ARTS OF PACIFIC ASIA, March 25-28, 2010
7 West 34th Street at 5th Avenue / across from the Empire State Building Thursday-Saturday 11am-7:30pm, Sunday 11am-5 pm Andrea Aranow, stand H-13
Andrea Aranow Textile Documents will exhibit for the first time in America some 200 kimono textile ink and gouache paintings created from 1900 to the mid 1960s.
These patterns originated in Kyoto and form part of a trove which Aranow acquired in the 1980s while researching modern kimono design. The paintings are life-sized renditions of patterns intended for hand painting onto one width of silk fabric.
By 1900, Japan was already a sophisticated country of consumers, with railways drawing clients into the new department stores in the urban centers for the newest and latest trends. The lifting of dress proscriptions starting in the Meiji restoration permitted the equal access of dress to anyone with sufficient means.
In the Taisho period, styles at first referenced older historic periods but shortly fell under the influence of Art Nouveau and then Art Deco trends from Europe. The palettes also became more variable. Aranows painting collection thus illustrates this graphic design progression in kimono as foreign influences are bent to the styl- ization of centuries-old motifs.
Known as zuan, these textile paintings were created by anonymous artists within the textile companies and typically kept locked away in a private archive to be used as needed. As a result, this artwork has been rarely viewed by the public, even in Japan. Aranow, whose extensive design archive has built a following in the fashion and home industries since 1987, will also exhibit some of her private kimono holdings as well as antique batiks from Java, embroideries from Laos, and ikats from China and Indonesia.
AndreaAranow New York 212.684.3361 andrea@textiledocs.com
PRESS RELEASE
DETAIL FROM TAISHO PAINTING (1912-26)
