Mary Jo Maraldo

The Status of Oral Traditions in the History of Philosophy: Methodological Considerations

7.-9. September 2023, Universität Hildesheim

Mary Jo Maraldo

Visuality, Pure and Worded: A Dialogue of Images between Japanese Calligraphy and Modern Art.

A slide lecture

Our symposium has focused on orality and the relevance of oral sources for global histories of philosophy. In addition to sounded ways of building traditions, there have been visual interchanges that often escape the notice of historians of culture and philosophy. This slide lecture illustrates one such interchange that began 75 years ago and still continues. In 1952 the Japanese artist Morita Shiryū exhibited his calligraphic works in Brussels. This exhibit made visible, for the first time outside Japan, the amazing interchange of images and techniques that have mutually influenced Japanese calligraphers and Western painters such as Joan Miró, Antonio Tapies, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Pierre Alechinsky. Japanese calligraphers were inspired by abstract expressionism to create works that playfully abstracted pure images from linguistic texts and the ancient Chinese characters used to write them. Western painters like Miró and Paul Klee also created texts of pure images; and others like Kline, Motherwell and Alechinsky created calligraphic-like texts that mimicked Sino-Japanese characters. Painters like Magritte used contrast and space in new ways shared by contemporary Japanese calligraphic work. This lecture with slide illustrations teaches us a way of seeing the new forms of vision discovered and practiced by this cross-cultural movement.

Mary Jo Maraldo is a native of Terre Haute, Indiana, and has lived in Japan for seven years. She began her studies of Japanese language and culture in 1971 at Sophia University, Tokyo, and in 1972 began formal lessons at Ikebana Ikenobo School. In 1984, she received teaching credentials in Ikenobō (池坊) the oldest and largest school of ikebana. In 1985 she was awarded the title of Junkankan by Senei Ikenobō, Headmaster of the School. She did numerous gallery installations of large sculptural Ikebana works at the Jacksonville Art Museum from 1982 to 1986. Her formal study of Japanese calligraphy began in 1987 under Daiki Takemoto in Kyoto. A recipient of several grant awards, she has shown calligraphic works, both two and three dimensional, in solo exhibitions in Kyoto, Japan; Jacksonville, Florida; and Santa Fe, New Mexico; as well as in group exhibitions of contemporary art in Florida and New York. Her work is on view at Bruce Dempsey Fine Arts | SHO: Contemporary Japanese Calligraphy.

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