This may be something you've seen
The most immortal-level ukiyo-e exhibition
Ready to ride the waves with Hokusai?
Katsushika Hokusai's "Kanagawa Surf", one of the iconic works of the Japanese art world
Everyone is familiar with this painting "Kanagawa Surf", and the waves and Mt. Fuji are symbols of Japanese culture in the eyes of young people. From postcards and canvas bags to classic costumes on couture shows, it's everywhere.
But initially, it was just one of the Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku, which was printed eight thousand times, and each sheet was priced at 16 yuan — about two bowls of ramen for the price of two bowls.
The painter Katsushika Hokusai possessed a genius technique and created this set of "Mt. Fuji Tourism Posters" to make a living. Unexpectedly, it became a masterpiece of ukiyo-e art and swept the world.
Christian Dior, Spring/Summer 2007
More than 300 years ago, Edo-era Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and was a hedonistic pleasure. Ukiyo-e woodblock prints came into being as a popular art that showed the diversity of life, which was popular with the public.
When this art unexpectedly came to Europe, it set off an unprecedented "Japanese fever" with its unique colors and shapes, and became a source of inspiration for Monet, Van Gogh Impressionism and Post-Impressionism masters.
Exhibition time: 2020.7.3-2020.11.8, Address: Bund One Art Museum, No. 1 Zhongshan East 1st Road, Shanghai
Now, the legendary ukiyo-e is on display at the Bund One Art Museum in Shanghai. More than 140 works have landed on the New Landmark on the Bund, which is the largest and largest collection of famous artists in China, and the first time to review its past and present lives from a historical perspective.
At the exhibition site of "Dream Back to Edo", the picture shows the beauty of Kitagawa Kaoru
I watched the "Dream Back to Edo – Ukiyo-e Art Exhibition" on the weekend, where many cultural lovers gathered and couldn't wait.
Not only are there a considerable number of masterpieces of ukiyo-e (Kitagawa Katsumi, Katsushika Hokusai, and Katagawa Hiroshige), but you can follow the timeline of history from the early freshness to the decadence of the end of the century.
01
The art of joining the world in person
In 1661, the writer Asai Wrote in his book Uki Monogatari: "Live in the moment, enjoy the moonlight, snow, cherry blossoms, and bright red maple leaves, sing indulgently, drink sake, forget the troubles of reality, get rid of the worries in front of you, no longer discouraged, like a hollow pumpkin, floating in a trickle of streams." This is called the ukiyo-e. ”
For the people of Edo, it is enough to enjoy themselves in time, sing and drink.
Lingchuan Shixuan, After The Whisper, 1673-1681
Fine wine is inseparable from the company of beautiful people. From the founder Lingchuan Shimono to the beautiful Suzuki Harunobu, the beauty painting at the beginning of the exhibition suddenly attracted the attention of the audience.
Chun Xin advocates classical imagery and has a vivid painting style. You see that when the wind and rain are approaching, the girl is in a panic to pack up the clothes to dry, and the clogs accidentally fall off, which is dynamic and interesting. He also invented brocade painting, the method of multi-color overprinting, which makes the color resemble exquisite satin.
Harunobu Suzuki, "Yuritsu (Illustrated Calendar)", Nishiki-e
The next corner is the pinnacle of beauty paintings, Kitagawa Kaoru. For the first time, Ge Huang fixed the bust and facial close-up of the women (called "Dashou Painting"), so that their momentary mood was seen by the audience.
Kitagawa Kaoru,"Seven People Makeup Namba Ya Abei", Nishiki-e
How can ukiyo-e be separated from the painting maniac Katsushika Hokusai? The exhibition includes the famous "Kanagawa Surfing Lane", where many visitors stopped to take photos.
As the waves rise, the waves silently demonstrate the infinite power of nature in the face of worried sailors. The perfect Mt. Fuji seems to be watching all this from afar. Hokusai captures this moving moment with precision, using magnificent graphics and elegant colors to navigate nature with ease.
Katsushika Hokusai's "Kanagawa Surf", selected from "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku".
Another great landscape painter, Hiroshige Utagawa, is also not to be missed. His landscapes are always elegant, like a lyric poet, rendering mournful nostalgia.
Living in an elegant and nurturing environment for many years, Hiroshige has always maintained a primitive memory of the samurai class, and has also learned the artistic techniques of the Japanese Hunting School and traditional Chinese ink painting.
Hiroshige Utagawa, "Asakusa Kanetsuzan", from 1857, Nishiki-e
Next you will meet the grotesque Kuniyoshi Utagawa, whose long shogunate era is coming to an end during his active years.
He focuses on historical themes and samurai portraits, with cat metaphors and satire. His otherworldly paintings depicting ghosts and apparitions garnered particular attention from the public for "what is nearby".
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, "Soma King's Old Castle", 1843-1845, Nishiki-e
There is also the most mysterious Dongzhou Sai writing music. He painted the most beautiful Kabuki in Japan, but he portrayed them so ugly that even Lu Xun, who loved ukiyo-e, could not understand them.
Higashisu Saikari "Actor Nidaime Iusegawa Tozaburo as The Wife of a Tibetan Ogishi Kazumigi", 1794, Nishiki-e
With the death of Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi, the art of classical woodblock printmaking depicting the "floating world" of Edo came to an end, but paintings of Kabuki continued.
At the end of the exhibition, "Decadent Beauty at the End of the Century" and "Afterglow Sunset Illumination", most of the eight parts are finished. In the early Meiji years, new civilizations were infiltrating every corner of Japanese society, and traditional ukiyo-e were declining.
02
Ukiyo-e Sanjie Discernment
Despite the many famous artists, I still want to talk about the story of the ukiyo-e three masters.
When you look at the beauties of Kitagawa Kaoru, they seem to look very similar: cherry lips, clear hair, and slender figures, but they have been eliminated by Kakuto's idealized brushstrokes, but they have complicated thoughts.
Kitagawa Kaoru,"The Girl Who Blew the 'Poof'", from The Ten Bodies of the Woman's Phase Study, 1792-1793, Nishiki-e
Because their prototype comes from the geisha girl of Edo's famous fireworks willow lane, "Shin Yoshihara".
This asakusa land on the outskirts of Tokyo nurtured the shogunate's default pornography industry, with a multitude of Kabukiza, bunraku theaters, and trading venues where new merchants would squander their money. The geisha Hua Kui enjoys a glamorous appearance and popularity, and has also tasted the unknown heartache behind it.
Kitagawa Kaoru, "Three Beauties at that Time", 1793, Nishiki-e. Through the nuances of the faces and looks of the three geisha, Kaoru gives them a unique personality.
Witnessing the ups and downs of Shin Yoshihara, Kitagawa dedicates almost all of his works to people who indulge in pleasure. At the end of the 18th century, the two groups of prints "Ten Bodies of Women's Physiology" and "Women's Portraits of Ten Pins" won him a high reputation and deservedly became the protagonist of ukiyo-e.
His beauty drawings push the landscape of the Hedonistic Age to a climax, but do the viewers notice that the painter has a deep insight into the sympathy of the wandering girl after her sorrow?
Kitagawa Kaoru, Pink Collar Beauty, 1795-1796, Nishiki-e
In Edo Castle, where the entertainment industry is developed, ukiyo-e painters have more or less been exposed to the theme of the Blue House, and the genius Katsushika Hokusai is no exception.
But this most witty craftsman is not only known for his beauty. In hokusai's 70-year painting career, no one can stand out for the wide range of subjects, the new fusion techniques, and the visual impact of design composition.
Afterword to the first edition of Katsushika Hokusai's "Hundred Views of Fugaku", 1834, when the painter was 75 years old.
In the 1830s, The Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku, published by Nagashodo, is Hokusai's most splendid landscape print.
But he drifted away from the mainstream style of ukiyo-e, doing performance art and becoming a "strange man" in the eyes of the public. You can't tell if he's coming from a real scene, a literary depiction, or a painter's rich imagination.
Katsushika Hokusai's Five Hundred Arhat Temples, selected from the Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku, Nishiki-e. Monet's 1866 work The Balcony of the Garden of Saint-Adrés is based on this work.
If you want to explore hokusai's inner world, you might as well flip through the famous Hokusai Manga. Although satirical comedy was popular in Edo, the painter's real and sharp brushstrokes made this work inseparable from the portrayal of the real world.
He tirelessly sought inspiration in the encyclopedia, exploring the wonders of humans, animals, nature, technology, architecture and theology... This frenzy lasted to the end of his life, and he did not forget to cry out "to be a true artist".
Selected from Hokusai Manga, 1818-1819, Nishiki-e
When Hokusai became famous, Utagawa Hiroshige was gaining fame, and the two had completely different breaths.
Hiroshige Utagawa, "The Flower of the Mallet Cut Calamus", from The Hundred Views of Edo, 1857, Nishiki-e
Hiroshige does not pursue realistic presentation, but he can make the audience immediately think of the corresponding scenes. Because he never simply copied scenes—he merged nature and people into one, a real, playful, and angry civilian life in the early 19th century.
The Fifty-Three Times of Tokaido represents a certain stage of Hiroshige's artistic achievements. He is good at observing climatic characteristics and depicting the changing seasons of nature. Images of fog, rain and snow dominate the picture.
Hiroshige Utagawa, "Kabara Night Snow", from The Fifty-Third Time of Tokaido, 1832-1834, Nishiki-e
By the time the 1860s series of 1860s was published, the painter had entered a period of maturity. It just so happened that the 60-year-old Hirokashige shaved his hair to celebrate his birthday and looked like a monk.
Hiroshige Utagawa, "The Bridge Rainstorm", from The Hundred Views of Edo, Meisho, 1857, Nishiki-e. Against the backdrop of the cholera outbreak, there is also a sense of melancholy in the painting, as if the painter has sensed that the end of his life is approaching.
Some say the prints differ greatly from the quality of his earlier works—the flat design, the rough colors, and the sad regression.
Interestingly, however, this type of "poor quality" woodcut from the late Edo period had a profound influence on later Western Impressionist painters.
03
When the japanese wind blows towards the Western world
After the Meiji Restoration, European painting almost engulfed traditional Japanese art. At the same time, moribund ukiyo-e prints were shipped to Europe as cheap wrapping paper for tea.
Katsushika Hokusai's "Kai Feng Kuai Qing", selected from "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku", Nishiki painting
Katsurakawa's beauty drawings, Katsushika Hokusai's innovative works, and Hiroshige Utagawa's stunning landscape paintings have deeply attracted European and American artists. For many years, ukiyo-e as seen by Westerners represented Japanese art as a whole.
There is also a small story that has been handed down: the French designer and printmaker Braquemont accidentally got a copy of the Hokusai manga, and suddenly fell in love with it, so he recommended it to his artist friends to circulate, and it was immediately popular. It is said that manet, Degas, Fontaine-Latour, Whistler, Baudelaire and others read the pamphlet.
Whistler's Nocturne of Black and Gold: Falling Fireworks was influenced by Hiroshige Utagawa's "Ryogoku Bridge Fireworks".
The upper class all used the collection of ukiyo-e as a symbol of fashion and nobility, and the printmaking art that was gradually lost in the local area was once a strange commodity.
In the field of painting, ukiyo-e happened to encounter the innovation of modern painting forms, providing inspiration for the flat composition of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Edouard Manet, Portrait of Zola, oil on canvas, 1868
Manet's portrait of Zola is followed by a small ukiyo-e print, juxtaposed with the artist's early Olympia on the right, and a Japanese screen on the left.
Claude Monet, Camille Monet in Japanese Costume, oil on canvas, 1875
Monet once dressed his beloved wife Camille as a Japanese woman, but the picky Degas rebuked the painting, believing it to be "the worst effect of the spread of Japaneseism on Monet." Years later, Monet himself could not look directly at this work, and he wanted to burn it many times.
But that didn't dampen his Japanese feelings, and he built a Japanese bridge in a lotus pond in his private courtyard, inspired by Utagawa Hiroshige's Taiko Bridge— the original painting also hung in his room.
Left: Van Gogh's "Bridge in the Rain"; Right: Hiroshige Utagawa's "Bridge Rainstorm"
Van Gogh directly copied three works of ukiyo-e in his early years. He even carefully copied the Japanese handwriting outside the painting - I don't know that this is a propaganda poster in Willow Lane, Flower Street.
But the profound influence of ukiyo-e remained in later masterpieces such as Starry Night on the Rhône.
Van Gogh copied Hiroshige Utagawa's "Blossoming Plum Tree", which is Japanese for Kamedo Umeya, and is the propaganda of a tavern in Yoshihara
No matter how many small episodes of civilization misreading, the timeless ukiyo-e has been active since the Edo period, providing a new way of observation and abstraction for modern art, and also leaving the ancient and humorous Japanese style in the hearts of the world.
"Dream back to Edo" exhibition site, cultural and creative products
The cultural and creative area at the end of the exhibition gives us an opportunity to reinterpret ukiyo-e.
Here, you can buy oil-paper umbrellas that imitate the Edo period – printed with beautiful pictures, but more suitable for taking pictures and decorations. If you want to add a little Japanese-style decoration to your home, you can choose a ukiyo-e print of the same proportion, and the frame is like visiting the exhibition site.
Garter Hokusai flowers are available here: T-shirts, canvas bags, silk scarves, even playing cards... You can also buy a set of postcards of "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku" to enjoy it.
My favorite is the stockings based on Utagawa Kuniyoshi's cat. It is specially packed in a can, and the illustrations on the body of the jar are inspired by Guofang, showing the ingenuity of the collision of tradition and contemporary.
Faced with this key to opening up Japanese culture, in what form would you like to have a dialogue with ukiyo-e art? Let's take a look at the scene.
"Dream back to Edo - Ukiyo-e Art Exhibition", exhibition time: 2020.7.3 -2020.11.8, Address: Bund One Art Museum, No. 1 Zhongshan East 1st Road, Shanghai