Reference
Kachina Martin
Muhlenberg High School
Studio Art – grades 10 through 12
AP Studio – Crafts – 12th grade
Global Studies – Non-Western Art History – 11th grade
AP Art History – 12th grade
In Praise of Shadows, an essay by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, is without a doubt one of the best and most useful pieces that I have read as part of my NCTA experience. One of the most challenging things in teaching Non-Western art is how to help students understand and appreciate an aesthetic often very different from their own. Students must first recognize that, by virtue of their own culture and upbringing, they have an aesthetic bias, and that this bias can make it challenging to appreciate art made by cultures which embrace a different aesthetic. Art Historians frequently make excellent use of the compare/contrast model, yet the danger with comparing Non-Western and Western artworks in this manner is that it is not always useful, and often incorrectly creates a sense of European superiority. Furthermore, if the comparison is not carefully made, the Non-Western work is often cast as exotic, and somehow, too different from objects or works from the Western world that have the same purpose or meaning.
This essay, with its gentle, meandering tone offers an in-depth perspective of what the Japanese value and how these values shape their aesthetics. Teachers must be mindful in introducing this work, insofar as I am sure neither every Japanese person feels this way, nor could an essay written in the 1930s capture more modern aesthetics. However, reading this work has made me completely reevaluate my approach to teaching Japanese art and Japanese aesthetics. And I do not suggest that I agree with everything the author espouses, as I do feel that museums are a reason to rejoice, having spent many hours within their walls. However, I very much liked the author’s focus on the beauty of everyday objects – tea bowls, soup bowls, architecture and the layout of one’s home. This essay could also be a source of ideas regarding what seems to be the latest focus of discussion in the art world – craft versus art. It also moves the reader beyond the tea bowl, which sadly, is often the sole object considered when one addresses Japanese art.
This work is easy to read and beautifully flows, but it is best read at a leisurely pace, one that allows for re-reading and thinking. Readers will be disappointed if they begin the work expecting a straightforward beginning, middle, and end. I intend to have both studio and non-studio students read this work in its entirety; this will be an important resource for my lectures regarding Japanese art in Global Studies. For my studio students, given their focus on crafts, I think the author’s focus on the beauty of utilitarian objects will be of interest, and of course, the importance of light, a subject that has preoccupied artists for centuries, whether painter or sculptor, whether fine artist or craftsman, whether American, European, or Asian artist.
This essay could also be broken down into sections, but I think students at the high school level and beyond would be capable of grasping its meaning, and, hopefully enjoying the beautiful way in which has been written and translated. The author’s musings regarding things of beauty that we, from a contemporary American perspective, might find strange or troubling – for instance, the common practice of Japanese women blackening their teeth – offer teachers a wonderful opportunity to question why we, as Americans, find certain contemporary behaviors acceptable, and in fact, praise them. One might argue that the American quest for bright white teeth, or wearing towering high heels, or the love of “spanx” and other forms of girdles, or the countless other ways in which American society today encourages men and women to distort and manipulate their body could be just as troubling to others, or to us, in another hundred years.
