A detail of Konoshima Okoku's 'Tigers,' 1902
Organized by the Japanese Art Society of America and co-curated by Bradley Bailey, Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao curator of Asian art at the MFAH, this expansive exhibit is installed thematically, rather than chronologically, across several galleries on the upper level of the Caroline Wiess Law Building. The show features more than 150 objects borrowed from 70-plus public and private collections, including several newly discovered masterworks of Japanese art, many of which have never been shown publicly. The curatorial vision here is extraordinary; Meiji Modern will simultaneously reaffirm and explode any preconceived ideas you have about Japanese art.
The exhibit’s title refers to the 50 years of Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912), named after the country’s first monarch, who ruled from 1867 to his death as Japan transformed itself from an isolationist, feudal country into a nation-state and one of the great powers of the modern world. In a statement, Bailey describes Japan during that time as “one the first non-Western nations seeking to repel colonization by making the case for the integrity of its art and culture.”
But “repel” may be too narrow a word. Throughout the exhibit’s over 150 paintings, woodblock prints, historic photographs, cloisonné enameled vases, bronze sculptures, crystal balls, and folding screens, one sees a sometimes tense, sometimes joyful, sometimes propagandized amalgamation of Japan’s ancient traditions and the Western promise of 19th-century modernity, which included new techniques and concepts in art.
Mitsutani Kunishirō’s European tutelage is apparent in his 1910 watery oil-on-canvas portrait “Flowers,” where a woman, seated outdoors on a wooden veranda, and dressed in a traditional kimono and with two flowers in her lap, strikes a languid pose against a mysterious background of undulating, deep green foliage, like an incongruous underwater garden. It’s a painting that would sit nicely between one of Monet’s “Water Lillies” and John Singer Sargent’s en plein air masterwork, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.”
Kano Hogai's 'Two Dragons in Clouds,' 1885
'Hell Courtesan,' c. 1900, one of a pair of six-panel screens by Utagawa (Baidō) Kokunimasa
Mitsutani Kunishiro's 'Flowers'
Hashiguchi Goyo's 'Poster for Mitsukoshi'
Gender roles evolved during the Meiji era, and the fashion of the time followed — but the kimono is present in several woodblock prints of women enjoying new freedoms and technologies.
In Shodo Yukawa’s “Telephone Call: A Merchant’s Wife,” an elegant, kimono-clad woman has pushed a pink floor-to-ceiling curtain aside to access a wall telephone, her ear cocked coquettishly toward the handheld receiver. Meanwhile, the men are represented by a bowler hat woven entirely out of bamboo reeds. (You will do a double-take when you see it.)
Other works that will stop you in your tracks include a stunning image of a polar bear made with embroidered silk by an unknown Japanese artist. (The creation of modern zoos in Japan began during the Meiji era.)
And then there’s the woodblock print, “Tokugawa Shogun Viewing Watermelon Fight at Hama Palace” by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, which depicts exactly what the title describes: a churning ocean bay filled with two teams of imperial boatmen swimming furiously as they attempt to grab and collect dozens of floating and super slippery watermelons.
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Jacob Hilton a.k.a. Travid Halton
Houston singer-songwriter Jacob Hilton, 37, who records under the nom de plume Travid Halton, a portmanteau of his mother and father’s names, might balk at being mentioned in such company. (This is a thoroughly unpretentious man, who describes himself as an “archaeologist turned singer/songwriter.”)
Nevertheless, Hilton’s brand new album Obsessions, currently streaming on all major platforms and available on vinyl, CD and cassette, is a low-key though no less powerful contribution to the concept album genre. Across 10 beautifully recorded tracks, Hilton shares his experiences with childhood trauma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and OCD recovery.
He’s joined by some of the city’s musical luminaries, including Geoffrey Muller (bassist for The Suffers and Robert Ellis); Will Van Horn (pedal steel player for Khruangbin and Leon Bridges); Matt Serice (trumpet player for Bayou City Funk and Free Radicals); and Ellen Story (violinist for Slow Meadow and The Broken Spokes), who contributes backing vocals to the album’s penultimate track “The Great Remembering.”
Hilton is heard playing resonator guitar, dobro, steel-string acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano, giving the album an indie-folk vibe, with nods to classic country and meter-shifting prog-metal. (Slipknot, KoRn, and other nu-metal bands inspired Hilton as a teenager to pick up the electric guitar.) Throughout Obsessions, Hilton sings with a quiet urgency and a range of expression reminiscent of Jakob Dylan unplugged and Sam Beam a.k.a. Iron and Wine, but with a voice that is uniquely his own.
Hilton describes the album’s first two tracks, “Little Bayou Boy,” a bucolic homage to childhood, and “Blossom,” a harrowing, second-person description of his mother, Tracy Hall, in the throes of a severe psychotic episode, as “two halves of a whole.” Hall, who died in 2010, was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child; in 2016, Hilton went to an outdoor screening of a documentary about schizophrenia and afterward, was inspired to finish “Blossom,” a song he began at age 15 to express his conflicting feelings about his mother.
“The documentary helped me better understand my mother’s experience, even though I had witnessed it personally for years,” says Hilton. “The next day, I sat with my guitar and strummed the first few chords of the song and the first few lines of lyrics just came out effortlessly.”
Hilton has come to manage the debilitating symptoms of OCD with therapy, sessions with a licensed psychologist, and sticking to a daily routine that includes regular exercise and healthy eating. (Hilton is a talented cook and decided the photo shoot for Obsessions should take place in his kitchen.) Unfortunately, therapy without insurance can be cost-prohibitive for many people, but there are several helpful free online sources, including OCD Recovery, which provides free content on YouTube and Instagram led by people who have recovered from OCD.
While Hilton, who does indeed hold down a day job as an archaeologist, doesn’t have immediate plans to perform Obsessions live, he can imagine one day playing the entire album at a house concert, with all of the musicians on the album as special guests. In the meantime, he is completing a four-song EP, set for release early next year, that is (you guessed it) another thematically tied-together cycle of music.