Musée Cernuschi Spotlight | Masuura Yukihito, The Shrines of the Deities + Painting Apart from the World: Monks and Scholars of the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Masuura Yukihito,
The Shrines of the Deities
September 14, 2021 — December 12, 2021
Recognized for his images of sculptures, Masuura Yukihito (born in 1963 in Tokyo) has been passionate about photography since the age of twelve. In 1981, he moved to France, where he became Guy Bourdin's assistant. In 1987, Masuura won a prize at the Salon d'Automne for his photographs of Aristide Maillol's works. His gaze is also drawn to the creations of Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle, as well as to the masterpieces of Michelangelo, the beauty of which he sees revealed by light.
From 2006, it was traditional Japanese culture that aroused his interest. Masuura has the privilege of attending the sacred ceremonies of periodic reconstruction ( sengū ) of two Shintō shrines: the Ise jingū and the Izumo Ōyashiro. The displacement of the abode of the deities takes place every twenty years in Ise jingū and every sixty years in Izumo Ōyashiro. According to Japanese beliefs, the deities regain their power after moving into the newly built pavilion.
This selection of nine photographs belonging to the Kami no miya series testifies to different moments of the 62 nd sengū of the Heisei era (1989-2019) such as the rituals of offerings to the deities or the transfer of cult objects called treasures (shintai) and reveals the attention of their author for certain architectural details. These images are drawn on the famous hand-made paper ( washi ) in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, which is known in Japan to last over a thousand years.
Painting Apart from the World
Monks and Scholars of the Ming and Qing Dynasties
The Chih Lo Lou Collection
November 5, 2021 — March 6, 2022
This exceptional exhibition presents more than one hundred masterpieces of classical Chinese painting. Shown in Europe for the first time, these paintings and calligraphies were created by the greatest masters of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties.
Before being donated to the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2018, these works were patiently brought together by the collector Ho Iu-kwong (1907–2006) who, following Chinese tradition, named the collection Chih Lo Lou, “Pavilion of Perfect Bliss”.
The works presented in Painting Apart from the World were created at a pivotal moment in Chinese history, between the mid-fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, a period of significant historic rupture that resulted in a dynastic shift. During these three centuries of grandeur and misery, the timeless aspirations of sages and poets to withdraw from the world to live in the forests and mountains took on new meanings under the painters’ brushes.
