Frank L. Chance. Review of "Hokusai" by Ann Yonemura
Frank L. Chance2006, Caa Reviews
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
AI
AI
This review discusses the exhibition "Hokusai", which presents a comprehensive overview of the works of Katsushika Hokusai, emphasizing his diverse talents beyond printmaking to include paintings and illustrations. The exhibition celebrates the legacy of Charles Lang Freer by featuring 166 exemplary works ranging across various themes and periods of Hokusai's artistry in a carefully designed space that enhances viewer engagement and appreciation.
Related papers
An Analysis of Some Illustrated Books by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice
2020
The collection of Japanese prints, albums and illustrated books (ehon) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice is the result of the last stop in Japan of a journey to the Far East of Prince Henry Bourbon-Parma, Count of Bardi and his wife Adelgunde of Bragança, during the years 1887-1889. The gathering of more than thirty thousand objects became the core of the present collection. Among these there are about 500 illustrated books of famous ukiyoe masters, surimono, and colour prints nishikie. The creation of catalogue entries in Japanese and Italian and the analysis of each print reveals an amazing quantity of unpublished ukiyoe masterpieces and allows a division into different groups according to the subject matter. At the same time, this distinction into different genres shows an interesting tendency in the formation of the collection together with a possible new classification of the prints themselves. This study aims to shed a new light on this particular collection while focusi...
How Ukiyo e influenced the Impressionists
The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism introduces audiences to the development of the Japanese print over two centuries (1700–1900) and reveals its profound influence on Western art during the era of Impressionism(Legion of honor Museum). This exhibition “Ukiyo-e and the Impressionists” shows six ukiyo-e pieces culled primarily from the Spaulding collection with the description of the featured influences and comparative images. The Spaulding collection is the famous collection of over six thousand fine Japanese prints to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but with an unusual condition. In order to preserve the delicate colors of the woodblock prints, which fade rapidly when exposed to light, they specified that the prints was never exhibited in the galleries(Museum of Fine Art Boston). Now, for the first time, the University gallery of CSU Dominguez Hills presents digital images of this renowned collection to the public in near microscopic detail using 50 inches TV screen as canvas of monitor.
The History of Art in Japan
University of Tokyo Press eBooks, 2018
Reviewed by Brenda G. Jordan N obuo Tsuji's History of Art in Japan was originally published by the University of Tokyo Press in 2005 and is now available in English translation. The book covers Japan's art history from the ancient Jōmon Era all the way to the rise of manga and anime in the twentieth century. Included is a list of the main historical eras in both Romanization and Japanese; a map of archaeological sites; a timeline for Japan, Korea, and China; long lists of scholarly English-languages sources on Japanese art; and an extensive index that usefully includes the Japanese rendering of words. The author is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Tama Art University. Tsuji is considered one of the preeminent Japanese art historians of his generation, a trailblazer in the research on Japanese eccentrics and the arts of playfulness in Japan. His introduction to this book takes a refreshingly different approach from the usual beaux arts (fine arts) focus of old by including a broad selection of Japanese arts: painting, sculpture, ceramics, lacquer, textiles, metalworking, architecture, gardens, calligraphy, photography, printmaking, and design. Rather than prioritizing one kind of art over another, Tsuji develops three concepts: "wonderous adornment (kazari), playfulness (asobi), and animism. " This kind of approach enables us to view the history of art in Japan more broadly and in tune with the current field of art history, as the idea of bijutsu (fine arts, beaux arts) didn't exist in Japan until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The numerous scholars who assisted the translator with this edition worked hard to provide context; Tsuji, like so many Japanese scholars, assumed a great deal of knowledge on the part of his readers. Even with that, there are likely to be sections that are harder for someone unfamiliar with Japan to fully understand, particularly the numerous references to sites and objects that are not illustrated. The book is probably most useful to graduate students and scholars of East Asian art history, especially Japanese art history, and particularly as a reference book. Some chapters, such as the introduction and chapter 1 on "Jōmon: The Force of Primal Imagination, " can be used for readings in a college classroom as context for the instructor's presentations. Other chapters, such as chapter 3, "Asuka and Hakuhō: The Sphere of East Asian Buddhist Arts, " require a great deal of previous background in Buddhist art, particularly that of China, in order to understand the text. An instructor might use selected readings from Tsuji's book to complement other texts such as Asian Art (Dorinda Neave, Lara Blanchard, and Marika Sardar, 2013) rather than attempt to use it as a main text. Even as an upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level text, the instructor would need to provide historical background and contextualization in order for students to fully understand the material. The book is extremely useful for providing a great deal of information and current research in a comprehensive English-language text.
Living Proof: Drawing in 19th Century Japan
Living Proof: Drawing in 19th Century Japan, 2017
Living Proof: Drawings from 19th-Century Japan examines varying approaches to draftsmanship by Japanese artists in the nineteenth century, shining a light on this underappreciated and understudied body of work. While traditional Japanese woodblock prints are widely admired, this exhibition is the first of this kind in the United States in more than three decades, presenting a range of drawings and sketches that were intended as didactic tools, meditative exercises, or preliminary proofs for woodblock carvings. More than seventy works are featured from such celebrated figures as Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, and Yoshitoshi, as well as lesser-known but significant artists. These materials reveal much about their methods, from re-workings of initial sketches in various stages of the creative process to collaborative engagement of subsequent woodblock carvers and printers. By highlighting the often-unseen processes, alterations, and even imperfections that have been excluded from a celebrated history of printmaking in Japan, Living Proof offers a rare opportunity to witness the artist's hand directly, reframing these preliminary drawings as artworks in their own right. For the great care, attention, and commitment with which they organized this exhibition, I wish to extend my deep gratitude to Kit Brooks, independent curator, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg, Associate Curator of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Working in collaboration, Kit and Tamara have brought together an unprecedented range of works that speak to the varied functions and roles common at the time of their creation. I thank Kit and Tamara for realizing Living Proof, and for revealing the great wealth of surprises, details, and delights that these works present to the viewer. This exhibition would not be possible without the judicious care and stewardship of the collectors and institutions that loaned these works for this installation.
New Art and the Display of Antiquities in Mid-Meiji Tokyo
Review of Japanese Culture and Society, 2012
The Meiji period (1868-1912) was an age of new cultural terminology, but it was also a time when artists, critics, and viewers profoundly altered their thinking about past art and its roles in the creation of new works. This should come as no surprise given that most definitions of modernity involve the will to break with the past, either through the ambition to surpass it, or by dominating it through scholarship and the construction of archives and museums-places where the past is fixed and sequestered from everyday life. 1 Okakura Kakuzō (1863-1913) has been associated with the latter movement; in the wake of modernization theory in the late twentieth century (a historical perspective that presented Japan as progressing toward a satisfactory state of modernity), scholars and popular historians alike celebrated him as an active modernizer through his involvement in a series of pioneering activities: the establishment of the first art journal (Kokka [Flowers of the Nation], 1889), the first national government-sponsored art school (Tokyo School of Fine Arts [Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō], 1889), the first Japanese-language lecture series on Japanese art (Nihon bijutsushi, 1890-92), 2 the first Japanese survey text of art history (Histoire de l'art du Japon/Kōhon bijutsu ryakushi, 1900-1), and so forth. 3 All of the above institutional packages for art historical knowledge have distinctly Western precedents, and scholars from F. G. Notehelfer to Karatani Kōjin have offered the ironic view that "Okakura was able to use his Western education and intellectual skills to defend and promote the values of the [Japanese] past." 4 By sheer virtue of his youth-he was twenty-six when he helped found Kokka and the Tokyo School of Fine Arts-and his international upbringing in Yokoyama, Okakura's frame of reference was undeniably different from that of his seniors. He was born too late to have experienced the modes of late Edo antiquarianism that inspired Ninagawa Noritane, Reizei Tamechika, and the kokugaku (native learning) loyalists whose thought supported the Restoration. 5 While their contributions form an equally important-albeit
Access Granted: Art-Historical Art and Woodblock-Printed Books in Eighteenth-Century Japan
Ars Orientalis, 2019
Contributors to this volume have linked the flourishing of art-historical art in the Song period (960-1279) and beyond to an overall change in historical consciousness. The surge in art-historical art in eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Japan similarly marks a fundamental change in historical consciousness and methodology. From the early 1700s onward, Japan saw the dawn of an information age in response to urbanization, commercial printing, and the encouragement of foreign books and learning by the shogun Yoshimune (in office 1716-45). This essay explores the impact of this eighteenth-century information age on visual art, distinguishing new developments from earlier forms of Japanese art-historical consciousness found primarily in the Kano school. Printed seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Chinese painting albums and manuals arrived in Japan shortly after their issuance, but certain conditions had to be met before similar books could be published in Japan. First, artists and publishers needed to circumvent the ban on publishing information related to members of the ruling class (including paintings owned by these elites). Second, independent painters who had been trained in the Kano school also were obliged to find a means of breaking with medieval codes of secret transmission in a way that benefited rather than harmed their careers. Finally, the emergence of printed painting manuals was predicated on the presence of artists and audiences who saw value in the accurate transcription of existing paintings and their circulation in woodblock form. In the 1670s and 80s, the Edo-based painter Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-1694) popularized the ezukushi (exhaustive compendium) form of illustrated book. While some of his images were based loosely on existing paintings, his books show little interest in faithful reproduction. By the late eighteenth century, by contrast, the market saw the appearance of numerous books about painting with the stated goal of the reproduction and circulation of painting models for the historical or practical benefit of their audiences. Ōoka Shunboku (1680-1763), one of the most important contributors to this trend, presented his own compilations of pictorial models as a response to Honchō gashi (A History of Painting of Our Realm), the textual history of Japanese painting that had been published in Kyoto in 1693. From this, we can conclude that the rise of woodblock-printed painting compendia emerged from broader changes in historical consciousness, and would, in turn, come to affect the ways in which painters and audiences perceived the act of creating new paintings.
Foxwell, "The Painter and the Archive: Models for the Artist in Edo Japan." 2018
Studies in the History of Art, 2018
In The Artist in Edo Japan (Studies in the History of Art), edited by Yukio Lippit. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2018, pp. 221-246.
EARLY MODERN JAPANESE ART HISTORY: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLICATIONS
This is an alternate version of the bibliography published in the journal EARLY MODERN JAPAN (fall 2002), arranged chronologically within categories.
Related papers
Review of Inventing Utamaro: A Japanese Masterpiece Rediscovered (Washington, D.C., Freer Gallery of Art, 2017)
Journal of Japonisme, 2018
"Snow, moon, and flowers / In these moments I lovingly think of you" (setsugekka no toki motto mo kimi wo omofu) ⸪ This tender couplet originally written by the Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772-846), and featured in exhibition wall labels and in the exhibition pamphlet, beau tifully fitted the modern and momentary aesthetics of Japanese ukiyo-e, the Edo period's 'images of the floating world.' In three large painted tableaux, the genre's grand artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) situated this theme of love and beauty in three of Edo's (now Tokyo) well-known pleasure districts. This set of paintings formed the stunning centerpiece of the Freer Gallery of Art's exhibition Inventing Utamaro: A Japanese Masterpiece Rediscovered. Occasioned by the rediscovery of Snow at Fukagawa (ca. 1802-6), announced by the Okada Museum in 2014, the exhibition reunited Snow with the Wadsworth Atheneum's Cherry Blossoms at Yoshiwara (ca. 1793) and the Freer | Sackler's Moon at Shinagawa (ca. 1788) for the first time in over a century (Fig. 1). But rather than simply present Snow at Fukagawa's triumphant return to the art world, curators Julie Nelson Davis (Professor of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania) and James Ulak (Senior curator of Japanese art, Freer Gallery of Art) engaged viewers with robust questions concerning, alongside the meaning of the triad's imagery, commission, provenance, and even attribution. The exhibition transparently explored the answers to these questions and was the first to investigate "the notion of the Utamaro 'brand' ."1 In the absence of personal documents or writings by Utamaro, scholars of Utamaro's work have turned to the artist's dazzling oeuvre (over two thousand print designs and thirty paintings)2 for contextual information to interpret his life. The curators provided an abbreviated history of the Utamaro brand that has evolved with shifting markets, tastes, and ideals of beauty across three continents over two centuries. Exhibition viewers journeyed from publishing houses, galleries in
Review of Fujisawa Akane, Kobayashi Tadashi, Ellis Tinios, Laura J. Mueller (Eds.), Competition and Collaboration: Japanese Prints of the Utagawa School
2008
Tadashi and Tinios, and an extensive set of catalogue entries, Competition and Collaboration takes a serious and scholarly approach to the study of the Utagawa school of ukiyo-e artists. Ukiyo-e , the 'images of floating world', were classed as commercial works in their time, and by and large these printed materials display the fashions and entertainments available in the major cities of the early modern period, in which the Utagawa school was one of its most successful lineages. The prints selected for the exhibition and catalogue all come from the Van Vleck Collection of Japanese woodblock prints in the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin. With more than 4,000 prints by about 140 artists, this is the eighth largest collection of Japanese prints in the United States, and by virtue of being at a university museum is considered one of the most important teaching collections in the world (p. 6). The collection was formed by Edward Burr Van Vleck, Professor of Mathematics at University of Wisconsin-Madison (1909-26). A savvy collector, Van Vleck acquired two collections to form the centre of his own; these included the holdings of Thomas and J. Harriet Goodell and, more famously, that of Frank Lloyd Wright. This was acquired after Wright, having used the prints as collateral, defaulted on a bank loan and the bank sold the prints to recoup its investment. In the 1980s the Van Vleck family donated the collection to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mueller leads off the catalogue with 'Establishing a Lineage: The Utagawa School and Japan's Print Culture', a fine essay describing the emergence of the Utagawa house in the dog-eat-dog market of ukiyo-e. The school's founder, Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814), designed a number of ukiyo-e ('floating pictures') that adapted one-point perspective to depict the famous sites around Edo (as well as fantastical rep
The Legacy of Japanese Art Part 2 Pgs. 49-80
This is a continuation of my paper on the influence/influencing of Japanese arts associated with Japanism, Arts and Crafts and most importantly Art Nouveau
The Importance of Being Hokusai — Hokusai and European Art before 1900
2017
There are some artworks that are simply part of our lives. We can’t imagine being without them. These artworks fascinate, are seemingly easy to understand. The themes are always whittled down to the essentials — like a logo! “The Wave” is one of them. “Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa” (H-7) from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) by Katsushika Hokusai is one of the most famous artworks in the world. It belongs to the whole world; it transcends place and time. We feel no initial need to categorize or explain. Why does Hokusai concentrate on this gigantic wave crashing down, seemingly devouring everything? Is the overpowering force of nature alone the aspects he wishes to convey to us? This is one possibility perhaps for understanding the picture: a sudden, precipitous force of nature, and we — symbolized by the people in the boats — are helplessly exposed to it. It is not only the clarity of the composition, but also our possible involvement, which makes...
The Transmission of Chinese Idealist Painting to Japan: Notes on the Early Phase (1661–1799). By Joan Stanley-Baker. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Japanese Studies, 1992. xxiv, 191 pp. $18.95
The Journal of Asian Studies, 1994
Section of fusuma-e. Ink on paper. Daisen-in Collection. Kyoto. ic. Ikeno Taiga (1723-76). Mount Fuji in Mi-style. One of twelve views. Hanging scroll. Ink and light colors on silk. log x 29.5 cm.Tokyo University of Arts. K325-12. 2. Anonymous. Spring Landscape. 1053. Wall painting. Colors on wood. 374.5 x 138.6 cm. Phoenix Hall, Byodoin. Uji. 3a. Su Shi (1037-1101). (Attributed). Twisted Bare Tree by Recumbent Rock. Mounted with others in handscroll format. Ink on paper. Shanghai Museum. 3b. Wang Tingyun (1152-1202). Secluded Bamboo and Withered Tree. Section, handscroll. Ink on paper. H. 38 cm. Fujii Yurinkan. Kyoto. 4a. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322). Old Tree, Bamboo, and Rock. Album leaf. Ink on paper. 54.1 x 28.3 cm. National Palace Museum. Taipei. 4b. Xuechuang Puming (fl. mid-fourteenth century). Lonely Fragrance on the Precipice. Dated 1343. Hanging scroll. Ink on silk. 109.5 x 45.7 cm. Imperial Household Collection. Tokyo. After Japanese Ink Paintings (hereafter JIP) no. 75. 4c. Tesshf Tokusai (d. 1366). Orchids, Rock, and Bamboo. Hanging scroll. Ink on paper. 51.3 x 32.6 cm. The Art Museum, Princeton University. Lent anonymously. vii Inscribed by Yinyuan Longqi. Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on paper. Ca. 183 x 94 cm. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. 12a. Zhang Qi (fl. mid-seventeenth century). Portrait of Feiyin Tongrong. Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on silk. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. 12b. Kita Soun (fl. mid-seventeenth century). Portrait of Yinyuan Longqi. Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on silk. H. ca. 138 cm. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. 13a. Zhang Qi. Ink Landscape. Inscription dated 1645. Hanging scroll. Ink on silk. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. 13b. Wang Lan (fl. mid-seventeenth century). Landscape "in the style of Wu Zhen." 1655. Hanging scroll. Ink and light colors on paper. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. 13c. Jifei Ruyi. Landscape. After 1655. Hanging scroll. Ink on paper. Nakama Collection. Kyushu. (Including detail). 14a. Cai Hui (fl. mid-seventeenth century). Landscape. 1651. Handscroll. Ink and light colors on paper. Manpukuji Collection. Uji. (Includes detail). 14b. Zhang Ruitu (1576-1641). Towering Peaks and Cascading Falls. Hanging scroll. Ink on silk. Osaka Municipal Museum. 14C. Wang Jianzhang (fl. 1628-44). Searching for a Poem in the Mountain Shade. Hanging scroll. Ink on paper. 153.83 x 49.15 cm. Ex Ching Yuan Chai Collection. 15a. Hattori Nankaku (1683-1769). Ink Landscape. Hanging scroll. Ink on paper. ill x 29 cm. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. British Columbia, Canada. 15b. Gion Nankai (1676-1751). Autumn Landscape. 1707. Hanging scroll. Ink and light colors on paper. 87.5 x 31.5 cm. Yabumoto Collection. Hyogo. silk. 95.1 x 47.2 cm. Yabumoto Collection. Hy6go. 20b. Ikeno Taiga. Plum Blossom with a Bird. Hanging scroll. Finger painting. Ink on paper. 110.5 x 55 cm. Kobayashi Collection. Tokyo. K3o. 20c. Ikeno Taiga. Grapes. Fan painting. Finger painting. Ink on paper. 14.75 x 36.37 cm. Fujii Collection. Osaka. K.96. 2od. Shen Quan signature from finger-painted Prunus (L) and Horses (R). 21a. Shen Quan. Wild Horses. Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on silk. 152.7 x 43.5 cm. Yamato Bunkakan Collection. Nara. 21b. Yosa Buson. Horses in Wintry Woods. Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on silk. 128.4 x 55 cm. Private collection. Kyoto National Museum.
Drawing in Ukiyo-e Prints
Anais do Congresso de Iniciação Científica da Unicamp, 2015
This study approaches the aspects of drawing in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which emerged in Edo period Japan (1603-1867). It is intended to investigate stylistic and historic origins of the prints along with the technical process of producing one, but the research focus will be on graphical and spatial specificities within the drawing involved. Also, there will be a brief discussion over the main topics-or "commonplaces" for expressions-depicted in the prints and a listing of Edo period's main artists, according to renown and influence on Western art. The research covers an interview with Professor Madalena Hashimoto Cordaro, Ph.D., specialist in Japanese art and literature from the University of São Paulo.
Early Modern Japanese Art History-- An Overview of the State of the Field
EARLY MODERN JAPAN, 2002
This article and accompanying bibliography surveys the state of the field of Early Modern Japanese art studies through the date of the publication (2002) in Western languages (primarily in English).
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.