Ukiyo

Exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Juxtapoz x Superflat was a show co-curated by Murakami, whose illustrations are often shown in gallery spaces, though he too retains a strong entrepreneurial sense. Directly drawn from traditionally flat Japanese imagery, Murakami’s superflat aesthetic appeals directly to otaku and kawaii culture, otaku as a fan-based subculture and kawaii as a culture of cuteness (Laurence). He views these cultures as a specific response to the trauma of Japanese people,…

Katsushika Hokusai’s piece titled The Great Wave off Shore At Kanagawa is a Japanese woodblock print that was created around 1826-1833 in the Edo period. This piece is apart of Hokusai’s series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Japan’s most famous mountain, Mount Fuji is in every piece in the series. This piece is relatively small at 10 1/8 inches x 14 15/16 inches. Yet, Hokusai did not make his magnificent pieces of art alone, he had skilled craftsman aid in the production of the each of his…

Utagawa Hiroshige I created Hamamatsu: Winter Scene in the Edo period (1833-34) using the medium of woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Specifications include: dimensions of 9 in. x 14 in. and a landscape orientation, as showcased in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, U.K. The piece depicts a wintry rural scene on the outskirts of Hamamatsu station. The village and Hamamatsu Castle are visible in the distance. Porters warm themselves by a bonfire while another traveler looks on, pipe in hand,…

Many artists throughout the world have looked to the Japanese as inspiration for their own art. Artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso have utilized the Japanese style, known as Japonisme to give their art a fresh look, or just to experiment with new things. A very accomplished artist, James Tissot, used this Japanese style in his earlier works. Tissot began his art career in the mid 1850’s while studying in college. It was in the 1860’s when he began to experiment with the eastern art…

The Dawn at Isawa in Kai Province is a painting in a collection of works titled Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, by artist Katsushika Hokusai between 1830-1833. However, even though the series is named thirty-six views, Dawn at Isawa in Kai Province is the fifth of an additional ten paintings added onto the original set of thirty-six due to the overall popularity of Katsushika Hokusai’s work. The series, as the title states, contains thirty-six various views of Mt.Fuji and the areas surrounding the…

Compare and Contrast Essay The two works of art that I have chosen to compare and contrast had me worried at first. I wondered if there were enough things to compare between the two. However, after evaluating Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s Samurai Attacks Woman and Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s self portrait, I have come to find that they share many things in common; from medium to colour, I will discuss the vast array of contrasts as well as similarities. It helps first to describe the two pieces. The first…

The artist Kawase Hasui, was a printmaker who used color and repetition to uniquely style his works. He was one of the most famous artists of the “Shin Hanga” movement during early 20th century Japan. Influenced by Impressionism, “Shin Hanga” meant “new prints” that focused on landscapes and portraits using various amount of colors. As a leader in this movement, Kawase Hasui created many landscapes, often using the same woodblock only with different colors. However, he presented more of the…

single mole on her body” (609-610). Saikaku, of course, satirizes this list composed of ridiculous demands to illicit laughter from the audience; this helps him both reveal and mock the expectations that the Ukiyo lifestyle inherently demands of only women in society. Furthermore, he exposes that Ukiyo has conditioned individuals to accept these gender biases by allowing expectations about women and their behaviour become the norm. A prime example of this is of the episode concerning the domain…

traditions in Japanese art is Ukiyo-e of the Edo period. As the ‘jewel’ of the Japanese printing art, it uses the most exquisite paper, the finest colors and elaborate technique. Ukiyo-e not only carved a deep influence in Japanese art, and also in western art history. Ukiyo-e is a genre in Japanese printing art blossoming in 17th through 19th century. The word Ukiyo refers to “the floating world”, the realm of entertainment, and –e means the picture. The word ukiyo originally expressed the…

During the Kansei era the Ukiyo-e genre of the woodblock prints had a focus on balance and beauty that subsided into disharmony and degeneracy when the reform broke in the next century, finishing in the Menji Restoration of 1868. Sharaku‘s work is one of the best known of Ukiyo-e, but he appeared in 1794 very suddenly for ten months for then disappearing at the beginning of 1795. He introduced a large…