“Year Of The Dragon” Makes Waves

“Year of the Dragon” — an exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery celebrating the year 2024 and running now through Nov. 10 — begins with two artworks of waves. One of those artworks happens to be the beyond-famous woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai, dating from the 19th century. The other, printed only in 2023, is by the Philippines-born American artist Peter Soriano. 

In the difference between the two pieces lies the angle of the show overall, which offers a taste of the rich history of East Asian art and shows how more contemporary Asian artists have embraced the modern move toward abstraction while staying true to the techniques and aesthetic sensibilities they’ve inherited.

“In the West, the dragon has historically been characterized as an evil creature, breathing fire while flying through the air, and thus has been considered something to be conquered,” writes curator Sadako Ohki. ​“By contrast, in the East the dragon has long been seen as a powerful being that pours out blessings from the celestial realm in the form of rainwater over swirling wind.” 

The dragon is associated with ​“good fortune, achievement, and prosperity,” but Ohki points out that some of this power doesn’t derive from political or economic forces. In China, she writes, ​“the enigmatic dragon presided over the wind and clouds and brought precious rain.” The dragon thus remains a potent figure for contemporary artists, who ​“take up the dragon’s perceived relationship with the elements of wind and water to address themes related to environmental crisis, thereby lending the motif a new currency at odds with its well-established connotations of success.”

This begins with a spin on Hokusai’s famous print of a wave dwarfing Mount Fuji. To some, it’s more than just a landscape; the wave ​“represents the encroachment of foreign powers,” a deep political concern in 19th-century Japan. The wave isn’t just a wonder of nature; it’s a threat. Inspired by Hokusai, Soriano takes his wave a step further. At nine feet tall, his image ​“towers over us like a tsunami wave that is about to break, having swallowed everything in its path,” bringing to mind ​“the loss of lives in recent tsunamis throughout the world.” If Hokusai used depictions of nature as a metaphor for political threats, Soriano stays in the literal. The wave is a threat in and of itself.

Throughout the show, Ohki draws strong connections from past to more contemporary works. The history of Western art is often presented as a series of aesthetic revolutions, with young artists breaking from old ones, declaring the originality of their new ideas. This reviewer doesn’t know enough about the history of East Asian art to say if there’s a similar dynamic at work among visual artists in China and Japan, but if there is, Ohki doesn’t emphasize it. Rather, the move into more modern modes of expression is presented as development. The Japanese artist Kohyama Yasuhisa is honored for his stripping ideas down to their essences — ​“and what remains touches on the essence of the Japanese aesthetic of reduction,” Ohki writes. Ceramics artist Sakiyama Takayuki is presented as reconciling the tension between his avant-garde teachers and his more traditional taste. 

The sense of continuity is clearest in the presentation of two large screens. The first dates from the beginning of the 17th century, attributed to artist Kaihō Yūshō. The screen depicts the dragon as a ​“water god,” giving ​“particular attention to rendering humorous details in the faces of the dragons” in the images. In Kaihō Yūshō’s work, the dragon is a powerful deity, the human a thankful recipient of the creature’s gifts of abundance.

Contemporary artist Qin Feng, meanwhile, is a ​“leading avant-garde artist who makes use of traditional calligraphic materials,” deploying ​“unrestricted energy with the brush.” In this more restrained work, the implied form of a dragon appears ​“amid violent waters,” ​“as though writhing around in agony or in rage.” In short, ​“the dragon, god of water, suffers the effects of civilization’s contamination of nature.”

With the retrospective view of centuries, then, Ohki shows how views of dragons — as metaphors for power, for luck, for nature — have changed. The dragons of centuries ago were distant, benevolent creatures, for those lucky enough to encounter them. Today, they’re closer to hand. Our effect on nature itself has grown considerably since Kaihō Yūshō’s time. In recent years, so has the threat from nature to us. It would maybe be fitting if this was the year we acknowledge that more deeply, and in return, rekindle a little more of the awe — and playfulness — of the past.

“Year of the Dragon” runs at Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., through Nov. 10. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.