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Collecting Japanese Antiques. Alistair Seton
Читать онлайн.Название Collecting Japanese Antiques
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isbn 9781462905881
Автор произведения Alistair Seton
Издательство Ingram
Fig. 64 Hiroshige (1797-1858),"100 Views of Famous Places in Edo-Kawaguchi no Watashi Zenkōji," woodblock print, 1857. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Note: Ukiyo-e were made before concepts of limited editions existed; artists' birth and death dates may be uncertain. Standard sizes include Oban: 15 x 10 in (38 x 25 cm), but sometimes half an inch smaller; Chūban: 8 x 11 in (20 x 28 cm), and Hosoban: 6 x 12 in (15 x 30 cm).
Fig. 65 Masanobu (1686-1764)."Man and Three Ladies," woodblock print, sumizuri-e (black and white print). ca. 1715. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Woodblock Prints (Ukiyo-e)
Woodblocks were long used to publish books with or without images, but ukiyo-e pictures of the Floating (or entertainment/ pleasure) World started from around 1665 when Japan finally enjoyed peace and rising prosperity. With money but little freedom, townsmen devoted themselves to pleasure: time was often spent drinking or at brothels and kabuki theaters.
People wore fancy clothes and enjoyed extravagant lifestyles and to express themselves sought an art form unlike those of the court or Buddhist monks. Ukiyo-e thus celebrated a hedonistic society. Sensual courtesans in the most popular and stylish costumes, and dramatic scenes from kabuki plays were the main subjects. The works did not moralize like priests, nor depict an aesthetically ideal landscape like court painters.
Initially, the subject matter of ukiyo-e was up-market, with masked references to Chinese literature or Genji Monogatari episodes. After about 1800, however, woodblock prints no longer appealed only to this leisured, educated class, but to ordinary people with everyday interests. Nowadays, those same people would focus on television or movies, but the kabuki theater then was where the heart -throbs were. Many woodblock prints show an actor in a favorite, climactic pose (mie) and were bought by his fans as they were cheap and attractive mementos.
All over the land a main reason for buying prints made in Tokyo was to see the latest fashions worn by actors and courtesans. In this sense, prints foreran fashion magazines and television. With the regular, enforced sojourns by clansmen in the capital, many prints got taken home to the clan lands, so men and women could see the latest clothes and hairstyles prevailing in the capital.
Top fashion photographs are snapped by the very best today but with Edo prints, there was a difference. The best-connected aspiring artists got into famous Kanō and Tosa school studios and could expect a secure career, but the ukiyo-e world was treated by the samurai class with disdain: those without the right connections had to risk the nether world of ukiyo-e, because that was where the work was and fame might come among the townspeople (but maybe not money). Colleague Peter Ujlaki says that apart from Hokusai (who did get painting and surimono or print commissions, but was careless with money like the typical Edokko so always out of pocket), artists accepted lower prestige to work in ukiyo-e, generally out of a love for the lifestyle of the theater and amusement districts, so they worked for love not lucre.
Fig. 66 Toyoharu (1735-1814),"Eiegance: Six Clear Rivers," woodblock print. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 67 Kiyonaga (1752-1815),"Minami Jūnikō," woodblock print, ca. 1785. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 68 Koryūsai (fl.late 18th c.), chūban, woodblock print, ca. 1770. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 69 Utamaro,"Three Beauties," one of triptych, ca. 1800. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 70 Utamaro,"Teachings in Pa rents' Eyes-Bakuren" (abandoned woman), woodblock print, ca. 1802. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
A third, if less common, reason for the existence of prints was to advertise a particular establishment or kimono design. The Floating World, epitomized by Yoshiwara in Edo, was very competitive, and since some prints bear the names of geisha houses, it is reasonable to see a connection. Many prints of women name their place of work. Thus, prints would have been a good way to show which lovely women worked where and what they wore.
Occasionally, a woman might give a regular client a print of herself as a token of affection or to remind him where to find her-in much the same way that name cards are used today! Some experts, however, do not share this reasoning.
Judging by the current passion for erotic prints and animation, another merit of prints must have been that they fed the Japanese people's insatiable appetite for the visual. As a northern European, in the wrong mood I find the visual clutter of Japan (and Hong Kong, etc.) an eyesore, but there is also something charming about a narrow street full of vertical signs-ergo these prints.
It is interesting to note that Japanese cartoons and fashions are increasingly popular in other Asian countries.
Popularity in the West
Westerners have always felt the pull of ukiyo-e, probably because they show landscapes, clothing, and a way of life quite unlike anything in Europe or America. As a result, many dealers, curators, and collectors have considerable knowledge of the subject, while museums, auction houses, and stores are well stocked with prints.
Woodblock images of the Floating World became popular from the 1860s in the West, captivating people with their vitality, fresh ness, and charm, and causing the Japonisme art movement. Ukiyo-e were collected by Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Monet. In a way, Westerners are responsible for rescuing ukiyo-e from oblivion, as most indigenous critics scorned them in the later 1800s, though aware that the print artist Utamaro was different and that Westerners loved Hokusai and Hiroshige too.
Ukiyo-e influence is seen in masters like Van Gogh, Whistler, and Toulouse-Lautrec, dating from the time when ukiyo-e by unknowns were said at times to be but liner in a box of curios packed for European travelers, or sold by the pound to curio collectors, sometimes after being dirtied to make them appear "older."
One secret of the enduring popularity of ukiyo-e is the way some artists went beyond the Japanese tradition of using line and sensitivity to convey scenes, and incorporated perspective (putting Westerners at ease) in scenes that are still quintessentially exotic, thereby inducing frissons of both recognition and shock. Other reasons are the soaring creative imagination shown in choosing scenery (see later, Hokusai and Hiroshige), the human warmth of genre scenes like the inebriated revelers and snoozing dogs in Kuniyoshi's "Yoshiwara Embankment by Moonlight," and the playfulness of Hiroshige's "Ratcatcher" or Kuniyoshi's "Six Immortal Poets as Cats," which satirizes the Chinese tradition of making respectful images of famous authors. Through punning allusions to them or their poems, it depicts six fat cats socializing: the great Heian era poets (Rokkasen) Ariwara no Narihira, Ono no Komachi (the lasting image of female beauty and poetic excellence), Sōjō Henjō, Bunya no Yasuhide, Kisen Hōshi, and Ōtomo no Kuronushi.
Fig. 71 Toyokuni I (1769-1825), "Today's Match of Beauties-Saké Cup as Mirror," woodblock print, ca. 1820. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 72 Toyokuni I,"Fireworks at Ryōgoku," woodblock print, triptych, ca. 1790. Photo courtesy Mita Arts Gallery.
Fig. 73 Hokusai (1760-1849),"Kanadehon Chūshingura Scene VI," wood block print, ca.