The brilliant and intimately appealing art of the ukiyo-e woodblock print is undoubtedly the most well-known of all Japanese arts. This particular style of art flourished in Japan from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centrury. The word Ukiyo-e was originally Buddhist and meant “sad world”. By the seventeenth century, however, the meaning evolved to mean “floating world.” The “world” was one of transient pleasures and freedom from the cares and concerns of the world. The prints and paintings that the merchants commissioned and bought, almost always depicted aspects of a carefree existence, and were therefore called ukiyo-e: “pictures of the floating world”. To understand these prints, and gain respect for the art, we must understand something of the ukiyo-e, or at least those aspects of it which the print-makers usually depicted: the theatre, life in the pleasure quarters, and travel. In essence, Ukioy-e reveals much of the rich history of Japan. During the sixteenth century in Japan, wars of between rivaling feudal lords came to an end and the country was unified. As a result, the traditional arts experienced a renaissance.
The military class, the samurai, began to beautify their castles which, until then, had been little more than forbidding fortresses. Painters and sculptors were hired to decorate the sliding doors, ceilings and wood panels while weavers and seamstresses were commissioned to produce beautiful clothes. Every form of art and craft was vitalized by the desire of the powerful samurai to make their lives as luxurious as possible. The great merchant families of the cities of Kyoto and Sakai, whose money had provided the samurai with guns and ammunition, also wanted to improve the quality of their lives. Since they were of a lower social order than the military, the merchants did not pretend to be interested in the artisocratic forms of art associated with members of the high culture. They commissioned paintings depicting pretty courtesans, visited the new Kubuki dances, and read popular books that were lavishly illustrated by hand. The demand for these illustrated manuscripts, however, became so great that they could no longer be made by hand. Thus, the picture-book printed from cut wood was born. Although the technique of printing from wood blooks had been known in Japan for many centuries, and although Chinese printed books were quite common, the first Japanese illustrated book printed from wood blocks did not appear until around 1650 (the book was the Ise Monogatari, which is a traditional tale).
The Term Paper on Ai Weiwei & Marcel Duchamp – Debate Within the Art World
Artists’ intentions are shaped by context, materials, ideas and audience. Discuss this statement with consideration of how audience interpretations of artworks have caused debate in the art world. An artwork is often an artist’s subjective expression of their context. The ideology of artists, their perceptions of their contexts and the materials available to them play a significant role in the ...
The illustrations in such early printed books were crude and directly relevant to the text. Very soon, however, the pictures became more important and provided the masses with an affordable form of art (even those who were illiterate bought the books, for the sake of the pictures).
Around 1660 there were many illustrators working under contract for publishers in Japan’s capital, Edo (present-day Tokyo).
One of them, Hishikawa Moronobu, persuaded his publisher to issue illustrations as single sheets and without texts. These sold very well and from then on, woodblock prints as well as illustrated books were widely available to the public. He not only signed each print in the woodblock, but his signature announced to the world that he took himself seriously as an artist, that he was Yamato esho – master of Japanese painting. In the sixteenth century, a group of entertainers, led by a woman, became popular in Kyoto. It specialized in dances performed by men masquerading as women, and women as men. Many such troupes soon emerged, some of which consisted only of women who were less interested in dancing than prostitution. The authorities soon prohibited them. The girls were then replaced by boys who, in turn, were also banned for the same reason. Finally, adult males took over, and they began to liven up the performances by acting out some of the popular stories of the day. The result was the form of the Kubuki theatre, famous even today In the slangof the time, Kabuku meant ‘fashionable’, and it is thought that the name Kabuki developed from it. The theatre was not only fashionable, but was also very popular, partly because it was the only outside entertainment to which respectable women might go.
The Essay on Italian Women Artists Century Artistic Renaissance
Prior to the fifteenth century, very few works of art were signed and virtually no information on their artists, male or female, was recorded. However, beginning in the early Renaissance, the identities of artists and their stories begin to be preserved. Any study of the art of this period will undoubtedly include the study of the lives and works of the great masters such as Raphael, Donatello, ...
Not only the leisured wives and daughters of the merchants flocked to the theatre but, on the few free days, the ladies of the court went also. Some of these women were fortunate, or forward enough to have actors as lovers, but most of them had to settle for portrait-prints of their favorites. Publishers were aware of this demand and hired artists to depict every aspect of life of the actor and the Kabuki theatre. They showed actors relaxing backstage, holding dramatic poses, or simply out taking a walk. They also produced single and group portraits. The threatre provided the print-makers with an endless supply of subjects, and they, in turn, boosted its popularity. There were, of course, as many male enthusiasts of the Kabuki as there were female ones. For the men, however, there was a more important place of entertainment – the brothel. The craftsmen and merchants possessed enough money and time to allow them to live large parts of their lives with courtesans and prostitutes, and a large industry grew up to meet their needs. By 1627, all the whores and brothels in Edo had been concentrated in one place, the Yoshiwara, and were licensed for prostitution. After a disastrous fire in 1657, which virtually destroyed Edo and caused the city to be replanned and rebuilt, another district was specially cleared for prositution and called the New Yoshiwara.
It inspired many now-famous ukiyo-e prints. The most accomplished of the courtesans provided the print-makers with many of their subjects. Although prints of explicit sexual activity were popular, the courtesan was as frequently depicted showing off her extravagant kimonos, demonstrating the latest hairstyle and enjoying her seemingly leisured way of life. She was a star, and her portrait, bought by admirerers and by those who wished they could afford her, increased the demand for her and the profits of her house. Once Hishikawa Moronobu had signed his prints and had called himself a master, other artists followed his example and, in true Japanese fashion, master-pupil realtionships developed. Schools of print-making, each with its own style, emerged. They were known as families because the head pupil often married into his master’s family and established a true blood relationship. In the early eighteenth century families such as the Hisikawa (Moronobu’s followers) the Torii (who specialized in actor prints) and the Kaigetsudo (masters of the full-lengths of beautiful women) were especially prominent. The early eighteenth century was a period of development in print-making.
The Essay on Ukiyo E Prints Japanese Women Munsterberg
Varieties of Subject Matter in Ukiyo-e Prints The Japanese woodblock print has been one of the more fascinating aspects of Japanese aesthetic expression to western culture. Ukiyo originally was the Buddhist term "for the fleeting secular world in contrast with the spiritual reality of Buddhism" (Munsterberg 16) though in the Edo period the term was appropriated to designate in particular the red- ...
The quality of the paper improved; shapes and sizes of prints became varied; and polytychs were introduced. Techniques of printing became more sophisticated. The urushi-e (lacquer-print) was developed, in which certain areas of black are made to shine by mixing glue with the printing-ink. The greatest innovation in technique, however, was in the use of color. From the earliest times, deluxe editions of prints had been richly colored by hand, and by the middle of the eighteenth century Okumura Masanobu (a publisher as well as an artist) was experimenting with the use of more than one block to produce beni-e, or “red pictures” which employed up to three colors. These colors were not contained by the contours of the design, however. The first truly polychromatic print (called nishiki-e, “brocade picture” in Japanese) appeared around 1769. An Edo artist, Suzuki Harunobu published a series of prints in which the colors were either enclosed by an outline, or formed hard edges in their own. These prints were an instant success and Harunobu, until his death six years later at the age of 46, was the most popular artist in Edo, producing prints of ethereal, identical-looking young men and women, posing with exquisite grace. After Harunobu’s death, the ukiyo-e art form shifted from the dream-like, quiet or gentle atmosphere that he typified, back to the Kabuki actors and the girls of the Yoshiwara District. This trend was completely dominated by Torii Kiyonaga (1752 – 1815).
The Term Paper on Artists Work Caravaggio Caravaggios Moir
There are many Renaissance artists who had a large impact on what was then the future of art. Each of these artists had some-what interesting lives. Although many artists of the Renaissance time had interesting lives, Michelangelo Merisi, who was called Caravaggio, had the most interesting and turbulent life. Caravaggio, was born in Milan in during the late summer or early autumn of 1571. His ...
Kiyonaga is considered by some to be one of the greatest of the 18th century woodblock artists. His girls were more realistic and mature than those of Harunobu’s. Kiyonaga portrayed tall, mature women, often in statuesque poses involved in gentle activities. He used strong lines and beautiful colors, emphasizing browns and grays to produce realistic scenes. Although Kiyonaga was not a member of the Torrii family, he became the head of the Torii School in 1875 when his master died suddenly. Kiyonaga assumed the Torrii family name. His early works were influenced by such popular artists as Suzuki Harunobu, Isoda Koryusai, and Kitao Shigemasa. Kiyonaga was a prolific artist: He published several sets of his ukiyo-e women, the finest of which are the well-known “Tosei Yuuri Bijin Awase”, “Huuzoku Azuma no Nishiki”, and “Minami Koo”. After Kiyonaga retired, Kitagawa Utamaro (substantially influenced by Kiyonaga) became the leading ukiyo-e master. Utamaro introduced the okubi-e style of ukiyo-e, a portraiture style, where the artist concentrates on the formal elements of the face and hair, and only the head and shoulders are shown in the picture; Utamaro usually removed the setting entirely.
He depicted mainly brothel and tea house women, but unlike his predecessors who depicted these women as glamorous, he depicted them as they really were, with all their vanity, their frivolity, their intoxication, or their hard work. Most of his women showed a sensuous posture of the head with a bare curved neck and elongated torso. Their kimonos are often a little revealing. [note: Utamaro’s work is known to have had an influence on later artists such as Picasso and Modigliani, each known for their elongation and distortion of their women.] Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is considered one of the outstanding figures of the Ukiyo-e school of printmaking. Between 1796 and 1802 he produced a vast number of book illustrations and color prints, perhaps as many as 30,000, that drew their inspiration from the traditions, legends, and lives of the Japanese people. Hokusai’s most typical wood-block prints, silkscreens, and landscape paintings were done between 1830 and 1840. The free curved lines characteristic of his style gradually developed into a series of spirals that gave freedom and grace to his work, as seen in Raiden, the Spirit of Thunder. In his late works Hokusai used large, broken strokes and a method of coloring that imparted a more somber mood to his work, as in his massive Group of Workmen Building a Boat. Among his best-known works are the 13-volume sketchbook Hokusai manga (begun 1814) and the series of block prints known as the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (circa 1826-33).
The Essay on Women Representing Women Male Artist
Many female artists in the 17 th century used women as subject matter. Images of women are powerful because women have often been treated as the second sex. Such images are often paradoxical in their power. Female artists often times represent the most extreme representations of women's subservience in effort to convey their messages. Two instances are in Elisabetta Sirani's, Our Lady of Sorrows ...
The latter was an attempt to show Mt. Fuji from many different angles and in a variety of circumstances. It was, in other words, an experiment in observing and recording the essence of single object seen in diverse aspects. These pictures’ majestic composition and, in many cases, resourceful and even witty content, together with Hokusai’s powerful brushstrokes, have earned them many devotees in Japan and throughout the world. Hiroshige (1797-1858), was the last great figure of the Ukiyo-e. He transmuted everyday landscapes into intimate, lyrical scenes that made him even more successful than Hokusai. Ando Hiroshige was born in Edo (now Tokyo) and at first, like his father, was a fire warden. The prints of Hokusai are said to have first kindled in him the desire to become an artist, and he entered the studio of Utagawa Toyohiro, a renowned painter, as an apprentice. In 1812 Hiroshige took his teacher’s name (a sign of graduation), signing his work Utagawa Hiroshige. His career falls roughly into three periods. From 1811 to about 1830 he created prints of traditional subjects such as young women and actors. During the next 15 years he won fame as a landscape artist, reaching a peak of success and achievement in 1833 when his masterpiece, the print series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (scenes on the highway connecting Edo and Kyoto), was published.
He maintained this high level of craftmanship in other travel series, including Celebrated Places in Japan and Sixty-nine Stations on the Kiso Highway. The work he did during the third period, the last years of his life, is sometimes of lesser quality, as he appears to have hurriedly met the demands of popularity. He died of cholera on October 12, 1858, in Edo. With Hokusai, Hiroshige dominated the popular art of Japan in the first half of the 19th century. His work was not as bold or innovative as that of the older master, but he captured, in a poetic, gentle way that all could understand, the ordinary person’s experience of the Japanese landscape as well as the varied moods of memorable places at different times. His total output was immense, some 5400 prints in all. Paradoxically, the Japanese have managed to stay both innovative and traditionalist through the peaceful Tokugawa Era. As we have seen in the above studies, their art vividly reflects this conflict in its intriguing merging of superficiality and symbolism.
The Essay on Hokusai Katsushika analysis
Three of Hokusai Katsushika’s prints titled The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, hang in The Rodger L. and Pamela Weston Wing on the entrance level of The Art Institute of Chicago. Upon entering the south entrance of the Japanese wing, departing from The Chauncey McCormick gallery, the prints are the first presented in gallery 107, on the east wall. While ...
