In the biographical film Vertigo: Daughter of Hokusai, in 1822, a Dutch merchant named Siebold approached the painter Katsushika Hokusai through an intermediary and asked him to paint 15 ukiyo-e paintings of Edo themes.
Dutch merchants were paid handsomely, but only on one condition: they had to be "orchid paintings", that is, the presentation methods of Western paintings, and as for what exactly was painted, either the Edo scenery or the geisha, it was free to play by Katsushika Hokusai.
For Katsushika Hokusai, known as the "painting maniac", the combination of "Western techniques + Japanese style" is not a new thing, and in some of his ukiyo-e works, there are both Prussian blue pigments from Europe and techniques such as perspective and geometric composition in Western paintings. Therefore, it did not take long for him to draw the original drawings of 12 of them and give them to the disciples in the studio for polishing. Dutch merchants were so satisfied with Hokusai's paintings that they praised them one after another: "Hokusai-sensei!" ”
In Japan from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century, where Katsushika Hokusai lived, "ukiyo-e" was widely sought after by the machi class as an important art form. People can cheaply buy woodblock-engraved ukiyo-e beauties and landscape paintings for the price of a few bowls of soba noodles to decorate their mansions, or hang them in the shop theater and the Qinglou Trick Hall to attract more guests. Sometimes, they appear in the form of illustrations in japanese song collections, novels and other publications, adding a little life to the original monotonous text.
The influence of ukiyo-e was not limited to Japan itself, and many Western artists were fascinated by it after Dutch merchants such as Siebold brought it back to Europe. The representative figures of Impressionism, such as Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, Rotrek, etc., can often see the shadow of ukiyo-e in their paintings in addition to buying and collecting ukiyo-e.
Van Gogh, referring to his work Al's Bedroom, lamented: "How simple it is to conceive, all the shadows and semi-shadows have been dispensed with by me, everything is painted in uniform solid colors, just like ukiyo-e." ”
From Japan to Europe, from ordinary citizens to artists, what is the magical charm of ukiyo-e, which was born in Japan in the Edo period, and has fascinated so many people? How should we appreciate the ukiyo-e works with a wide variety of themes and styles? For the beginner "ukiyo-e xiaobai", Wu Qiying's "This is ukiyo-e: Oriental Art That Influenced the World" provides an excellent entry point to "read ukiyo-e".
In terms of content structure, "This is Ukiyo-e" is divided into two parts: the first part introduces the rise and development of ukiyo-e, which focuses on the interpretation of the "Three Masters of Ukiyo-e": the artistic style and representative works of Kitagawa Katsumi, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige, and deeply explains the origins between ukiyo-e and Impressionism. The latter part is to appreciate the paintings, and the author carefully selects the classic paintings of ukiyo-e masters such as Harunobu Suzuki, Kiyonaga Torii, Keizai Hidezumi, and Utagawa Toyokuni, presenting readers with masterpieces of ukiyo-e from different periods and styles.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >01 From "afterlife" to "ukiyo-e": art belonging to the common people</h1>
The so-called "ukiyo-e", that is, the color woodblock prints that were popular in Japan in the Edo period, have the core of the word "ukiyo-e", which conveys the attitude of paying attention to the present and having fun in time.
The Edo period writer Asai Whitsushi had a brilliant discussion of "ukiyo", saying: "Enjoy the present, taste the moon, snow, cherry blossoms and maple leaves, sing, drink, forget the troubles in front of you, don't worry about the poverty you are about to face, carefree, like a gourd floating in a flowing river, this is our floating world." ”
Corresponding to the "ukiyo-e" is the "afterlife", which is a topic of concern for religious beliefs such as Buddhism and Shintoism. Before the Edo period, Japan experienced decades of the Sengoku period, when daimyo in various places were conquests and wars, and it was not easy for civilians to save their lives, and it was even more unattainable to be able to live a stable life. At this time, the beautiful vision of the afterlife described in the Buddhist teachings provided spiritual comfort for people struggling in the quagmire of suffering, and Buddha statue painting naturally became the most popular type of painting.
After ending the warring states, Tokugawa Ieyasu, a legendary figure of the first generation, opened the Edo period with peace as the main theme for more than 260 years, and people finally stopped suffering from war and could focus on their daily lives, and the capital city of Edo Castle was at its most prosperous, with a population of one million people at one point. With the increasing abundance of material conditions, people began to pursue a more diversified entertainment life and spiritual enjoyment, such as watching Kabuki performances in theaters, drinking and playing with geisha at Yoshihara Hanayagi Street, or making pilgrimages to Ise Jingu Shrine with their companions.
In the Edo period, people were divided into four categories according to their different identities: "scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants", with the highest social status being the samurai and the merchants at the bottom of the chain of contempt. With the prosperity of social economy and the development of commercial trade, the merchant class accumulated a lot of wealth, and their social status was enhanced, hoping to decorate their shops and mansions with works of art. However, those hand-painted beauties (i.e., "meat pen ukiyo-e") were often expensive and beyond the reach of ordinary people, at this time, the painters in Edo Castle keenly captured this new "business opportunity" and began to make custom paintings with woodcut prints.
Compared with the meat pen ukiyo-e of the lone book, the biggest advantage of woodblock engraving is that a painting can be copied into ten, hundreds, or even thousands of copies, and the price is naturally much lower. The first batch of ukiyo-e woodblock prints produced by "the ancestor of ukiyo-e" Lingchuan Shixuan was quickly sold out, and the growing order for ukiyo-e attracted more and more painters to join the industry, and masters such as Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, and Kitagawa Katsukashi were among the best, thus opening the "ukiyo-e era" in the history of Japanese art.
Just like the Dutch in the 16th century after the bourgeois revolution, the emerging civic class replaced the nobles and clergy as patrons of artists, and derived the Dutch genre painting school with the theme of depicting daily life, which arose in the Edo period, which was a comprehensive result of "time, place, people", and was also a brilliant artistic achievement exclusive to the machi people class.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" >02 Charm Flower Queen, Merchant Traveler: The Faces of Beings in Ukiyo-e</h1>
As an art that caters to the aesthetic tastes of the common people, ukiyo-e presents a variety of scenes, such as kabuki actors, geisha flower queens, peddlers and pawns, farmers and fishermen... All of them can become the protagonists of the picture, and the different postures of scenic spots such as Mt. Fuji, Nihonbashi, Tokaido Ekijuku, and Fukagawa Kiba are also popular with people, and sometimes even used as "tourist brochures". Therefore, ukiyo-e is a "encyclopedia of civilian life" of the Tokugawa period, and we can glimpse the Edo style of hundreds of years ago through the brushstrokes of ukiyo-e painters.
"Beauty painting" is the favorite theme of many ukiyo-e painters, one of the "Three Masters of Ukiyo-e", Kitagawa Kaoru is known for drawing beauty pictures, and the women in the painting are mostly geisha, kabuki, handmaidens, etc., usually with a low status.
Japanese writer Nagai Hofumi called ukiyo-e "the unity of evil and charm", and beauty painting is the perfect embodiment of this feature, the painters use simple and smooth lines to outline their gorgeous kimonos, slender and supple eyebrows, bright peach lips, plump white cheeks, all exude the unique style of Japanese beauty.
In Kitagawa's "Waiter's Picture", two geisha either stroke the shamisen or dance softly, and the guests in the middle seem to dance to the rhythm of the music, and the atmosphere of indulgence and pleasure is about to come out. Such a scene can't help but be reminiscent of Ihara Nishizuru's description of Hua Kui in "Lustful Generation Men": "After the guests came, they first played the piano and then blew the sheng, then sang and sang, made tea, adjusted the clock, played chess with the guests, helped the girl's family comb their hair, talked about the past and the present, and moved the seats for it." ”
In the 1840s, due to famine caused by natural disasters and increasing social contradictions, the Tokugawa shogunate embarked on the "Tenpo Reform", which included the suppression of luxury and the correction of customs, and the beauties and servant paintings, which depicted hedonic scenes such as kabuki and geisha, were naturally "banned".
Against this backdrop, some ukiyo-e painters found a new way out: to paint landscapes, that is, "Naiso Paintings", the most famous of which are Katsushika Hokusai's "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku", and Utagawa Hiroshige's "Fifty-Three Times tokaido" and "100 Views of The Famous Edo". In these dazzling paintings, we can see moving pictures of the daily life of commoners in the Edo period.
There is a small shop selling yam juice next to the Juzi Su Station, and when travelers pass by here, they can stop and take a break, buy bowls of yam juice to moisten the thirsty throat, and carry a young child on the back and forth of the hostess of the shop.
On the Nihonbashi Bridge, which is already bustling with light in the morning, a group of vendors wearing straw shoes and carrying heavy fish, shrimp and vegetables have just come off the bridge, and a group of people who come not far away seem to be the queue of a certain daimyo who came to Edo to attend the work.
At the end of the day, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom at Linquan Temple, and the people who come to enjoy the flowers are wandering in the fragrance of the flowers, which is another leisurely scene.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="65" >03 "Japanese Fun" in Ukiyo-e: A Fusion of Eastern and Western Cultures</h1>
During the Edo period, Japan implemented a policy of lock-in of-the-country, setting up trading posts only on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, allowing Dutch merchants to stay in Japan to carry out trade activities, thus retaining a window for communication with the Western world.
Through the hands of Dutch merchants, Western publications, paintings, pigments, etc. were successively introduced to Japan, and ukiyo-e painters were able to absorb and borrow materials and artistic styles from the West. In the landscape paintings of Keizai Hidezumi, the chemical pigment "Wilding Blue" from Europe is used, and Katsushika Hokusai's famous work "Kanagawa Surf" uses Prussian blue. Techniques such as perspective and the use of color to express chiaroscuro are also reflected in ukiyo-e paintings in the middle and late Edo period.
Tens of thousands of miles away in Europe, the advent of photography technology has made artists face new challenges, and the ukiyo-e art from the far east has made their eyes light up: it turns out that they can also paint like this! "Japanese fun" and "Nihonism" set off a craze in Europe, and the new Impressionists were even more fond of ukiyo-e.
At the beginning, the Impressionists' love for ukiyo-e was very direct: using ukiyo-e as a background, such as Van Gogh's "Tang Qui's Father" and "Self-Portrait with Ears", Monet's "Woman in Kimono", Manet's "Zola Statue", or directly copied, Van Gogh had copied Umeyapa Umeya shop by Utagawa Hiroshige, "Ohashi Anzai No yuri" and other paintings, or chose to use iconic Japanese elements such as Hanaku and Nihonbashi as the protagonists of the picture.
Later, European artists' understanding of ukiyo-e reached a new level, and the unique lines, colors, composition methods, and emphasis on decorative rather than realistic characteristics of ukiyo-e were incorporated into Impressionist paintings.
Van Gogh's love of bright blue and yellow, the almost flat composition in Manet's "The Flute Boy", the cut of the main image in Degas's "Ballerina", and Monet's subtle grasp of light in different seasons are all more or less influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e.
Monet had this to say about Katsushika Hokusai's "Peony and Butterfly": "Look at these flowers swinging in the wind, the petals are rolled up. This is clearly not a real sight. ...... There is no doubt that they have shown us different ways of constructing. "The profound influence of ukiyo-e on impressionist painters is evident from this.
Ukiyo-e arose in the flourishing civic culture of the Edo period, and gradually embarked on the road of decline after orchid studies, in the past three hundred years, a large number of outstanding ukiyo-e painters have emerged in Japan, and the classic works they have created not only decorated the lives of the Edo people, but also invisibly influenced the development process of Western art.
There are many more stories about Japanese ukiyo-e, and if you are interested in ukiyo-e, you may wish to start by opening the book "This is Ukiyo-e" and meet Edo Japan and meet beauty in light and color, line and composition.
Resources:
1. Wu Qiyi, "This is Ukiyo-e"
2. Pan Li, Ukiyo-e
3. Ye Weiqu, Japanese Painting