and see other people who have art as their interest, too. It’s not always the best time to see the artwork, so I tell people to come back two and three times. That’s what the gallery is there for, and it helps us to see what people enjoy and what type of shows to get in the future.”
Future exhibits in the 06-07 season include contemporary artist Io Palmer, The Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis shows, the annual student competitive fine arts and graphic design show and popular photographer Brian Ulrich.
For more information on the exhibits call 325-2970 or visit http://www.caad.msstate.edu.
Pictures:
Art5.tif, caption: Second year art student Austin Hood views some of the prints in the new exhibit.
Jp84.tif, caption: Another of the many Japanese paintings provided by the Lauren Rogers Museum of Modern Art, a museum located in Laurel, Mississippi.
Art4.tif, caption: One of the many woodblock prints present in the Images of the Floating World collection.
Art4 & 5 credit to Jay Webb, jp84 courtesy photo