Warriors of Art
Warriors of Art

Author: Yumi Yamaguchi

Publisher: Kodansha International

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9784770030313

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Recently the West has been inundated by a steady flow of images from manga, anime, and the video games that are a key part of todays Japanese visual culture. At the same time, Japanese contemporary artists are gaining a higher profile overseas: many Westerners are already familiar with Takashi Murakamis brightly colored, cartoonlike characters, or with Junko Mizunos grotes-cute Lolita-style girls. Perhaps less familiar are the absurd fighting machines of Kenji Yanobe, the many disguises of Tomoko Sawada, or the grotesque fairytale landscapes of Tomoko Konoike. Warriors of Art features the work of forty of the latest and most relevant contemporary Japanese artists, from painters and sculptors, to photographers and performance artists, with lavish full-color spreads of their key works. Author Yumi Yamaguchi offers an insightful introduction to the main themes of each artist, and builds up a fascinating portrait of the society that has given birth to them: a Japan that still bears the scars of atomic destruction, a Japan with a penchant for the cute and the childish, a Japan whose manga and anime industries have come to dominate the world. Warriors of Art takes its title from a phrase used to describe Taro Okamoto (1911-1996), perhaps the first truly influential contemporary artist to emerge in postwar Japan, who fought to bring modern art to a wider audience. Following in Okamotos footsteps, the forty artists featured in this book are a new generation of warriors, attacking our senses with a shocking mix of the cute, the grotesque, the sexy, and the violent, forcing us to sit up and take notice of their vision of Japan.

Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints
Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints

Author: Helen Merritt

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780824817329

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"[An] impressive volume, with a valuable amount of information not otherwise available in one source." --Choice Companion volume to Merritt's Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints. This volume is a reference work that is both comprehensive and rigorously chronological.

Modern Japanese Prints
Modern Japanese Prints

Author: Carnegie Museum of Art

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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A selection of exemplary 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints from the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art This volume presents more than 1,000 exemplary twentieth-century Japanese woodblock prints, from the collection of Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Taken together, the collection reflects the stylistic movements, aesthetic directions and historic changes of the past century, with particular emphasis on two significant movements: sosakuhanga (creative prints), represented by in-depth selections by Hiratsuka Un'ichi, Onchi Koshiro and Munakata Shiko; and shin-hanga (new prints), with works by Kawase Hasui and Hashiguchi Goyo. Carnegie Museum of Art also possesses several complete series of prints produced in such limited numbers that they are rarely seen today, including One Hundred Views of New Tokyo created between 1929 and 1932. In addition, an essay on the history and significance of the collection provides a brief introduction to Japanese printmaking in the twentieth century, making this illustrated guide an invaluable reference for researchers, curators, collectors and general enthusiasts of Japanese art.

Modern Japanese Prints - Statler
Modern Japanese Prints - Statler

Author: Oliver Statler

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2012-10-09

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1462909558

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Featuring over 100 unique prints, Modern Japanese Prints is a testament to the continuity of Japanese art and creativity. By far the most vitally creative group of artists working in Japan today, modern print-makers are truly international in appeal. Although they owe much of their heritage to the famous ukiyoe techniques of the past, they depart from their forebears in at least two important respects. In the first place, whereas in the ancient ukiyoe tradition a print was the joint production of three men— the artist-designer, the artisan who carved the blocks, and the printer—these modern artists perform all these functions themselves, thus satisfying their demands for individual artistic expression at every step of the creative process. Another distinguishing feature of this artistic school is that its inspiration is derived neither solely from its own Japanese past nor solely from the West. This book carefully traces the history of the modern print movement through detailed discussions of the life and work of twenty-nine of its most noteworthy and representative artists. It describes vicissitudes which the movement has undergone and the high artistic ideals which have motivated its members in spite of public apathy and the hostility of the traditionalists.

Made in Japan
Made in Japan

Author: Alicia Volk

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 9780295985022

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Made in Japan examines the artistic dialogue between East and West as it played out between 1945 and 1970. During this post-World War II period, Japanese printmakers effectively acted as ambassadors, bringing their aesthetic traditions into fruitful interaction with contemporary American trends and forging ties with artists, scholars, museums, and collectors. This volume presents for the first time an integrated history of innovative visual experimentation and pioneering cultural patronage. The creative print (sosaku hanga) movement originated in the early twentieth century, when Japanese artists sought to modernize their practice by embracing Euro-American concepts of originality and autonomy. The movement matured in the decades following World War II, when second- and third-generation sosaku hanga printmakers continued to experiment in stylistic, technical, and thematic terms. From the early 1950s, Japanese printmakers participated in a newly global art scene, achieving great success at international art exhibitions sponsored by the American and Japanese governments. The prints in this book range widely in treatment and medium, embracing woodcut, stencil, lithography, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, and screenprint. Made in Japan includes essays by Alicia Volk and Helen Nagata and biographies of the artists.

In Pursuit of Universalism
In Pursuit of Universalism

Author: Alicia Volk

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 0520259521

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"Volk's impressive study rethinks the East-West binary often reiterated in discussions of Japanese modernism by reinserting local aspects into the universalizing tendencies of modernism itself. The book makes an important contribution to the growing literature on modern Japanese art history by providing an alternative comparative framework for understanding the global development of modernism that decenters Euro-America. Rigorously historical in her critique, Volk destabilizes our understanding of the Japanese experience of modernity through the prism of Yorozu's singular vision of the self, leaving us questioning conventional wisdom and contented to wobble."--Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University "In Volk's affectingly stunning and deeply reflective study of the Japanese artist Yorozu Tetsugorō's work between 1910-1930, we have a profoundly historical reminder of how modernism everywhere struggled to meet the demands of the new with the readymades of received artistic practices. In this study of Yorozu's utopian universalist project, Volk has imaginatively broadened our understanding of the modernist moment and perceptively captured its global program to unify art and life, contemporary culture and history."--Harry Harootunian, author of Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan