582-a - Kawanabe Kyōsai (Koga 1831 - 1889 Tokyo), attributed to

Kawanabe Kyōsai (Koga 1831 - 1889 Tokyo), attributed to Japan, dated Meiji 21 (1888) on a grave marker 42,2 x 84,3 cm, R. A dance of skeletons in the cemetery. Ink and colours on silk, formerly mounted as a hanging scroll, now framed under glass. The work depicts a lively, satirically exaggerated scene of dancing and revelling skeletons (Gaikotsu) in a mountainous landscape featuring a cemetery. A group of figures, some seated on an oversized lotus leaf, moves across the picture in a parodic procession with a flag and a pole weapon (naginata); in the right-hand part of the picture, further skeletons frolic amongst gravestones (sotoba) and a stone lantern, making music, fanning themselves and handling bowls, wäwhilst one figure performs an acrobatic handstand on a gravestone. The motif of the boisterous, human-like skeletonsis one of the characteristic, humorous and macabre visual themes of Kyōsai and his circle, which caricature the social and political conditions of the late Edo and early Meiji periods. Private German collection Kyōsai is regarded as one of the most unconventional painters of 19th-century Japan. Trained initially under Utagawa Kuniyoshi, then in the strict Kanō school under Maemura Tōwa, he combined academic mastery with the irreverent wit of the ukiyo-e tradition. During the political upheavals of the Meiji Restoration in 1867, he made a name for himself as a caricaturist and was arrested on several occasions for his scathing social criticism. He became famous above all for his pictures of crows - yet his second major theme is just as characteristic: dancing, revelling skeletons who play music, drink sake and frolic exuberantly amongst the grass. These works combine Buddhist symbolism of transience with black humour. To this day, his work is regarded as a bridge between traditional Japanese painting and a modern, subversive visual language - technically masterful and at the same time defiant ofany authority, be it that of this world or of death - Age-related damage, old restored