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Ukiyo-e and New Prints – The Old and the New in the Art World
It is said that “new prints” are currently enjoying a bit of a boom among art fans. When I once read an interview with an overseas arphist visiting Japan, the answer to a routine question about what he did in Japan was “I bought prints.
Shinpanga is a very niche genre of woodblock prints that was created during the period of about 50 years from the Taisho era to the early Showa era, while inheriting the tradition of Ukiyo-e production since the Edo era. In the past few years, art exhibitions have been held all over the country.
新版画 進化系UKIYO-Eの美(2022/9/14-11/13)@千葉市美術館
THE 新版画 版元・渡邊庄三郎の挑戦(2022.9/10-11/6@茅ヶ崎美術館)
Notable new prints in the past include those by Ohara Koson, Yoshida Hiroshi, and Kawase Baisui. For example, a collection of prints by Kawase Tomoe Sui, with its nostalgic style, is available in electronic format at a low price on amazon.com.
I would like to explain a little about Ukiyo-e, which is the basis of new prints. In the Muromachi period (1333-1573), the word “ukiyoe” was written as “sorrowful world,” meaning “the world is full of hardships just to live in. After the end of the Muromachi period (1336-1573), which was a time of warfare, the word “ukiyo” was changed to “ukiyo” in the peaceful Edo period (1603-1868). The meaning of “ukiyoe” changed to “floating world” to affirm the transient nature of the present world, saying “If the world is as fleeting and painful as a dream, let us enjoy it more and live a more buoyant life.
The roots of ukiyoe can be traced back to the end of the Muromachi period (1336-1573), when the ruling class of the time, the samurai, aristocrats, and other powerful local figures, who were attracted by the vibrant lifestyle of the townspeople who had rebuilt the war-torn city of Kyoto, had screens and paintings produced depicting scenes of commerce and worship, men, women and children playing and having fun, festivals, dances, and other manners and customs in detail. The most prominent of these were Iwasa Matata and Iwasaki Maki. Among the most prominent examples are the Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu by Iwasa Matabee.
Initially, the paintings were intended as guide maps of the capital, but gradually the focus shifted to the people and their behavior in the city.
In the Edo period (1603-1867), genre paintings were scaled down, and what used to be painted on large screens were now painted on small screens such as the middle or koshi-byobu screens. The painters also changed from the Kano school as described in “Hasegawa Tohaku and the Kano school succeeding Sesshu“, a prestigious school patronized by samurai families, to unknown painters who did not even have a signature seal.
The Muromachi period’s subjects were aristocratic princesses, while in the Edo period they were prostitutes in pleasure houses, and women of high to low status, and women who had been depicted as “one among many” were now depicted alone.
In terms of drawing techniques, printing technology developed in the late Muromachi period (mid-1500s) based on type printing introduced from Europe and Korea (Gutenberg started type printing in the mid-1400s, which was around the middle of the Muromachi period), and in the early Edo period (early 1600s), “banshon” (printed books) called saga-bon or kana-zoshi (paper with kana characters) were produced. These books were beautifully illustrated with woodblock prints, and the illustrations gradually grew in size.
In the early Edo period (1603-1867), Hishikawa Shinao, famous for his “Mikaeri Bijin,” appeared in Edo, one of the most populous cities in the world at that time (said to have exceeded 1 million in the 18th century, comparable to the population of London (about 900,000) and Paris (about 700,000)), where people came from all over Japan to visit the feudal lords on their missions. It began with the provision of inexpensive prints as entertainment to satisfy the amusement of the common people.
Shigenobu’s prints were still expensive, either in black or hand-colored. In contrast, the technique of using a mark on the edge of the paper called “kento” (register) was refined, which made it possible to print in five or more colors at low cost, and “Azuma-nishikie” was produced, which is said to be like Nishijin brocade fabric in Kyoto. One of the most famous nishiki-e artists is Suzuki Harunobu, who is famous for his paintings of beautiful women.
Harunobu Suzuki’s simplified lines and sense of composition/color can be seen in today’s fashion illustrations.
In the mid-Edo period, the publisher Tsutaya Shigsaburo (the company name of today’s TSUTAYA, a major bookstore company, is said to have been named after the founder’s grandfather, whose store name was “Tsutaya” and after Tsutaya Shigsaburo) and Kitagawa Utamaro created “Bijin Oshukue,” pictures of beautiful women with their busts up. It became a big hit.
Sharaku Toshusai, who also worked with Shigsaburo Tsutaya, created an even greater sensation with his unique and beautifully formed yakusha-e (portrayals of actors).
As the Edo period comes to an end in the 19th century, culture and economy are in full bloom. On the other hand, natural disasters and various incidents at the end of the Edo period spread darkness in people’s minds, and “bizarre” expressions began to appear in ukiyoe prints. Katsushika Hokusai, who produced illustrations for novels and books of bizarre stories, created grotesque and fantastical images featuring ghosts and other characters.
Hokusai also established a new genre of landscape painting with his “Fugaku Sanjurokkei” (Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji) against the backdrop of a travel boom in Japan due to the development of highways.
Kuniyoshi Utagawa, who emerged at the end of the Edo period, created landscapes incorporating Western-style expressions, anthropomorphic goldfish and hozu, and even more original forms such as human faces formed from a collection of naked bodies.
As mentioned above, such ukiyoe were a pastime for the common people that could be purchased for the price of a bowl of soba noodles (300-500 yen in today’s prices), and they were meant to be enjoyed and thrown away when people got tired of them. The Tokugawa Shogunate, which was participating in the Paris Exposition of 1867, sold the prints to supplement its travel expenses, and they sold like hotcakes, creating a huge boom overseas.
The new prints began in the Taisho era (1912-1926), when a publisher (such as Shozaburo Watanabe, the subject of the Chigasaki Museum of Art, whose Watanabe Wood Cut Prints Shop is still located in Ginza), who wanted to reproduce Ukiyo-e that could be sold overseas as reprinted editions for business, called on the artists of the time to create Ukiyo-e in the modern style.
Fritz Cavellari’s “Woman in front of a Mirror” and
Various prints were created in collaboration with watercolorists, including “The Duke, Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku Surfing” by Charles Bartlett.
The above painting will be one that depicts Duke Kahanamoku (whose statue is on Waikiki Beach), the founder of modern surfing.
These works were the catalyst for the creation of numerous works from many artists, including Ito Shinsui and Kawase Tomoe Sui.
This genre of “new prints,” which once fell into disuse during the Showa period of rapid economic growth, has recently been reevaluated in terms of its value, and as mentioned earlier, is favored by artists overseas and frequently exhibited in Japan.
This kind of “renewal from the past” is not only applicable to the art world, but also to the world of technology, as described in “AAAI Classic Paper: Renewal from the Past in Artificial Intelligence Technology“.
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