To fully appreciate this art, I imagine that you would need to fluently read and write Japanese. Indeed, that language has changed so much that even native speakers nowadays need a translation to read Genji. If we cannot read and write the language, we are often in the dark.
But sometimes we can learn by walking around the museum. Puzzling over how to understand this display, I went to another show at the Met, The Decorated Word: Writing and Picturing in Islamic Calligraphy (April 8 – November 3, 2019). Like the Japanese, Muslims are much concerned with writing. But where most of the writing in the Genji exhibition presents Mursaki’s fictional narrative, Islamic sacred calligraphy presents the words of the Qur’an, as communicated by God to Mohammed, an acute difference. And of course, in European old master visual art, handwriting is relatively unimportant.
Although these comparisons, in the end, didn’t help me understand this exhibition, they did provide a useful demonstration of interpretative problems. One important goal of the art museum is to bring art that is historically or geographically distant closer to our experience. The curator of an exhibition devoted to illustrations of the Bible might reasonably assume that the Met audience would have a general familiarity with the text. But unless you have read The Tale of Genji and know something about Japanese art, you are unlikely to understand the art here, which leads to the question of how much context a museum should provide.
Some people prefer to focus on the art, without the distractions of labels. Here, however, the paucity of such useful background information left this great visual exhibition drastically undermotivated. On the day I visited the Met’s most popular show — Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll, which was downstairs — it was so crowded that getting in the door was all but impossible. New York audiences generally know about guitars, but when it comes to old master Japanese art we really need instruction. Even when the Met was crowded, this show was not. Would the exhibition be better attended were the art made more accessible? I would like to think so.
What I dream of, but hardly ever find, are inexpensive exhibition catalogues with interpretative essays for the general reader. For The Tale of Genji, however, we have a massive, gorgeous, and, needless to say, expensive presentation with essays by seven specialists talking among themselves. For me, the most instructive section was the short appendix by Akazawa Mari discussing the Japanese residential architecture depicted in these images. A lost opportunity, for sure.
Note: My earlier related review is “The Millenium of The Tale of Genji, The Museum of Kyoto,” ArtUS, 24/24 (Fall-Winter, 2008): 17.
The Tale of Genji. A Japanese Classic Illuminated continues at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Ave, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through June 16.
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