All photographs © Utagawa Hiroshige, courtesy of Taschen
From the seventeenth by means of the nineteenth centuries, a style of Japanese artwork known as ukiyo-e—translating to “footage of the floating world”—centered on colourful depictions of landscapes, performers and sumo wrestlers, and scenes from folklore and historical past in vivid woodblock prints. Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), probably the most famend artists within the custom—and one of many final—was well-known for his chromatic vistas depicting recognizable options like blossoming cherry bushes and the omnipresent snow-capped cone of Mount Fuji. His ultimate challenge, an formidable assortment of 120 woodblock illustrations, grew to become referred to as One Hundred Well-known Views of Edo and depicts what’s now Tokyo all through the seasons.
A brand new reprint from Taschen pairs every of the artist’s exceptional prints with textual content by authors Lorenz Bichler and Melanie Trede, celebrating the surroundings, town’s historical past, and Hiroshige’s contribution to ukiyo-e. The authors spotlight how the colourful depictions of the nation helped outline the Western world’s visible interpretation of Japan, referencing the affect of Japonisme on European ornamental arts and painters like Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and James McNeill Whistler. The brand new version is offered in a case and sure in a conventional Japanese type referred to as stab binding wherein a sequence of holes are punched within the cowl and the backbone is elegantly sure with string.
Scheduled for launch subsequent month, you possibly can pre-order One Hundred Well-known Views of Edo: The Full Plates on Taschen’s web site. You may additionally get pleasure from Hiroshige’s educational shadow puppet prints and a glance again at a current exhibition specializing in landscapes within the Artwork Institute of Chicago’s ukiyo-e archive.
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