In East Asian cultures, the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting have traditionally been referred to as “the three perfections.” A selection of works spanning the three forms of art—all created in Japan over the course of nearly a millennium—will be displayed in the exhibition The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, opened August 10, 2024, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition will feature over 100 examples of Japanese painting and calligraphy from the more than 250 donated or promised to The Met in the past five years by Mary and Cheney Cowles, Seattle-based collectors who built one of the finest and most comprehensive private collections of Japanese art outside Japan.
“This mesmerizing exhibition showcases magnificent Japanese painting, calligraphy, and poetry, offering a deeper look into both the cultural significance as well as the complex power and beauty of this magnetic trio of art forms,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “We are deeply grateful to Mary and Cheney Cowles for entrusting masterworks from their extraordinary collection to The Met.”
The yearlong exhibition, with a rotation of works on view in May 2025, will demonstrate the power and complexity of stand-alone brush-written calligraphy and its creative integration with painted images. Each gallery will feature several rare and precious examples of paintings and calligraphy, including folding screens with poems brushed on sumptuously decorated papers, dynamic calligraphy by Zen monks of medieval Kyoto, hanging scrolls with paintings and inscriptions alluding to Chinese and Japanese literary classics, ceramics used for tea gatherings, and much more.
Among the highlights of calligraphy works in the exhibition is the Buddhist phrase—in dynamic Chinese-style brush writing—inscribed by the 14th-century Japanese Zen master Musō Soseki: “Abiding nowhere, the awakened mind arises.” The exhibition will also feature the celebrated painter-poet Yosa Buson’s portrayal of the ancient Chinese eccentrics Hanshan and Shide, a large-format diptych of ink paintings by the 18th-century master Okyo drawing on Chinese precedents to capture the power of a dragon and tiger, thought in East Asian cosmology to rule over the heavens and earth.
John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, said: “Mary and Cheney Cowles have donated important works of Japanese calligraphy and paintings to The Met, many of which will be shown publicly for the first time in this exhibition. These gifts, most of which feature poetic inscriptions or allusions to East Asian classical literature, have greatly upgraded our holdings of calligraphy—a cherished art form in East Asia. A goal of the exhibition is to sensitize viewers to the gestural impact and abstract power of Japanese brush writing.”
Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, said: “Mary and Cheney Cowles also assembled a carefully selected collection of Japanese ceramics, many of which complement styles and themes represented by the paintings and calligraphies they cherish. The exhibition will feature examples from their collection alongside other decorative arts selected from The Met's holdings. Numerous ceramics and bamboo works are related to the Chinese-style sencha (steeped tea) culture, embraced by Japanese literati.”
Main Image: Yosa Buson (Japanese, 1716–1783). Hanshan and Shide (detail), Edo period (1615–1868), early 1770s. Pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on paper. Image: 55 × 23 3/16 in.(139.7 × 58.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2022 (2022.432.16a, b)
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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