Creating Together – Networks of Creativity in Arts of Japan

“Collaborative creation has a long tradition in East Asia and Japan. Poems were conceived during gatherings and often recorded in calligraphic writing on the spot. Prose and poetry inspired paintings and vice versa. Thus, text and image, whether by the same or different contributors, often appear jointly on a single art work. This temporary presentation drawn from museum holdings takes as its focus collaborative works of art, which range from simple text-image combinations by two contributors to highly complex joint works in hanging scroll or album format by up to thirty-two parties. …”