Week XV: Part 1 TRADITIONAL JAPAN: LATER PAINTING

week XV: Part 1

Week XV: Part 1

TRADITIONAL JAPAN: UKIYO-E (Momoyama and Tokugawa Periods)

Key Work:

Hokusai, "The Great Wave" (LaPlante, Asian Art, Fig. 26.28, p. 260)

Hiroshige, "Hundred Views of Edo"

READING: Lee, S., Far Eastern Art, pp. 496-501.

TERMS:

Ukiyo-e

Woodblock print style - of mixed heritage from:

- from narrative scroll tradition using flat color, assymetrical compositions, with an emphasis on patterning of shape and color. Style brought to fore in the Momoyama (1573-1615) and Tokugawa.(1615-1868)

PRINT DESIGNERS:

FURTHER READING: Takahashi, S., Traditional Woodblock Prints of Japan, Tokyo, 1972.

NOTES: Who are the patrons of Japanese prints? Why?

JAPANESE LANDSCAPE PRINTS AND SERIES

The pictorial style of these prints is usually called ukiyo-e, meaning pictures of the floating world. The term "floating" is used in the Buddhist sense of transient or evanescent, the world of everyday life and especially of pleasure--theater, danc ing, love, festivals--or in the case of these two examples of the momentary rising of the great wave or in the humble aspect of the cotton merchants' lane.

The term ukiyo-e is especially associated with the popular art of woodblock prints, but in Japan it describes a style that begins with the paintings of mixed background. The arts of narrative picture scrolls (emaki, see Week 12 ) of the Kamakura per iod, the decorative style brought to its peak by painters such as Sotatsu (see his byobu , Week 13 ), Chinese elements of Kano painting, and something of both native and western realism were combined and adapted into a new art which met the demands of the merchant and plebian classes of urban Japan after the seventeenth century. This was an art of popular consumption and its bold color, familiar subject matter and ready availability was appealing to the new set of patrons.

The printing of books, even as single sheets, had been known in East Asia since the eighth century, but the technique was used to produce cheap Buddhist icons, painting manuals and text books. Printing of this sort did not fully exploit the medium e ither technically or aesthetically. The new interest in the urban everyday world and the new market among the moderately well-to-do motivated the swift development of woodblock prints. They were produced for mass production and answered quickly the chan ging urban fads and fashions.

Throughout its history the ukiyo-e woodblock print was the result of close collaboration among the artist-designer, the publisher who often dictated the subject matter and style much as a promoter would do today, the woodblock carver, and the printer . The development of the woodblock print in Japan is a complex and specialized activity demanding cooperation and compromise brought about for aesthetic reasons as well as to enhance marketing . The artist's line, based on brush drawing, is adapted to the cut of the knife on the wood. The early prints were in black and white and color was applied by hand. With the invention of color printing in about 1741 each different color was printed from a separately carved block.

The eighteenth century was the heyday of the figure print and as the popular taste for figure prints became more garish, urban and outdoor landscapes became the subject for sensitive and innovative artist-designers. Hiroshige put technical virtuosit y at the service of the creation of "lovely" renderings of the Japanese city and landscapes. He renders his prints with velvety color and with a naturalistic, even western influenced style. His scenes are nearly always idyllic yet particular to a place as in the Cotton Goods Lane which includes a local and recognizable landmark street in Edo (Tokyo).

For instance, the pristinely uniform architecture depicted here was a particular feature of the Odenma-cho (the merchants' quarter) and unusual for wealthy Edo merchants. It enclosed a row of several shops under a single roof, a house form usually r eserved for backstreet tenements. Alternating crests and names identify three separate establishments further defines by the low projecting ridges running down the roof face. According to the authorities, the cotton merchants were entitled to use the bo x-like structure running along the entire roof as a distinguishing mark. The enclosures on top of the ridge enclosed buckets which trapped rain water to be used in case of fire.

The care taken with architectural details in the scene are matched in the handling of human activity. As we peak into the cotton-goods merchants' quarter which was in the heart of Edo, Hiroshige has shortened one of the cloth noren so that we can pe er inside the shop where two merchants sit among piles of cloth presumably tallying the days' profits. The subtle disarray of the dress of the two geisha suggests that they are returning from a night of providing entertainment and perhaps sharing in the drink of the patrons.

Hiroshige also produced series of prints of well-known travel spots--Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido, Hundred Views of Edo , for instance. Interest is maintained from print to print because of the recognizable details of certain locations. Hokusa i's landscape prints (see above) were also made in series. The "Great Wave" is one of Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, the sacred mountain. These are universal views of landscape, usually composed with unusual and dramatic juxtapositions such as how the fi sherman in the skiff are dwarfed by the huge, clawing wave with Mt Fuji in the background. While these artists were contemporaries and were both interested in depicting the transitory, Hokusai's subjects were far less varied and particular than those of Hiroshige. Hokusai's willful inventiveness and daring organization marked his talent, while Hiroshige's focus is on the subtleties of a particular place and feeling. Most of these print designers were also painters, a body of work eclipsed in the west by the popularity and availability of the prints.

From: Linduff, K.M., "Japanese Prints," in Art Past/Art Present, by D. Wilkins, B. Schultz, and K. Linduff, New York: Abrams, 2000, 4th ed.