Word: ukiyo
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...collector, Monet had a sharp eye. Though he never went to Japan, he befriended writers, curators and art dealers who did, and they steered him toward quality. His treasures, all hand-printed from wood blocks, encompass the best of ukiyo-e - "images of the floating world" of geishas, Kabuki actors and pleasure houses that flourished in 18th and 19th century Edo, as Tokyo was known. These include works by such giants as Utagawa Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai and Kitagawa Utamaro. Rarer still are the fierce battle scenes from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 that Monet collected, as well...
...Britain, Germany and, especially, Paris' famed Mus?e Guimet. And what a world it was?a paradise of courtesans and Kabuki stars, teahouses and "green houses," where courtesans entertained their customers. All of it was tolerated, though watched closely, by the shogunate. Originally the term "floating world," or ukiyo, referred to the Buddhist notion that the everyday grind of travail and tears is ephemeral. Yet the proprietors and patrons of the leisure districts that sprang up on the outskirts of Edo (Tokyo), Kyoto and Osaka in the 1600s turned that concept on its head. Life was to be savored. "Living only...
...self-declared pioneer of "floating-world pictures," or ukiyo-e, was painter Okumura Masanobu, and the show has seven of his best. Woman Turning Around (1688-1704), for instance, exudes spontaneity, elegance as well as the faint air of melancholy that is typical of ukiyo-e?a reminder that pleasure is often best when bittersweet. Soon, however, the public wanted not just emotion but cheap, portable souvenirs of their visits to the pleasure pits?even if they lacked the nerve to actually enter. To the occasion rose the wood-block printmaking business. At first its images were mainly black...
...embodying the expressive new style developed large followings?and eager customers for their portraits. A lively example is Katsukawa Shunsho's The Actors Ichikawa Danzo III and Onoe Tamizo I, in which the two men portray a courtesan and a samurai with an intensity that literally defies gravity. Other ukiyo-e scenes were drawn from popular literature, especially the tagasode painting theme?literally "Whose sleeves are these?"?a 17th century meditation on an empty kimono. The original poem inspired numerous still-lifes of clothing and fashion accessories suggesting the essence of a beautiful but absent woman. One example...
...19th century, when Japanese artists began to look beyond scenes of city life and toward the countryside. Thus, you won't find any works here by Katsushika Hokusai or Ando Hiroshige, two giants of Japanese landscape prints. Less defensibly, you also won't find much about the enormous impact ukiyo-e had on Western artists, especially France's own Impressionists, or even on present-day Japanese comic-strip art forms manga and anim?. And a more adventuresome exhibition might even have added some footage from ukiyo-e-inspired films like Kenji Mizoguchi's masterful 1947 biopic Utamaro and his Five...