Bare Bones: Skeletons in Japanese Art

Bare Bones: Skeletons in Japanese Art opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on October 24 and runs through January 3, 2027. It's in the Cargill Gallery, and it brings together 23 works from the museum's own collection—scrolls, prints, sculpture, textiles, and netsuke—that span nearly two centuries, from the 1830s up to 2018.

The show takes its starting point from the Japanese Buddhist idea of impermanence, which is pretty close to the Western memento mori. It traces how Japanese artists turned skeletons from symbols of fear and mortality into subjects of humor and experimentation. Skeletons didn't really become a staple of Japanese art until the late 18th and 19th centuries, following the 1774 translation of the Dutch anatomical text Kaitai shinsho ('New Text on Anatomy'). From there, artists started rendering them in a lifelike, playful way that contrasts with their usually terrifying nature.

The centerpiece is a recently acquired and exceptionally rare pair of six-panel folding screens by Takeuchi Ryūa (Kokunimasa), painted in ink, color, and gold pigment on silver leaf. They feature tall, almost life-size humanized skeletons, and curator Andreas Marks describes them as the artist's greatest masterpiece. The screens are titled Skeletons at Play and Skeletons as a Courtesan Procession, both from around 1900–1920.

Other highlights include The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji (c. 1831–32) by Katsushika Hokusai and Mimicry: Monkey (2018) by Akinaga Kunihiro, so you can see how the theme carries through from the early 19th century right up to the present. The exhibition is free, and it's on display at the Cargill Gallery, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55404, through January 3.