impurity and complexity - moral, economic and otherwise - might be just what a flourishing artistic culture needs
The cult of celebrity and the commercialization of art are not unique to the West. In 19th-century Japan, Kabuki actors and high-priced geishas were idolized by commoners, and the sale of colorful woodcut prints portraying them became a big, competitive business.
In 1842, fearing an erosion of national moral fiber, the government reacted to the mania for Kabuki and for ukiyo-e, the paintings and prints that depicted the fleeting pleasures of life in the entertainment sectors of major cities. Laws were created to limit the extravagance of Kabuki theater and to prohibit yakusha-e (actor prints) and bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women). It was as if the US had clamped down on Hollywood movies, paparazzi and the tabloids.
Looking at Japanese prints today, you might not realize what a rough-and-tumble commercial world they came out of. Their formal elegance, poetic beauty and technical refinement suggest a more serene, creative environment. So Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770-1900, an exhibition of many splendid prints at the Brooklyn Museum, offers a useful and informative corrective.
Organized by Laura Mueller, a doctoral candidate in Japanese art history, the show presents 73 woodblock prints from the Van Vleck collection, a renowned repository of more than 4,000 Japanese prints owned by the Chazen museum. With 22 more prints from the Brooklyn Museum's collection, the exhibition tells the story of a group of artists that dominated the ukiyo-e print business for much of the 19th century.
It is not a masterpiece show, though there are some terrific works in it. Utagawa Toyokuni's Fireworks at Ryogoku Bridge (1825) is spectacular. On a 76cm square made by conjoining six prints, it depicts yachts loaded with languid geishas passing under a great wooden bridge, on which a crowd has gathered to observe fireworks bursting against the night sky. With its scores of lively people, precisely delineated details and blocky diagonals thrusting every which way, it is a marvel of formal compaction.
Also extraordinary is Toyohara Kunichika's dramatic wide-angle picture from 1894 of an actor dressed in a sumptuously patterned costume surrounded by vividly colored flames. With a fierce expression on his face, he poses with extended arms; holding a sword in one hand, he prepares to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide.
The exhibition's sole example of the popular erotica called shunga warrants a close look too. Produced in 1851 by Utagawa Kunisada, An Illustrated Account of Coupled Genji consists of three lavishly printed volumes, with double-page spreads showing men and women in luxurious robes engaging in sexual intercourse with delightful urgency.
There are many more compelling works in the show, including land- and seascapes by Utagawa Hiroshige, one of the most famous of all ukiyo-e artists. But there are comparatively nondescript works, too. Prints from the 1770s by Utagawa Toyoharu are historically significant because he founded the Utagawa school and because of his innovative use of Western-style deep perspective. But his blandly illustrative works lack the bold, sensuous qualities of prints by his immediate followers Utagawa Toyohiro and Utagawa Toyokuni.
Judging by the exhibition catalog, which has color reproductions of 213 prints, many quite beautiful, a larger and aesthetically superior exhibition could have been assembled from the Van Vleck collection. But Mueller's intent was something other than a "greatest hits" show. She wanted to tell the history of the Utagawa school and, in so doing, convey something of the complexity of the Japanese printmaking business in general.
So to get the most out of the show you need to read the exhibition labels, the text panels and, most important, the catalog's scholarly essays. You will discover, for example, why there were so many artists named Utagawa: it was the Japanese custom for successful apprentices to take the names of their revered masters.
You will also learn how Utagawa Toyoharu's first two students gravitated toward separate areas of specialization: Toyokuni into Kabuki actor prints and Toyohiro into landscapes. Subsequent generations of artists further diversified - into warrior prints, mythic parodies and other genres - and they sometimes collaborated. Prints in the show, for example, show how Hiroshige and Kunisada combined transcendentally beautiful landscapes and gorgeously attired women.
The reading material provides insight into the complex relationships among artists, craftsmen who cut the wooden blocks, printmakers who pulled the prints, and patrons and publishers who provided financing. Through the artists' strategic efforts, the name Utagawa became a brand so powerful that today more than half of all surviving ukiyo-e prints are from the Utagawa school.
Much of what makes this exhibition enriching may be missed by skipping the catalog. That's all right, because the show is rewarding enough visually. But those who do the reading may emerge with an idea worth thinking about in regard to art today: that an environment of impurity and complexity - moral, economic and otherwise - might be just what a flourishing artistic culture needs.
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
RSS