C14| Saturday/Sunday, October 19 - 20, 2019 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
MASTERPIECE|‘LAKSHMI (KICHIJOTEN),’ POSSIBLY MEIJI PERIOD (1868-1912)
ments....being blessed by whom I shall win
wealth in plenty.” Her dress, for its part, repli-
cates a fashion from China’s Tang dynasty
(618-907). Its cloud motifs bring to mind her role
in assuring plentiful harvests. And its wave-like
hem recalls the story of an imperial envoy who,
in 804, was on a ship during a terrible storm. He
prayed to Kichijoten and, abruptly, the tempest
ceased—and the goddess added safety at sea to
her growing portfolio.
The fact that Kichijoten is not holding a lotus,
Lakshmi’s hallmark, also signals the distance
she’s covered. Yet the shape of Kichijoten’s hall-
mark—the wish-fulfilling gem—echoes the round
fruit Lakshmi is often shown holding, a reminder
of their shared identity as a deity.
There is yet another significant parallel in
their depictions. Around the fourth century, be-
lievers linked Lakshmi to Vishnu as his wife, de-
scribed thus in the Mahabharata epic: “Orderly
social relations and traditional virtues attract Sri
Lakshmi, herself a model of social decorum as
Vishnu’s wife.” This translates into imagery in
which Lakshmi is shown embracing her husband,
perching on his lap or accompanying him as one
of two diminutive figures flanking the tall god.
The role of deities is historically as fluid in
Japan as it is in India, and a similar dynamic
plays out in the imagery of Kichijoten. By the
late 11th century she, too, is paired with a pow-
erful god, the guardian deity Bishamonten, who
tends to tower over her. She also occasionally
shows up as one of the Seven Gods of Good
Fortune, one member of a larger ensemble.
Not so here. She rises before us, expecting
veneration, her expression benign but distant.
Any kindness she bestows upon us is from a po-
sition of absolute power. And there is no doubt
that she can shower us with wealth. But the as-
sociations she has accumulated over the centu-
ries should remind us this Diwali that prosper-
ity isn’t just about money.Ms. Lawrence writes about Asian and Islamic
art for the Journal. PHOTOGRAPH BY SYNTHESCAPE, COURTESY ASIA SOCIETYTHE FOCUS OF A SMALL EXHIBITIONat the
Asia Society Museum, on view through Jan. 5,
2020, is a roughly 4-foot-tall painting of a ha-
loed woman dripping with jewels. Red and
green gems dangle from her headdress and
hang from tassels as she stands on a giant lo-
tus, afloat in space, unseen winds gently ruf-
fling her silks. Cloud motifs adorn her skirt,
whose hem curls and rolls like waves. Her right
hand extends, open-palmed, as though she had
just released a gift; her left holds aloft a round
stone topped by a bright red flame, the hall-
mark of a wish-fulfilling jewel.
The iconography is clear: She is Kichijoten,
Japanese Buddhists’ conception of Lakshmi, a
popular Hindu goddess whose annual five-day
festival of Diwali kicks off Oct. 25. Across the
globe, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains will line window-
sills and doors with lights, inviting the goddess
to grace their homes and businesses with
wealth and prosperity.
One gauge of Kichijoten’s popularity is how
few ancient paintings survive. Starting in the
eighth century, paintings presided over more
and more rites invoking Kichijoten’s help in
safeguarding the nation, bringing plentiful har-
vests, ensuring peace, prosperity and rulers’ po-
litical success. By the Kamakura period
(1185-1333), most paintings had suffered such
irreparable damage that temples replaced them
with statues. Though probably painted in the
late 19th to early 20th century, this Kichijoten
exhibits the style of much earlier paintings andBYLEELAWRENCEICONS
Prosperity
Comes in
Many Forms
REVIEW
idays, dancing, parties, wed-
dings—usually stayed the same.
“You’re going to film the happy
times, the good times,” Mr. Ma-
gliozzi said. “It is usually women
who are filming, looking at fash-
ions or going on boats for vacation
in Puerto Rico. It is hardly differ-
ent from what people share on social media today.”
But some of the offerings in the show are more
unusual. The filmmaker Jonas Mekas called home
movies a “beautiful folk art, like songs and the
lyric poetry that was created by the people,” and
that description certainly fits “My Dream Trip,”
shot in 1977 by a man known only as Roscoe. He
took his Super 8 camera into the bathroom of a
train compartment and filmed himself mumbling
incoherently in the mirror while rummaging
through his wife’s cosmetics. The movie is quietly
mysterious, making viewers wonder why the man
chose to record such an odd moment.
Other films in “Private Lives Public Spaces”
document significant cultural milieus. A 25-minute
movie made by the experimental-film impresario
Howard Guttenplan in 1967 shows New York’s
Tompkins Square Park flooded with hippies clam-
oring to see their heroes, the Grateful Dead, before
authorities shut the show down. Videographer Nel-
son Sullivan recorded New York City’s dance clubs
in the 1980s, showing writhing, sweaty bodies pul-
sating across dance floors.
Mr. Magliozzi observed that Sullivan “was not
filming because he knew it would be shown any-
where, but because he loved what he saw; he was
filming with love. And people today document
what they love.” In this sense, home movies offer
a glimpse of the constant self-recording that de-
fines so many of our lives now. “We believe this
product of the 20th century speaks to the 21st
loud and clear,” Mr. Magliozzi said. “You want to
find your roots? This is where you should be
looking.” THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (2)‘H
ome movies are expected to get
boring after time, that’s part of
their aesthetic,” notes Ron Ma-
gliozzi, the curator of “Private
Lives Public Spaces,” an exhibi-
tion opening Oct. 21 at the newly expanded Mu-
seum of Modern Art in New York. But this show of homemade films
spanning the 20th century is designed to keep the viewer’s attention.
Its galleries are full of movies projected or screened on monitors that
are arranged to look like family photographs covering a wall. “In this
exhibit, you can just turn your head 5 inches and see something new
and unexpected,” Mr. Magliozzi said.
Most of the films in “Private Lives Public Spaces” differ from
MoMA’s standard movie offerings in that they have never been the
subject of scholarship or criticism. In fact, “90% of the home movies
that appear in the exhibition had not been preserved or screened
publicly before,” Mr. Magliozzi said.
The show includes 47 hours of footage from the museum’s archives
and occupies three floors.
Some films feature celebrated
figures: A never-before-seen
1929 movie of Charlie Chaplin
shows him at the home of his
neighbors Mary Pickford and
Douglas Fairbanks, dancing
while wearing a ballerina skirt
and holding a bouquet of flow-
ers. A 1935 film shows the
sculptor Constantin Brancusi at
work. Movies from the 1930s
taken by Mrs. Gilbert W. Chap-
man, an American collector,
document her travels through
Europe with her famous artist
companions, including Pablo
Picasso and Henri Matisse.
Mr. Magliozzi believes that
visitors who walk through the
exhibit will feel the “poetic
passage of time.” The oldest
movies in the show date from
1916, before film cameras were
available for purchase by the
public. Most home movies from
this time were made on studio
sets, to document weddings or
family scenes featuring studio
executives. “Mr. Marvin’s Wed-BYEMILYFERGUSONding” from 1916 shows a double wedding and recep-
tion; it is silent, but guests can be seen singing and
dancing across the set.
When film cameras did go on the market in the
1920s, they were usually only affordable by the
wealthy. Mr. Magliozzi discovered several films
featuring the family of Russell Stover, the confec-
tionery magnate, from 1925; they show the open-
ings of candy shops, chocolate delivery boys on bicycles and the Sto-
ver children playing at the family mansion.
As cameras became more accessible with the development of inex-
pensive hand-held models, the subjects people chose to document—hol-New York’s Museum of Modern
Art features films that document
our intimate moments.The Folk
Poetry
Of Home
Movies
Above, an image from a 1929
movie of Charlie Chaplin at
the home of his neighbors,
Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks. Below, an image
from a 1944 home movie by
Charles L. Turner.appears to be a near perfect match to a Kama-
kura-period statue at Joruri-ji temple near
Kyoto: same dress, same adornment, almost ex-
actly the same pose. I say “appears to be” be-cause the statue belongs to a class of
Buddhist statuary that is kept out of
view, her image circulated primarily
through copies and photographs.
Thankfully, this is not the case for
other such statues, one of which the Min-
neapolis Institute of Art is installing in its
Japanese galleries in time for Diwali. The
painted patterns on the statue’s dress
and the pale skin tones have long worn
off. But she sports the same multilayered
sleeves as the painting, same plump
body, and same scalloped edges of the
shawl that drapes across her shoulders
and crosses over her chest. And, of
course, the goddess’s hallmark: the grant-
fulfilling jewel and the gift-giving ges-
ture. The medium dictates some differ-
ences. In the painting, the jewel is round,
topped by delicately rendered flames,
which sculptors seemed to have alluded
to by giving the stone a pointed onion
shape. Similarly, sculptors could only hint
at the sway in the goddess’s garment,
while the painter unleashed heaven’s
winds.
By the time this iconography took
shape in Japan, Lakshmi had traveled far
from her birthplace in India, accruing a
multiplicity of names, stories and powers
as people of different cultures embraced
her, credited her with miracles, and fit her
into pre-existing pantheons.
We can find clues to that journey and
evolution in the painting. The goddess was
first written about between 1000 and 700 B.C.,
yet much of the poet’s description still applies:
“divinely resplendent....the embodiment of the
fulfillment of all wishes....radiant with orna-Kichijoten, Japanese Buddhists’
conception of Lakshmi, a popular
Hindu goddess whose annual five-day
festival of Diwali is set to begin, is a
divinity with global popularity.