The Edo period saw the growth of an urban culture of extraordinary richness, sophistication and cultural diversity, and an unprecendented flowering of the arts, in painting, woodblock prints, ceramics, laquer and textiles. This text offers an overview of the arts of the Edo period as they developed in Kyoto, Edo, Osaka and Nagasaki, illustrated with the work of artists such as Korin, Utamaro and Hokusai, as well as with lesser-known artists of the time.
This title is an introduction to the important artists of the Edo period Japan and their work, as well as the issues and concepts surrounding the production and consumption of art in Japan at that time
Examines how and why people bought, sold, donated and received works of art at a time of dynamic exchanges between those making and those acquiring art.
Designed for Pleasure is a dazzling probe of Japan's famous "floating world" of spectacle and entertainment. From luxury paintings of the pleasure qurters to Hokusai's iconic "Red Fugi," Designed for Pleasure presents a focused examinatin of the priod's fascinating networks of art, literature, and fashion, proving that the artists and the publishers and patrons who engaged them not only morrored the tastes of their energetic times, they created a unifying cultural legacy. Contributors include John T. Carpenter, Timothy Clark, Julie Nelson Davis, Allen Hockley, Donald Jenkins, David Pollack, Sarah E. Thompson, and David Boyer Waterhouse.
This survey examines the art and artists of the Edo period, one of the great epochs in Japanese art. The author focuses on the urban aspects of Edo art, including discussions of many of Japan's most popular artists - Korin, Utamaro and Hiroshige, among others.
This book examines a set of paintings produced in Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s that have received little scholarly attention. Asato Ikeda views the work of four prominent artists of the time—Yokoyama Taikan, Yasuda Yukihiko, Uemura Shōen, and Fujita Tsuguharu—through the lens of fascism, showing how their seemingly straightforward paintings of Mount Fuji, samurai, beautiful women, and the countryside supported the war by reinforcing a state ideology that justified violence in the name of the country’s cultural authenticity. She highlights the politics of “apolitical” art and challenges the postwar labeling of battle paintings—those depicting scenes of war and combat—as uniquely problematic. Yokoyama Taikan produced countless paintings of Mount Fuji as the embodiment of Japan’s “national body” and spirituality, in contrast to the modern West’s individualism and materialism. Yasuda Yukihiko located Japan in the Minamoto warriors of the medieval period, depicting them in the yamato-e style, which is defined as classically Japanese. Uemura Shōen sought to paint the quintessential Japanese woman, drawing on the Edo-period bijin-ga (beautiful women) genre while alluding to noh aesthetics and wartime gender expectations. For his subjects, Fujita Tsuguharu looked to the rural snow country, where, it was believed, authentic Japanese traditions could still be found. Although these artists employed different styles and favored different subjects, each maintained close ties with the state and presented what he considered to be the most representative and authentic portrayal of Japan. Throughout Ikeda takes into account the changing relationships between visual iconography/artistic style and its significance by carefully situating artworks within their specific historical and cultural moments. She reveals the global dimensions of wartime nationalist Japanese art and opens up the possibility of dialogue with scholarship on art produced in other countries around the same time, particularly Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Politics of Painting will be welcomed by those interested in modern Japanese art and visual culture, and war art and fascism. Its analysis of painters and painting within larger currents in intellectual history will attract scholars of modern Japanese and East Asian studies.
The sophistication and variety of painting in Japan's Edo period, as seen through a preeminent US collection Over more than four decades, Robert and Betsy Feinberg have assembled the finest private collection of Edo-period Japanese painting in the United States. The collection is notable for its size, its remarkable quality, and its comprehensiveness. It represents virtually every stylistic lineage of the Edo-period (1615-1868)--from the gorgeous decorative works of the Rinpa school to the luminous clarity of the Maruyama-Shijō school, from the "pictures of the floating world" (ukiyo-e) to the inky innovations of the so-called eccentrics--in addition to sculpture from the medieval and early modern periods. Hanging scrolls, folding screens, handscrolls, albums, and fan paintings: the objects are as breathtaking as they are varied. This catalogue's 12 contributors, including established names in the field alongside emerging voices, use the latest scholarship to offer sensitive close readings that bring these remarkable works to life. Distributed for the Harvard Art Museums
