ART REVIEW : Fashion Becomes Art : LACMA Exhibit Showcases the Spectacular Kosode

The Western world classifies the spiritual worth of artworks according to a traditional pecking order. Painting, sculpture and related forms are deemed carriers of the purest aesthetic possibility and therefore automatically deserving of the highest respect. Other forms, like the so-called decorative arts, are treated with condescension--entertaining and sociologically interesting, but too dependent on mere craftsmanship to act as vehicles for true genius.

Anyone who subscribes to this idiotic recipe could easily decide to skip the County Museum of Art’s newest exhibition. Opened Sunday, it’s called “When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan.” The principal subject of this 200-work extravaganza is the kosode-- the main outer unisex garment worn in Japan for about 250 years following 1615, a time when Tokyo was known as Edo. It was the sartorial forerunner of the more familiar kimono.

LACMA has clearly gone to a lot of trouble here. The work is sumptuously installed in the main special exhibitions gallery and is accompanied by a densely illustrated, 350-page catalogue including essays by LACMA curators Dale Carolyn Gluckman, Sharon Sadako Takeda and Robert T. Singer, plus half a dozen more Japanese and American scholars. Rare works have been borrowed from 18 collections, including the Tokyo National Museum and the National Museum of Japanese History. The textiles are so fragile they cannot travel farther and must be presented in two rotations to minimize exposure to light. (This one closes Dec. 20. The next half will be seen Dec. 24 to Feb. 17.)

Anyone inclined to shrug this off as a costume show to placate the design industry and flatter local Japanese interests should take a look before deciding. Don’t bother with the slide show, didactic panels or labels for now, just look.

The eye will be rewarded with one of the most stunning, touching aesthetic experiences of a lifetime. These garments, suspended on pole hangers, combine all the entertainment value of special-effects craftsmanship with the moving poetic aura of first-class painting--and contemporary painting at that. If this exhibition attracts the attention it deserves, avant-garde artists will be jostling with fabric designers and eager citizens to get a place in line.

In format, the kosode recall the casual unstretched canvases fashionable here in the ‘70s. This ease of presentation acts as understated dramatization of their unexpected aesthetic power. Their makers appear as masters of the subtle spectacle, delicately balancing bold abstraction and witty stylized realism. In fact, great artists like Sakai Hoitsu did not shrink from designing these garments.

“Uchikake With Bamboo Curtains and Plum Tree” (made sometime between 1800-1850) has the scale and daring of a prime Abstract Expressionist canvas, its raw power gentled by an autumnal palette of tans and olives. “Kosode With Snow-Covered Chrysanthemums, Tendrils and Butterflies” (1750-1800) unsettlingly predicts Jackson Pollock. “Furisode With Japanese Bamboo Curtain and Children at Play” (1800-1850) combines wit, sophistication and wisdom.

The Japanese word for color also translates into “love” and “passion.” Its use here reflects a belief in those linked meanings. Color was virtually never used undiluted, but in naturally derived dyes that capture the optical reality and nuanced moods that add up to life.

The Japanese revere nature. Its poets, like our own, made the seasons into metaphors. Symbols like cherry blossoms and plum trees were instantly recognizable as standing for spring and the brief flowering of love. Calligraphic writing is so closely linked to art in Japan that literary allusions turn up unforced, allowing the wearer to whisper to the viewer about, say, Lady Murasaki’s “The Tale of Genji”--the world’s first novel.

A good simple look at this exhibition tells us that art will not permit itself to be confined to categories, it’s where you find it.

Once that sinks in, a perusal of the social and political implications of the kosode epoch only makes the experience richer, adding amusement to admiration.

In cliche outline, Edo-period Japan was a place of peace, plenty and rigid social stratification. The ruling shogun and his factotums, the daimyo, were top dogs. Behind them, and in descending order, were farmers, artisans, merchants and assorted riffraff known as the chonin . Life was ruled by wearisome ceremony and brittle convention. Sumptuary laws, for example, dictated that the most brightly colored and elaborate kosode were reserved for young available women. As years passed, married females’ kosode grew evermore simple, restrained and somber in design and color.

Then, as now, the more rigidly regimented a society, the greater its need for someplace to hang loose. An urbanizing Japan sprouted such steamy spots in the cultural centers of Edo, Kyoto and Osaka. Under government license, license was permitted in districts reserved for entertainments ranging from Kabuki theater to the purchasable favors of courtesans. This was the floating world, the ukiyo-e.

It produced the famous popular genre paintings that eventually influenced European artists like Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. There is a nice room of them in the exhibition. The ukiyo-e also spawned the kosode.

Interesting how fashion is often forged by the denizens of life’s underbelly. There people are poor enough to count their threads as an important vehicle of personal expression. It happened here in the ‘40s when black and Chicano men developed the zoot suit only to have it ripped off by mainstream designers as “The Bold Look.” In the ‘60s, poor kids decorated their jeans with arm patches, glass studs and deftly placed rips. Hell’s Angel-style bikers wore leather as a practical matter of showing off their macho menace. Eventually all of it showed up in Rodeo Drive boutiques with designer labels and shocking price tags. People talked about clothing as “body art.” It was as close as we ever came to the spirit of the kosode epoch.

Then, it was the bedizened prostitutes and flamboyant actors who concocted the most elaborate costumes. The bored gentry copied them. The upstarts of the ukiyo-e, wanting to look classy, copied the rulers copying them. The government didn’t like this blurring of classes and was forever concocting new sumptuary laws to put a stop to it. It didn’t work, thank goodness.

Makers of the kosode were endlessly inventive. They embroidered, tie-dyed, printed, wove and painted a body of historically unprecedented garments that literally turned into art by ignoring silly classifications of media.

The Western avant-garde has been trying to do this for decades without ever quite achieving the timeless distinction of the kosode. The Japanese have imitated our avant-garde without realizing that, at some fundamental level, we were imitating them.

Some things never change.

* Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd, through Dec. 20, closed Mondays. (213) 857-6000.