"Kaifeng Quick"
"White Rain Under the Mountain"
"Valley of the Tokaido Course"
《Zhengzhou OnoShinda》
"Tokaido Fifty-three Times of Shono"
"Kabara Night Snow"
《World Dancers》
"Twelve Workers of Women's Handicrafts" ◎ Wang Jiannan
Exhibition: Edo Keiko – Ukiyo-e Works Exhibition
Exhibition period: March 26 - June 5, 2022
Venue: China Millennium Monument
Ukiyo-e reached its peak in the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, and in the second half of the 19th century, it spread to the European painting world, exerting a great influence on Impressionist painters and achieving the most brilliant chapter in the history of Japanese art. The "Edo Ki-o-e Works Exhibition", which is being held at the China Millennium Monument, selects works from different periods of ukiyo-e from the early days of its creation to more than 300 years after the Meiji Restoration, and the exhibition is divided into four chapters: "Flowers Not Sleeping", "River Castle", "Kazuyuki" and "Baimeitu", the most exciting of which is undoubtedly the section "River Castle", which brings together the most representative series of landscape works of Katsushige Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige in the "Ukiyo-e Three Masters".
Katsushika Hokusai Can't get around Mt. Fuji
Katsushika Hokusai devoted his life to ukiyo-e and had a long artistic career. At the age of 20, he followed the style of Shimen painting, focusing on Kabuki painting and sumo painting; after the age of 30, he was exposed to Western painting, using perspective to produce beauty and genre paintings; from the age of 40, he introduced chiaroscule into landscape painting and drew a large number of illustrations for novels; published Hokusai Manga between the ages of 50 and 60; Clock was fascinated by landscapes and flowers and birds at the age of 70; and after the age of 80, he focused on hand painting.
Throughout his life, the Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku, created in the 1830s, brought him to the peak of his artistic career. Over 70 years old, he spent five years showing the style of Mt. Fuji from different locations, different angles, different times and different seasons, opening up a new world of ukiyo-e landscape painting. This is the world-famous "Kanagawa Surf", a masterpiece called expressionism in the Western art world, which dominates the viewer's attention with an extremely simple geometric structure. The huge waves that roll up high from the left form two huge triangles of upward leaps with the rising peaks below, in contrast to Mount Fuji in the lower center. It is deliberately depressed by the painter to control the viewer's line of sight and counter the turbulence of the waves. Three boats in a sharp, long triangle weave through them, which are cargo ships that carry fresh fish and vegetables from the Bunsho Peninsula near Edo to the Nihonbashi Market in Edo Castle, each with eight oarsmen, all hunched over to avoid being swept to the bottom of the sea by the waves. By exaggerating the power of nature, the painter shows the courage and tenacious fighting spirit of human beings, and is full of profound philosophy.
"Kaifeng Kuaiqing" is taken from the description of Kaifeng in the Chinese Book of Poetry, which refers to the southern wind in summer. This painting leaves an unforgettable impression because of the strong contrast. Such a scene is really rare, and Katsushika Hokusai does not know how many times he has gazed at Mt. Fuji before he has the privilege of seeing such a miracle. Some say this is a sight that can only occur at dawn in summer and autumn – the summit is still in darkness, but the hillside is dyed red by the morning light, hence the name "Red Fuji". The night is dispelled by the gentle breeze, leaving long layers of cloud curtains that are pulled like ripples of the sea. The vast vegetation at the foot of the mountain is steeped in greenery. This fleeting moment is frozen in time under Hokusai's brush.
"White Rain Under the Mountain" is also known as "Black Fuji", and compared to the static "Red Fuji", this one is full of kinetic energy. The "white rain" in the title refers to thunderstorms in summer. In the painting, the sky at the top of the mountain is clear, the dark clouds under the mountain are dense, and the clouds curling under the blue sky contrast strongly with the sharp lightning at the foot of the mountain.
The nature embodied in these three works is both magnificent and awe-inspiring, and several other works in this series emphasize man's subjective initiative in nature. Located in Iwai-cho, Hototani-ku, Yokohama City, Tsutomu Valley, Tsuneyoshi Valley was a famous inn in the Edo period. Hokusai adds a row of trees between the travelers in the foreground and mt. Fuji in the distance, and the eight pine trees represent the dense woods along the way, and this symbolic method of dots instead of faces conveys people's desire and pleasure in overlooking the green mountains on the journey. Hokusai's Hokusai Manga, created between the ages of 50 and 60, provides him with a wealth of material for portraying a variety of characters, and in this painting, the caravan man seizes the time to stop while the horseman looks at Mt. Fuji, and although the beauty is in front of him, everyone's mind is very different.
Ono Shinda in Surushu Ono Shinda is located in Fuji City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and because there are many wetlands nearby, water birds such as herons can often be seen. The farmer in the close-up scene has just finished harvesting the reeds in the swamp, holding the cattle, and walking home satisfied, a ray of sunset reflects the red foot of Mt. Fuji, echoing the colors of the reddish-brown cattle in the foreground and the reeds on their backs, and the birds flying in the middle connect the front and back scenes. It is a great place to see Mt. Fuji from the front.
The above two pictures reflect a leisurely state of mind, and Mt. Fuji appears in a soothing rhythm of the picture. In the following two paintings, Hokusai significantly speeds up the speed of the brush laying the scene, and the wind becomes the driving force behind the development of the plot. In Sumidagawa Sekiya Nori, three well-dressed samurai gallop along the zigzag ridge on horseback, and the placket of the wind flutters. Although we could not see the faces hidden under the round bucket, we could feel the rider's eagerness through the four hooves of the mount. Hokusai uses speed to express the urge of time, and the more dazzling wind appears in "Junju Ejiri", which shows Hokusai's perfect control over the wind. On the field of Que Mo, the whirlwind that blew up in an instant blew the carrying paper and the bucket on the head of the traveler away from the body and lifted it into the sky, and the people hurriedly held the bucket and bent down to avoid the second attack of the fierce wind. The two slender trees in the foreground on the left fall to the right, giving way to the peak of Mt. Fuji, which stands still in the distance. To express this, the painter only used two lonely lines, one left and one right, and the simple and powerful sense of space jumped on the paper. Katsushika Hokusai, who has watched Mt. Fuji all his life, is indeed extraordinary. It can be seen that he is good at using geometric changes to integrate the scenery in reality and strengthen the artistic conception of the landscape, and his set of composition skills was quickly learned by another young genius of landscape painting.
Hiroshige Utagawa
The first "road film director"
Hiroshige Utagawa was 38 years younger than Katsushika Hokusai, and his father, whose original name was Ando Shigeemon, was responsible for fire safety in Edo Castle in the firefighting organization under the Tokugawa shogunate, and also belonged to the samurai class. When Ando was 13 years old, his parents died one after another, and he replaced his father in the fire brigade. Out of his love of painting, two years later, he fell under Utagawa Toyohiro and spent his spare time studying ukiyo-e figure paintings. The following year, with the consent of his master, he changed his name to Hiroshige Utagawa. Still serving in the shogunate, Utagawa Hiroshige went to Kyoto in August 1832 with shogunate officials to pay tribute to the imperial family with horses and swords.
The 495.5-kilometer post route from Edo to Kyoto, known as Tokaido, passes through 53 lodgings (coaching inns). Utagawa Hiromitsu was commissioned to accompany him back and forth to paint records. Interestingly, although the journey to and from Tokaido only took summer and autumn, Utagawa Hiroseshige made special references to many illustrated tourist materials published at the time in order to express the beauty of the four seasons of the year along the way, and borrowed the expression techniques of Western painting to creatively express the different scenery, seasonal differences, and climate changes along the way. This led to his series Oftodo Fifty-Three Times, published in 1833, which became famous in one fell swoop and was later revered as a master of ukiyo-e landscape painting.
Hiroshige Utagawa not only borrowed many of the expressions of his predecessor Katsushika Hokusai, but also gave full play to his unique creativity. There is no doubt that Mt. Fuji is the protagonist in the "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku" series, while the protagonist in the "Fifty-three Times tokaido" series is the station. Hiroshige Utagawa, like a director who specializes in "road movies", uses 53 stations to string together this scenic journey.
The starting point of the tour is the Nihonbashi Bridge, located on the Sumida River in Edo. In his first work, Utagawa Hiroshige renders the sky in pastels as if to announce the beginning of a long journey. In the middle of the bridge deck, a daimyo line from here to Kyoto appears, and the people rushing to the morning market carry their burdens.
Shinagawa is the first station on tokaido and a place for travelers to todaydo to say goodbye to friends and family. There are many teahouses on both sides of the road, and in addition to the departing travelers, there are also Edo people who come here to play. The painter uses the most common diagonal composition, leading the viewer to the next station as the daimyo line ends. The road not only has to climb more mountains, but also cross multiple rivers. For the sake of their own defense, the Tokugawa shogunate was not allowed to build bridges on many rivers, and the travelers had to cross the water, which was looked at by Hiroshi and written on paper. He painted the Rokgo River Ferry, placing pen and ink on the guests of the ferry and the other ships on the other shore, and the depiction of the pole boatman was particularly clever. In "Odawara", he uses a long-range lens to explain the process of crossing the river, while in "Fuzhong", he changes it to a close-up shot, clearly painting the expression and posture of the woman who sits in a sedan when crossing the river and the sedan walking in the waist-deep river. Utagawa Hiroshige writes about rain scenes, and he can paint the twilight rain as well as the raging rain.
Utagawa Hiroshige also excelled at using color to express temperature. For example, when he described the passengers departing early in the morning in front of the Mishima Station, the morning fog filled the surroundings of the Mishima Shrine, and the smudge of ink and blue was just right, making people feel that the morning was unusually cold. "Kabara Night Snow" is perhaps the most wonderful of all the snow scenes of Utagawa Hiroshige. The painting depicts three travelers walking silently in heavy snow, as if they can hear the footsteps of the snow late at night. Tokaido is located on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, the climate is warm, in reality, I am afraid that it is extremely difficult to see such heavy snow, the snow in the painting is more imaginary than the real. Utagawa Hiroshige often uses both fiction and reality, and what he wants to show is the scenery of mental images.
The last painting in this series depicts three bridges in Kyoto's Higashiyama District. Crossing the bridge, the nearly 500-kilometer trip to Tokaido is finally coming to an end. The He Mao River flows slowly under the bridge, the bridge is full of people and goods, and the Dongshan in the distance seems to give people a feeling of relief.
Utamaro Kitagawa
Beauty painting under huge business opportunities
Beauty painting is the first subject of ukiyo-e to be welcomed by the public class. Most of the protagonists were high-ranking prostitutes of that period. In the early 17th century, after the Tokugawa shogunate established a solid political power in Edo, the Yoshihara area in the northeast of Edo became a legal "red light district". Hua Kui's good looks and high value are rare for ordinary people, laying a huge business opportunity for ukiyo-e. Publishers who wanted to make money set up engraving workshops around Yoshihara, and contracted painters lived nearby to specialize in the production of beauty paintings. The flowers in the painting are all real names and surnames to satisfy the public's curiosity.
At the end of the 18th century, ukiyo-e entered a golden age, and the shogunate's mercantilist policy promoted the economic development of Edo Castle, the prosperity of civic culture, and the great increase in demand for beauty painting. Under this influence, Kitagawa Came to the fore and became a leader in the creation of this subject. Before him, beauty painting had long been fixed, and the image tended to be stereotyped, almost a thousand people. Kitagawa kasumi shifted the emphasis of ukiyo-e on the depiction of women's costumes and customs and gestures to an idealized way to highlight women's own beauty, while also expressing the subtle psychological and expression differences of the characters, so as to grasp the different personality and temperament characteristics of the characters. In order to achieve these goals, he pioneered the composition of the bust of a beautiful person. The exquisite facial features are matched with exquisite costumes and props, conveying the rich emotional world of the characters and promoting beauty painting to a new realm.
The "Contemporary Zi Zi Zi" series is the most famous. "Tachibana" refers to a young maiko, whose character shape is derived from the Kabuki classic "Heron Lady", which tells the story of an egret transforming into a young woman. Depicted by Kitagawa, the young maiko wears a flower hat that covers her hair, her hat is transparent pale green, and her hair is clearly recognizable under this misty tulle, which is more radiant and radiant. Coupled with elegant color clothing, elegance contains a sense of modernity, achieving the ultimate sense of divine beauty.
In addition to the traditional hanabi and maiko, Kitagawa also updated the theme of civilian girls, directly from the Edo commoner class, and once launched, it was all the rage. Among them, the geisha, tea house girls, and sign maidens selected in "Takato Beauty Rokukaku" are highly recognizable in the Edo area. In addition, Ge Di also created 12 works that reflected the scenes of women's labor, called "Twelve Workers of Women's Handicrafts", which established his unique typical double composition. This theme revolves around the life of the people of Edo City, reflecting the quiet years of daily life.
In addition to beauty paintings, Kabuki is also a character often represented in ukiyo-e. Kabuki was one of the most important entertainments in urban life during the Edo period. People flock to Kabukicho in their leisure time to watch dramas. With the high popularity of the repertoire, leading to the collection of relevant prints such as performance posters and program lists, the kabuki painting market was formed. One of the most famous genres is the "Torii school". Founder Kiyonobu Torii pioneered the use of a single print to represent Kabuki actors in a single print at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. He pays attention to the expressiveness of the lines, with a thick and powerful shape with a variety of ink lines outlined, and became the first model of Kabuki painting style. Although "The Dancer of Nakamura Gentaro" is not in the style, according to the characteristics of the line, it should belong to the style of Torii Kiyonobu. Nakamura Gentaro was a kabuki actor in the early Edo period who was known for playing dancers. Kiyoshi Torii, a painter with the same name as Torii Kiyonobu, further refined the Kabuki painting style of the "Torii School".
For a long time, ukiyo-e has become one of the loudest international business cards in Japanese art. This popular folk woodblock printmaking art of the Edo period, with all-encompassing themes and vivid expression techniques, intuitively records the worldly state of the time, becomes an artistic essence that travels through time and space, and continues to release its brilliance in the 21st century.