When Japan opened up to the Western world in the 19th century, popular artistic tastes were dominated by two great woodblock print artists, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864). Contemporaries, keen rivals and both members of the Utagawa School, the pair had the ...
April 1-24 Any major ukiyo-e fan would have seen Utagawa Kunisada’s work at least once. He was the most prolific of the key woodblock-print artists to document life in the Edo Period (1603-1868), producing works that have since been exhibited worldwide. Though ukiyo-e are ...
Feb. 2-March 27 To celebrate the 290th anniversary of Katsukawa Shunsho, the Ukiyo-e Memorial Museum of Art is holding a special exhibition of this leading 18th-century ukiyo-e woodblock-print artist’s work. Katsukawa, who is known in particular for his realistic portrayals of kabuki actors and ...
Jan. 9-Feb. 28 It is believed that ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock prints were first created in the late 17th century by Moronobu Hishikawa (1618-94) as a way to meet the demand for ukiyo-e paintings. With prints showing the latest kimono trends, kabuki actors and ...
Japan’s first major shunga (literally, “spring pictures”) exhibition of erotic paintings and woodblock prints, is surprisingly hard work. As a venue for a ground-breaking assembly of images, which probably would not have been shown publicly if it were not for a highly successful shunga ...
Sept. 19-Nov. 3 When Tokyo Station was established in 1914, three art students — Kyokichi Tanaka, Shizuo Fujimori and Koshiro Onchi — launched a magazine called Tsukuhae, which means reflection of the moon. In keeping with its title, the magazine featured the three artists’ ...
Why would anybody want to go to war? For some of us it’s incomprehensible. For others, there will be circumstances that make war justifiable — or even desirable. History tells us that the former demographic is usually added to by members of the latter, ...
Aug. 1-Sept. 27 This year marks the 250th anniversary of nishiki-e (multicolored ukiyo-e prints). Established by Harunobu Suzuki (1725-1770), nishiki-e improved on the first tinted ukiyo-e, which used just two or three colors to add warmth to illustations. Using many colors, applied with multiple ...
Often, when two cultures meet, it can be very messy and lead to a lot of unpleasantness. The continuing inability of the West and Islam to understand each other suggests itself as a convenient example. This kind of conflict often boils down to a ...
As the largest museum in the world, the Louvre houses some of the greatest masterpieces — Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and the ancient Greek statue “Venus de Milo” to name a couple. This show focuses on chalcographic works, such as lithographic prints, from ...
Being an island nation, Japan has always relied on water as a major form of transport and travel, with the importance of its natural waterways often depicted in art. This exhibition focuses on “the sound of water” — running rivers, lapping waves, waterfalls and ...
This exhibition showcases more than 250 Japanese woodblock prints of the Edo Period (1603-1868), depicting ghosts, goblins and other supernatural beings. The lurid subject matter, a graphic illustration of the shadowy spirit underworld, is as delightful as it is ghoulish.
