Visions of Sound: Okakura Kakuzō, John La Farge, and the Transsensorial Imagination

Visions of Sound: Okakura Kakuzō, John La Farge, and the Transsensorial Imagination
Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 5:30 pm

Co-sponsored by the Boston University Department of History of Art & Architecture (College of Arts and Sciences), and the BU Center for the Study of Asia (Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies)

The lecture will take place at:

BU Photonics Center, Room 211, 8 St. Mary’s St., Boston, MA

“Visions of Sound: Okakura Kakuzō, John La Farge, and the Transsensorial Imagination” 

This talk discusses the evocation of music and sounds in the work of the Japanese art historian Okakura Kakuzō (1863-1913) and the American artist John La Farge (1835-1910). Ever since the summer of 1886 when they first met in Japan, Okakura and La Farge enjoyed a friendship that continued until the artist’s death. The cultural significance of this friendship has not yet been closely examined, however. This talk looks at their relationship by considering their shared interest in the transsensorial dimension of the aesthetic experience wherein the visual, the auditory, and other senses such as the haptic merge. La Farge pursued this interest in his two late mural paintings on the subject of Confucius for the Minnesota State Capitol (1905) and the Baltimore Courthouse (1906), while the trans- and multi-sensorial experience also became a major theme in Okakura’s The Book of Tea (1906), which the Japanese author dedicated to the American artist.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Noriko Murai is Associate Professor of Art History at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, and a Visiting Scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University (2017-2018). She is particularly interested in visual creativity that crosses and challenges established boundaries, such as between different cultures, different media, or between art and nature. One of her research interests is the presentation, reception, and interpretation of Japanese art and aesthetics in the US around the turn of the 20th century. More recently, she has also been working on modern ikebana, or Japanese floral art. At Sophia University, she teaches courses in modern Japanese art, Japonisme, and gender and visual representation.

Prof. Murai earned her B.A. degree in History of Art at the University of California-Berkeley, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard’s Dept. of History of Art and Architecture. Her many publications include Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia, co-authored with Alan Chong, et al. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2009); Nihon bungaku no hon’yaku to ryūtsū—kindai sekai no nettowāku e [Translation and Circulation of Japanese Literature: Into the Network of Modernity], co-edited with Kono Shion (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2017);  Inventing Asia: American Perceptions around 1900, co-edited with Alan Chong (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2014).

Organized by Boston University Department of History of Art & Architecture and Boston University Center for the Study of Asia