Mrs. Gardner Abroad

Mrs. Gardner compiled 27 scrapbooks during her extensive world travels which included, in part, journeys to Europe, Turkey, Japan and Cuba and each experience was carefully recorded. In some scrapbooks, her observations are made in the style of an anthropologist taking field notes, as she sketched and defined hieroglyphics and illustrated monuments or jotted down excerpts from local myths. In others she included photographs purchased at local photographer’s shops, which catered to the tourist industry. Mrs. Gardner dedicated Sundays to her scrap booking, pasting photographs, pressed flowers and other ephemera into her books. The scrapbooks illustrate the link between her early travels and the later construction of her museum.

We’ve got rhythm

Take a sneak peak at this month’s gallery tour:

Sure, we have concerts every Sunday in season, performances throughout the year, and other hip events, but what is the rhythm of the Gardner? Seems obvious that old Isabella Gardner had style, but did she have rhythm? Could she boogie in those heavy, silk and satin, Victorian duds she wore? Let’s look to the design of her museum for answers. This is a short lesson in close looking and spatial awareness.

Think back about how you entered the museum. The entrance hall is low-ceilinged and cramped. Walking into the Spanish Cloister area gives you a bit more breathing room, and you see some art, and a little more interesting scenery. Once in the cloisters, windows allow views outside, and you get obstructed views of the courtyard. Most people naturally move toward the court to get the full view. When finally standing at the edge of the court, space, light, and color explode before you.

The short journey takes you from small, constricted, dark spaces to wide open wonder!

Preview of coming attractions

A taste of tonight’s tour of the galleries, in search of Asian objects:

Asian objects make up the third largest category of artworks at the Gardner Museum, after Italian and American art. Isabella Gardner’s interest in Asia began in 1883–84, when she and her husband Jack visited Japan, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, and India. She bought only a few things on this trip, but filled scrapbooks with photographs, notes, flowers, and assorted souvenirs.

Then, around 1901–3, Isabella bought Japanese screens and Chinese scrolls, along with carved and painted wooden panels. Most of these came from dealers’ shops here in Boston. A decade later, she sought a few select masterpieces of Asian art.

Isabella left nothing about why she collected what she did, but you can see from this chronology that an interest in Asia and Asian art ran throughout her life…

Sonic calligraphy

I often think of shakuhachi music as sonic calligraphy. Starting from a particular form, the piece of music, you create audible “brush strokes.” As in Japanese calligraphy, the artifacts are part of the art: the roughness of the breath, the unpolished sonorities of the bamboo, the rhythms that flow from the individual performer’s ever-changing physical and emotional state. In calligraphy, the final visual product may be almost unreadable as kanji, even as it expresses the deepest meaning of the characters. It is the same in shakuhachi music: no two performances are the same, and the expression is completely of the moment.