Merciful Mother Kannon and Its Audiences

Abstract

In 1884, the Japanese painter Kano Hōgai exhibited an early version of his Merciful Mother Kannon (1888) in Paris. The fact of the painting's exhibition abroad provides a basis for reconsidering its long-debated iconographic and historical significance. Taken in the context of the Meiji period (1868–1912), it aspires to a legibility that transcends the particularities of iconography through what was assumed to be the universal truth of the human body. Symbolic devices and painterly references anticipate the requirements of different viewers, thus inviting multiple interpretations and provoking a tacit consensus among viewers of different political and cultural backgrounds.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chelsea Foxwell

Chelsea Foxwell is assistant professor of Japanese art and architecture at the University of Chicago. She is completing a book on Kano Hōgai and the emergence of nihonga (Japanese-style painting) in the late nineteenth century [Department of Art History, University of Chicago, 5540 South Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 60637, [email protected]].