Unfolding the Screen

Transcultural aspects of the mobile multi-panel picture 1600−1750

Entfaltungen zwischen Bild und Raum

Das mobile Mehrfelder-Bild in transkultureller Perspektive 1600−1750

 

Workshop Freie Universität Berlin

Institute of Art History in co-operation with Asian Art Museum

 

Organization: DFG-Research Group »Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art. Comparative Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Contexts«, project »PORTUS. Visual Culture and Maritime Trade in Japan and the Netherlands c. 1550-1680«, PD Dr. Joachim Rees, Nora Usanov-Geißler M.A.

 

Asian Art Museum, National Museums in Berlin / Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem, Auditorium, entrance Takustrasse 40

 

Programm (PDF-Version)

 

09:30 – 13.15 h Morning Session

Chair: Merle Walter, Asian Art Museum, National Museums in Berlin

 

09:30 – 09:40 h

Alexander Hofmann, Asian Art Museum, National Museums in Berlin

Welcome address

 

09:40 – 10:00 h

Joachim Rees, Freie Universität Berlin

Transcultural Aspects of the Mobile Multi-Panel Picture. Introductory Remarks

 

10:00 – 11:30 h

Miyoshi Tadayoshi, Kobe City Museum

Japanese World Map Screens of the 17th and 18th Centuries and their Relation to European Cartography

[in Japanese with English translation]

 

11:30 – 11.45 h Coffee

 

11:45 – 12:15 h

Alexandra Curvelo, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Depicting Otherness on nanban Folding Screens

 

12.15 – 12.45 h

Nora Usanov-Geißler, Freie Universiät Berlin

Screen Paintings as Agents of (Ex-) Change: The Depiction of Trade and Cultural Contact on Japanese nanban byōbu

 

12:45 – 13:15 h Discussion 

 

13:15 – 14:30 h Lunch

 

14:30 – 18:00 h Afternoon Session

Chair: Wibke Voß, Freie Universität Berlin

 

14:30 – 15:00 h

Timon Screech, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

Screens from Tokugawa Ieyasu to King James of England and Scotland, 1614

 

15:00 – 15:30 h

Sofía Sanabrais, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Biombos Mexicanos: Folding Screens in Colonial Mexico and their Relationship to Japa-nese Models?

 

15:30 – 16:00 h Discussion

 

16:00 – 16:30 h Coffee

 

16:30 – 17:00 h

Antje Papist-Matsuo, Freie Universität Berlin

Hunting Exotics: A Late 17th-Century Coromandel Lacquer Screen for Japan?

 

17:00 – 17:15 h Discussion

 

17:15 – 18:00 h Concluding Discussion

 

18:00 – 19:00 h Refreshment

 

Unfolding the Screen

 

Probably no other group of artifacts has been characterized in such diversified terms as the mobile multi-panel screen. With a telling degree of indecision historical and current classifications adopt these objects for various artistic fields such as interior decoration, the art of painting or applied arts. Depending on the historical era and cultural area under consideration, the focus of research alter-nately shifts from the ceremonial and iconographic to the aesthetic or spatial aspects of the folding screen.

These aspects of entanglement are further enhanced by the fact that the folding screen had obtained an almost global dissemination already by the end of the sixteenth century. At that time, the painted, calligraphically embellished or lacquered ›shield‹ (píngfēng) possessed a time-honored tradition in Ming China. Japan of the Momoyama and early Edo-period saw an unprecedented popularization of paired screens (byōbu). Under the Portuguese loanword biombo the folding screen was being introduced into the Iberian culture of Europe and its colonial dominion. At first restricted to exclusive gifts in the wake of diplomatic missions, screens of (East-) Asian provenance reached other regions in Europe as commoditized luxuries mainly through the activities of globally operating trading companies.

Although the history of the folding screen is to a large extent characterized by phenomena of transfer and transformation, traditional narratives which celebrate the screen as a ›classical‹ genre of a specific culture or epoch remain powerful – a discursive limitation that is reinforced by the departmentalization of museums and specialized connoisseurship as required by the art market.

The workshop aims at a more comprehensive view on the history of the folding screen in a period of ever intensifying economic and cross-cultural exchange. Speakers with various academic and institutional backgrounds will address aspects of the multi-panel screen in Asia, Europe and the Americas in the early stages of globalization.