A walk along Madison Avenue in the 1950s changed Joe Price's life forever. Price was accompanying Frank Lloyd Wright on a stroll from the famed architect's legendary Guggenheim museum to the Plaza hotel. At Sixty-fifth and Madison they took a detour when Wright ducked into an antique shop that carried Japanese art. Wright, known for his fusion of Eastern and Western influences, was reviewing a selection of Japanese woodblock prints. Price, originally overwhelmed by his surroundings, focused on a simple hanging scroll he spotted across the room that depicted elegant grapevines. When Price delivered Wright to the Plaza, he made a quick dash on his own back to the shop and bought the painting of grapevines, not even knowing the artist's name. That of course, would change dramatically over the years as Price became more obsessed with the work of Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800), the artist who would form the central core of his collection.
Birds, Animals, and
Flowering Plants in Imaginary Scene, Ito Jakuchu, Japan, Edo period, 1716-1799, Pair of six-panel folding screens; colors on paper.
The Etsuko and Joe Price Collection.
Price, a native of Bartlesville, Oklahoma was an
engineering student who developed a passion for architecture,
and came under the sway of Frank Lloyd Wright. In
fact, Joe Price convinced his father, Harold, to
hire Wright to design an office building for the
family's burgeoning oil machinery business.
The two men, both strong willed, often butted heads,
leaving Joe Price in the role of mediator. Harold
Price wanted a two-story building, while Wright urged
the businessman to build “a tree that can escape
the forest.” Wright won the argument here and
the Price Tower in Oklahoma — all nineteen
floors of it — is one of Wright's gems
and this cantilevered skyscraper has the distinction
of being the tallest building in the architect's
portfolio.
Joe Price credits Frank Lloyd Wright for teaching him about nature, organic forms, and Japanese art. For more than fifty years, Price and his wife Etsuko have collected important works from Edo period Japan, (1615-1868), often at a time when many of the artists had fallen out of favor with collectors. This was especially true during their early years of collecting. At the center of the collection that also includes works by Maruyama Okyo (1733-1795), Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799), and Mori Sosen (1747-1821), is Ito Jakuchu, the painter whose elegant rendering of grapevines first caught Price's eye more than fifty years ago.
Etsuko and Joe Price live in Corona Del Mar, California, in a house that was designed by architect Bart Prince. Their collection is there and at the nearby Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, in a pavilion that was designed by Bruce Goff (and finished by Prince after Goff's death) and commissioned by the Prices. The Price Collection is regarded as one of the finest private collections of Japanese art in the world.
Clearly, “living with the art”… the clichéd mantra of many collectors, means something for you quite different from hanging paintings on walls. It seems that you have gone to great lengths to nestle your collection within a highly sympathetic and interactive environment.
Japanese art isn't an art you bring out and leave out. It's not an art you hang in a group. The best way to see art is to see the way the artist painted it and that's one painting at a time. Any Japanese home will have a tokonomo (alcove) and when the family would wake up in the morning, the first daily chore is what painting will we hang up today. They choose the painting. It is not like the Western World where you worry about matching to the drapes. It is a different way of looking at art. I never have the art hanging. I bring it out, one at a time.
Tell me about the importance of natural light. I know the installation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian, will get a special lighting treatment.
One thing I noticed in my early collecting is the way Japanese art changes when the sun goes behind clouds. The painting just doesn't get darker; the whole painting changes. I've always known this but nobody else ever seems to have realized this until the recent series of shows in Japan. The Japanese had only seen their own art behind glass with artificial light on it that never changes. They had missed one of the most beautiful parts of their culture, the way the art changes as the light changes.
The recent four venue tour of your collection in Japan broke attendance records. Did this surprise you? What does it say about the audience?
I believe that the reason the art exploded this summer
was due to the fact that we fixed the lights so that
we have the lights change from daylight to moonlight
every three minutes. People were crying — they just
couldn't believe it. That's what more than
800,000 people came for. It's hard to describe
it. One of the hardest things I've always felt
in trying to teach the art was seeing the beauty.
I'm intrigued by the pair of screens titled, “Birds, Animals, and Flowering Plants in Imaginary Scene.” How is it composed?
There's nothing like it anywhere. The mosaic
paintings are the hardest thing to talk about if you
haven't seen them. Jakuchu created them so that
when a person walks by it, each screen — composed
of more than forty thousand squares and squares within
squares — changes. It inspired
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Edo Masters from the
Price Collection
THROUGH APRIL 13, 2008
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.
202.633.4880; www.asia.si.edu |
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me so that I had a mosaic copy of it built into my house in Corona Del Mar. It's in my wife's bathroom. It's such a pleasure to take a bath. However, I'm constantly inundated by famous people from Japan wanting to see my bathtub.
I understand that the press in Japan is describing you as a kind of reincarnation of the spirit of Ito Jakuchu. Jakuchu is the dominant figure in your collection. Can you speak about your attraction to his work?
I thank my wife, Etsuko, and a Japanese scholar for that. They found a self-portrait of Jakuchu and they swear it looks like me. I think that's where that started. Not that I'm the reincarnation, but that I'm the person who discovered him. I am not a sole Jakuchu fan. I like all the artists. All are great. However, something happened during the recent exhibitions that made Jakuchu the rage of Japan.
When somebody comes to your house, what would be the one thing you would want to show them the most?
Everything.
