ASIAN ART IN LONDON

*****************ASIAN ART IN LONDON*****************

29th October until 7th November 2009

Lots of Japanese events, including exhibitions, talks etc from Gregg Baker Asian Art, Malcolm Fairley Ltd, Sydney L . Moss Ltd and Grace Tsumugi Fine Art Ltd. Bonhams and Christie's auction houses.

The website is: http://www.asianartinlondon.com/





***********Manga to Mural - the Japanese Sketches of John Thomas**********

17 February 2009 - April 2010

Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth, UK

The opening of trade contacts between Britain and Japan in the mid-1800s, sparked the beginning of a love affair with Japanese art. This was to have a profound influence on art, design, architecture and gardens.

The founders of this museum, Sir Merton and Lady Russell-Cotes, were lovers of Japanese art. As owners of the Royal Bath Hotel, they employed the artist, John Thomas, to decorate their hotel in Japanese style. Later they also created a Japanese ‘museum’.

Whilst nothing remains in the hotel today, the same themes and many of the Japanese objects ended up in the Russell-Cotes’ home, East Cliff Hall - now this Museum.

Look out for John Thomas’ work on ceilings, walls, covings, and even stained-glass around the house.

While in Bournemouth, Thomas also produced a Portfolio of Japanese Sketches. This provides vital clues to the origins of the decoration in the house, and is the main exhibit in this show.

With this first-ever exhibition on John Thomas’ work, we aim to:

* raise awareness of this, once celebrated, artist and his contribution to the uniqueness of this museum;
* mark the launch of our centenary year. The Museum was officially opened on 5th June 1909 by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir George Wyatt Truscott; and
* celebrate 150 years of diplomatic relations between Japan and the United Kingdom.

Gallery IV

Free admission


Russell-Cotes
Art Gallery & Museum
Russell-Cotes Road
East Cliff
Bournemouth BH1 3AA
UK



****************NEW EXHIBITION****************

Mills College Art Exhibition Reveals Newly Discovered Japanese Prints***

Oakland, CA—June 1, 2009.

The Mills College Art Museum is pleased to present "Reverberations: Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake" curated by Mills College Visiting Assistant Professor Deborah Stein and the Mills College Museum Studies Workshop, on view from June 17 through August 2, 2009.

An opening public reception will be held on June 17 from 5:30–7:30 pm with a curator walk-through at 6:00 pm. Other events include a family printmaking workshop on June 28 from 3:00–5:00 pm and a film screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes on July 22 at 7:00 pm. All events are free and open to the public.

“Reverberations is a collective effort to examine how art and natural disaster intersect in complex ways,” said Stein. “It offers insight into tragedy and loss, making available the experience of disaster in a way that scientific data and photographs alone simply cannot.”

Over a period of nine months, Stein and seven Mills College students from the Museum Studies Workshop, a course taught in the Art History Program at Mills College, found 18 unknown and unpublished prints in the Mills College art collection that became the basis for their investigation and this exhibition.

“This visual response to a natural disaster constitutes a record of despair and renewal specific to this period; yet, it is a strikingly familiar record of human suffering and survival that resonates with the Bay Area’s own experience with the destruction wrought by earthquakes,” said Jacquelynn Baas, interim director of the Mills College Art Museum.

The featured Japanese woodblock prints were created in the aftermath of the great Kanto earthquake of September 1,1923. Immense fires and strong winds devastated many cities in the Kanto region of Japan, including Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba. Everything was destroyed in a matter of days. Many print shops, including the famous Watanabe print shop, lost their equipment and woodblocks from the earthquake and fire. Afterwards, as surviving citizens rebuilt their lives in the wake of ruins, artists and publishers created new works to document the disaster.

The prints were commissioned as a set to be executed by a number of different artists. They exemplify a wide variety of print styles and practices during the Taisho Era and convey multiple levels of emotion and a visceral intensity, said Stein.



The Mills College Art Museum, founded in 1925, is a dynamic center for art that focuses on the creative work of women as artists and curators. The museum strives to engage and inspire the diverse and distinctive cultures of the Bay Area by presenting innovative exhibitions by emerging and established national and international artists. Exhibitions are designed to challenge and invite reflection upon the profound complexities of contemporary culture.

Docent tours of the exhibition are available by appointment. Please call the museum at 510.430.2164 to schedule a docent tour. The museum hours are Tuesday–Sunday 11:00 am–4:00 pm and Wednesday 11:00 am–7:30 pm. For more information, visit the http://www.mills.edu/museum/******************Waves, Waterfalls and Ripples: Water in Japanese Art******************

Allentown Art Museum,
31 N. 5th Street • Allentown, PA 18101

http://www.allentownartmuseum.org/
Until July 18, 2009

The centerpiece of this exhibition is a large four-paneled, hand embroidered screen depicting crashing ocean waves. The screen, prize winner at the 1915 St. Louis International Exposition, will be the only textile in the exhibition. Other works will be taken from the museum’s extensive collection of nineteenth-century wood block prints and represent the artistic output of such well-known Japanese artists as Hiroshige, Hokusai and others.


******************Des Moines Japanese Print Exhibition Opens******************

The Des Moines Art Center opens "Before Anime: Japanese Prints from Superhuman to Superflat" Friday, with curator Amy Worthen's gallery talk scheduled for 6:30 p.m. May 21. Free. (515) 277-4405, www.desmoinesartcenter.org.

***********Ukiyo-e Exhibition at the Chuncheon National Museum, South Korea ***********

Japan Week, one of the Japanese Embassy's biggest cultural extravaganzas kicks off in Chuncheon next week.

The festival promises to bring a slew of cultural events aimed at informing as well as entertaining.

The idea behind the cultural week was formed in 1998 "when the foreign ministers from both countries recognized the importance of promoting cultural contacts on the local level (cities outside of Seoul)," Japanese Cultural Center chief Taeko Takahashi told The Korea Herald.

Seoul is not included because the nation's capital already gets a plethora of events. The Japanese Embassy is the busiest of all foreign missions in Korea in promoting different aspects of their relationship.

Takahashi is working on a big cultural event for Seoul in September, which will most likely be held in front of City Hall.

The event will kick off on May 18 and run until May 24 at different venues around Chuncheon, Gangwon Province's capital.

The event will start with an opening ceremony at 5 p.m. and a lecture by Ambassador Toshinori Shigeie at Gangwon University.

Alongside the opening ceremonies there will also be the opening of the Japanese Dolls Exhibition and an exhibition about Japanese Ukiyoe at the Chuncheon National Museum.

Japanese dolls come in various types and represent children and babies, imperial court members, warriors and heroes, fairy-tale characters, gods and demons and people in their daily life.

The Ukiyoe exhibition will show off Japanese woodblock prints and paintings. This special artistic style was produced between the 17th and 20th centuries and features motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theater and other sources.

From the Korea Herald. For the rest of this article, see http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/05/11/200905110023.asp




*************PRINCETON LECTURE ~ May 3, 2009*************

A lecture on Japanese prints will be given by Julie Davis, Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall, followed by a reception in the Milberg Gallery. The Milberg Gallery is open to the public, free of charge, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Wednesday evenings, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is located on the second floor of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University, One Washington Road, Princeton, New Jersey. For information on visiting the campus, see: http://www.princeton.edu/main/visiting




***********NEW EXHIBITION AT DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY IN LONDON***********

Utagawa Hiroshige: Japanese prints from the Honolulu Academy of Arts

8 July – 27 September 2009

From the website:
"After his near-contemporary Hokusai, Hiroshige is the most famous master of the Japanese woodblock; he is renowned particularly for his 100 Famous Views of Edo [Tokyo]. The Honolulu Academy of Arts houses one of the most important collections of his work in the world. This remarkable show is curated by Gian Carlo Calza, Professor of East Asian Art History and Director of the International Hokusai Research Centre at the University of Venice, and has been organised by Arthemisia, Milan."

The gallery is well worth visiting for its permanent collections as well. See http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/ for further details


***********Envisioning Edo's Splendor: "The Floating World" and Beyond***********

February 3 - July 19, 2009



Website:
http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/edo_splendor.htm


This exhibition—presenting a selection of Japanese prints from the Allen’s extensive collection—has been designed as a broad overview of the history, technique, and subject matter of ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world.” Using Edo (modern day Tokyo) and its many pleasurable distractions as a starting point, the exhibition paints a picture of Japanese culture and society through times of peace and prosperity, as well as economic and political unrest. The majority of the works are drawn from the Mary A. Ainsworth bequest of 1950, a collection of nearly 1,500 prints celebrated for its breadth and rarity of impression. Spanning nearly three hundred years, the works on view represent several key categories: early technique; kabuki actors and courtesans; historical legend and literary themes; landscapes; and modern prints, including such masters as Okumura Masanobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, Toshusai Sharaku, Utagawa Hirokage, and Katsushika Hokusai.

Organized by Abbe Schriber (OC '09) and Assistant Professor of Art Bonnie Cheng, the exhibition is a teaching resource for courses in the East Asian Studies Program and the Art Department during spring semester 2009.

See one of the prints on show in images below ~ a rare Fox Fires at Oji, or "Oji kitsunebi" by Utagawa Hirokage (Japanese, 1850 - 1870). Interesting to compare to the more famous Hiroshige version.


OPPORTUNITY TO MEET THE HEAD OF THE TOKUGAWA FAMILY!!!!

Life and Culture in Japan during the Edo Period
A seminar with Mr. Tsunenari Tokugawa, 18th head of the Tokugawa Family

11 February 2009, London

Under the isolation system of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan maintained continual peace for 260 years, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and during this time a very unique Japanese culture emerged.

Mr. Tsunenari Tokugawa, the 18th head of the Tokugawa Family, will introduce Japanese culture from the Edo Period, through the politics, society and education of the time.





*****IF YOU"RE IN LONDON, DON"T FORGET TO VISIT THE HIROSHIGE EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM!!!*****

The Moon Reflected: Later Woodblock Prints by Hiroshige

15 October 2008 - 15 February 2009

A major display of more than fifty of Hiroshige's later landscape prints, selected by artist Julian Opie. All are from the Museum's collection and will be shown in the Mistubishi Corporation Galleries (Room 94). The prints are all from the following series: Famous Views of the Sixty-Odd Provinces, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji. They are shown together with three great landscape triptychs on the theme of 'Snow, Moon and Flowers'.

Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG

http://www.britishmuseum.org/



IMPORTANT SURIMONO EXHIBITION IN ZURICH

Surimono: Poetic Allusion in Japanese Prints

7 December 2008-13 April 2009

This exhibition, featuring over 300 surimono at the Museum Rietberg Zurich, is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts in cooperation with the Sainsbury Institute. Accompanying the exhibition is a scholarly catalogue, Reading Surimono: The Interplay of Text and Image in Japanese Prints, edited by John T Carpenter (Brill/Hotei Publishing, Leiden).


*I would be very interested to hear any reviews of this show and of the catalogue, which I'm rather excited about. Good surimono books are few and far between... ~ Anne.



NEW SHOW IN BANGKOK!

'The Attractions of 'Nishiki-e', National Discovery Museum, Bangkok.

The Attractions of Nishiki-e, an exhibition of Japanese multi-coloured woodblock printing invented in the 1760s, opened on 8th December.

Nishiki-e is considered to be one of the origins of multi-colour printing and it's technique is used primarily in ukiyo-e, which is single woodblock printing, with the colour black developed some 100 years ago. Nishiki-e printing, however, is created by carving a separate woodblock for every colour, and using them in a stepwise manner.

Organised jointly by the Japan Foundation and the National Discovery Museum, the exhibition focuses on yakusha-e, one of the popular themes of nishiki-e - often referred to as "actor prints" in English.

The show is on view at the National Discovery Museum, Pipitplearn 1, until December 20, from 10am to 6pm (except Mondays). Call 02-225-2777 for more details.



The V&A's collection of ukiyo-e is one of the largest and finest in the world, with over 25,000 prints. This display will feature highlights from the touring exhibition Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e from the Victoria and Albert Museum, shown at 7 venues in Japan in 2007/8. It will comprise some 60 prints & drawings from the V&A's unique collection, along with illustrated books and albums. Exhibition themes will reflect the strengths of the collection: glorious full-colour prints, fan prints, illustrated poetry books, and artists' sketches and copyists' drawings that offer unique insights into the production methods of ukiyo-e.

Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London SW7 2RL
Julie and Robert Breckman Gallery and part of the Edwin and Susan Davies Galleries (rooms 90 and 88a). A smaller selection of prints will also be on display in the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art and Design (room 45).
http://www.vam.ac.uk/


NEW SHOW IN BARCELONA, MOVING TO PARIS IN NOVEMBER!!!!

BARCELONA.- The exhibition "Ukiyo-e, Images of an Ephemeral World: Eighteenth and Nineteenth century Japanese prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France", opens to the public in the Exhibition Hall of La Pedrera on 17 of June continuing through until 14 of September 2008. The press conference will take place at 11 am and the opening ceremony at 7pm, which will be attended by Gisèle Lambert and Jocelyn Bouquillard, honorary chief curator and curator respectively, of the Print and Photographic Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF).

The exhibition includes more than one hundred prints from the BNF's Département des Estampes collection by such representative authors as Harunobu, Kiyonaga, Utamaro, Hokusai or Hiroshige, and is divided into five thematic sections: theatre, female beauty, parody, eroticism and landscape.

This project is a co-production of the Fundació Caixa Catalunya and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, which will host this exhibition from 17 November 2008 to 15 February 2009 at the Mazarine Gallery and the crypt of the Richelieu space.

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be published in Catalan, Spanish and French and will include reproductions of the works on display, articles by the curators, Gisèle Lambert and Jocelyn Bouquillard, and texts by Christophe Marquet and Keiko Kosugi.

HOKUSAI IN PARIS ~ UNMISSABLE EXHIBITION!!!!!!

PARIS.- Musée National Des Arts Asiatiques Guimet presents "HOKUSAI « l’affolé de son art » d’Edmond de Goncourt à Norbert Lagane" [or, in English, "Hokusai - "mad about his art” From Edmond de Goncourt to Norbert Lagane"] on view through August 4, 2008.
A complete exhibition on the Japanese artist that had the longest lasting influence on Western art. The exhibition was curated by Hélène Bayou, Chief Currator of the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet.

The Guimet Museum organized the first retrospective of its entire Hokusai collection, following the addition of major works. Including recent discoveries, this is a new look at the work of one of the masters of Japanese prints. It is presented to the public in tribute to a great benefactor: Norbert Lagane.

Katsuchika Hokusai (1760-1849) created thousands of paintings, drawings, woodcuts, illustrated books and technical manuals intended for painters and craftsmen. The Guimet Museum’s graphic art collection today houses around 130 works attributed to him. Polychrome prints as famous as the Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji are found next to preparatory drawings, sketches and some paintings which throw light on another facet of this painter’s creative activity. Hokusai influenced the genre of Japanese woodcuts – Ukiyo-e or “Pictures of the floating world”, so called because they described the pleasurable life of courtesans, dancers and kabuki actors. But it has stretched far beyond, inspiring European collectors and painters such as Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, etc (the latter possessing a very rich collection of prints), and thus giving rise to “Japanism”.

Even so, despite the renown that this maestro has enjoyed in Europe, and in France in particular, since the beginning of the 19th century, no exhibition devoted solely to Hokusai has ever been organised by the Guimet Museum. An outstanding gift made in 2001 enabled a painting by Hokusai never before displayed to enter the Museum’s collections: the Dragon among Clouds, a kakemono included in Norbert Lagane’s donation. As it turns out, this forms a pair with the famous Tiger in the Rain scroll, housed in the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo. Two sales from the Huguette Berès collection organised in Paris in 2002 and then in 2003 as part of the late Mme Berès’s estate, also gave the Museum the chance to acquire a series of preparatory drawings, as well as an extremely rare print of Mont Fuji in Blue. As a footnote to these discoveries, the project undertaken in 2006 to restore artworks included scientific analyses of the type of paper and pigments used.

Hokusai and his followers - These acquisitions led the Guimet Museum finally to present the Hokusai collection in its entirety to the public. His life, a moving quest for perfection, is explained through the exhibition in six major periods. His famous landscape prints are joined by beautiful young women and woodcuts with erotic connotations (shun-ga – images of spring). Since the origin of the Ukiyo-e woodcuts, the subject of Woman had been one of the themes especially favoured by artists, and popular with the public. Less well-known works (having never been published) or certain paintings hitherto unseen, complete this ensemble. Barely recognised in Japan, victims of censorship, these artists produced art that was considered lightweight and populist by the elites of the day.

(Article from Artdaily.org. For the Museum website pages on the show, see below)

KUNIYOSHI EXHIBITION AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY IN LONDON, 2009

Finally, a high-profile exhibition of Kuniyoshi in the UK. Hopefully, this will raise his profile and understanding of his work amongst the general museum-going public.


Utagawa Kuniyoshi Exhibition
21 Mar - 7 Jun 09, London

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798 - 1861) is considered one of the greatest Japanese print makers. He dominated the nineteenth century alongside such illustrious names as Hokusai and Hiroshige. On show at the Royal Academy of Arts will be his innovative representations of tattooed heroes of the Suikoden and his most successful applications of Western perspective, as well as good examples of his humorous design.

Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington Gardens, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD



LOOKING FORWARD TO DECEMBER 2008: WONDEFUL NEW EXHIBITION AT THE V&A IN LONDON

Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e

12 Dec 08 - 15 Mar 09, London

The V&A's collection of ukiyo-e is one of the largest and finest in the world, with over 25,000 prints. This display will feature highlights from the touring exhibition Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e from the Victoria and Albert Museum, shown at 7 venues in Japan in 2007/8. It will comprise some 60 prints & drawings from the V&A's unique collection, along with illustrated books and albums. Exhibition themes will reflect the strengths of the collection: glorious full-colour prints, fan prints, illustrated poetry books, and artists' sketches and copyists' drawings that offer unique insights into the production methods of ukiyo-e.

Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London SW7 2RL
Julie and Robert Breckman Gallery and part of the Edwin and Susan Davies Galleries (rooms 90 and 88a). A smaller selection of prints will also be on display in the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art and Design (room 45).


LAST DAY OF GENJI SHOW IN LONDON

Miyabi: The World of Genji

14 - 21 May 08, London

2008 is the one-thousandth anniversary of the writing of the The Tale of Genji and this exhibition looks to reinterpret this Japanese mediaeval literary masterpiece through the medium of fine contemporary glass works. The Heian period (794-1185 CE), during which the novel was written, is often characterised by the Japanese aesthetic ideal of miyabi, or elegance. It was a period of courtly refinement which celebrated allusion and nuance more than distinctiveness and the clearly defined.

Throughout the duration of the exhibition, there will be the opportunity to learn one of the most popular aristocratic Heian-period games, Kai-awase, a matching game using the delicately painted halves of clam shells. Inside each shell is a colourful miniature depicting a scene from The Tale of Genji. There is only one perfect fit for each pair of shell halves: this represents wago, or unity.

Kai-awase demonstrations and workshops will be taking place on Thursday, 15 & Friday, 16 May at 14:00. Booking essential.

Embassy of Japan, 101 - 104 Piccadilly, London W1J 7JT





NEW EXHIBITION IN ST LOUIS

Exchange: Prints from Nagoya Japan

A group exhibit featuring prints by Terou Isomi and Seiichiro Miida. Showcasing traditional printmaking methods as well as emerging techniques only recently made available through technological advances, this show is something of a primer on modern Japanese printmaking. Clearly rooted in a serene Japanese aesthetic, many of the prints are richly (if at times a bit frantically) layered, as though the serenity of an earlier age were being encroached upon by a harried modern world.
Through April 18 at Webster University's Cecille R. Hunt Gallery, 8342 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves; 314-968-7171 (www.webster.edu/depts/finearts/art
). Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri. (open till 8 p.m. Tue.-Wed.) and by appointment.

MAJOR NEW EXHIBITIONS IN NEW YORK!

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770–1900



"Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770–1900" presents more than seventy prints from the renowned Van Vleck collection of Japanese woodblock prints at the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison and approximately twenty prints from the Brooklyn Museum. The Utagawa School, founded by Utagawa Toyoharu, dominated the Japanese print market in the nineteenth century and is responsible for more than half of all surviving ukiyo-e prints, or “pictures of the floating world.” Colorful, technically innovative, and sometimes defiant of government regulations, these prints were created for a popular audience and documented the pleasures of urban life and leisure. The prints represent famous places, landscapes, warriors, and kabuki actors; they were reproduced in books, posters, and other printed materials for mass consumption, and they fed a thriving Edo publishing industry.

This exhibition has been organized by Laura Mueller, Van Vleck Curatorial Intern, Chazen Museum of Art, and Doctoral Candidate, Japanese Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison. The Brooklyn Museum’s presentation has been coordinated by Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum.

ASIA SOCIETY

Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680 – 1860

February 27th - May 4th
11:00 am - 6:00 pm (Friday until 9:00 pm)
Asia Society and Museum, 2nd Floor, Starr & Ross Galleries, 725 Park Avenue, New York
Phone: 212-517-ASIA

"Designed for Pleasure" is a dazzling exploration of Japan’s famous “floating world” of spectacle and entertainment. Through 140 masterworks from museums and private collections in the United States, the exhibition makes new discoveries about the patronage and commerce of an art that has been characterized for a century as sensational but plebian. From luxury paintings of the pleasure quarters to Hokusai’s iconic “Great Wave,” "Designed for Pleasure" presents a focused examination of the period’s fascinating networks of art, literature, and fashion, proving that the artists and the publishers and patrons who engaged them not only mirrored the tastes of their energetic times, they created a unifying cultural legacy.

"Designed for Pleasure," curated by the Japanese Art Society of America (JASA), commemorates the thirty-fifth anniversary of JASA, founded in 1973 as the Ukiyo-e Society of America by collectors of Japanese prints.

Accompanying the exhibition is a lavish full-color 256-page catalogue edited by Julia Meech and Jane Oliver with essays by John T. Carpenter, Timothy Clark, Julie Nelson Davis, Allen Hockley, Donald Jenkins, David Pollack, Sarah E. Thompson, and David Waterhouse.

JOAN B MIRVISS JAPANESE ART

Daring Visions —
Prints from the Utagawa School


Coinciding with two major museum shows in New York, Joan B Mirviss Ltd presents Daring Visions - Prints of the Utagawa School, an exhibition of masterworks of woodblock prints on view from March 3 through May 2, 2008, at 39 East 78th Street. Many of the nineteenth century's most celebrated artists worked under the Utagawa name, and Daring Visions will present a wide range of prints and paintings that demonstrate the variety and dynamism that established the Utagawa school as a dominant creative force in the nineteenth century.
Highlights of the exhibition include a striking field of iris by Utagawa Hiroshige from his celebrated series One-hundred Views of Edo, as well as a dramatic triptych printed with sparkling mica dust by Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicting a Japanese warrior hunting a giant boar.

Daring Visions will also show a small selection of exceptionally fine paintings by members of the school, including a hanging scroll by Utagawa Toyokuni of a courtesan robed in an exquisite black and metallic gold kimono with a spider web pattern. Another rare work is a fan painting by Utagawa Kunimaru (1794-1829) of the famed kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro VII (1791-1859) in one of his most popular stage roles. The exhibition Daring Visions - Prints of the Utagawa School will include an exceptional selection of prints and paintings that range in price from $650 to $32,000.

Printed Treasures:
Highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Includes:
* The Early Ukiyo-e Masters
* The Age of the Harunobu Style
* Nishiki-e's Golden Age
* The Bakumatsu Big Names

January 2 – April 6, 2008

Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts(1-1-1 Kanayama-cho, Naka-ku, Nagoya)

Information from the museum's website:

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is famous for being home to the world's largest and finest collection of Japanese art outside Japan. Assembling that body of outstanding works has been the work of many years, but the distinctive character of the collection was already decided 120 years ago, during the Meiji Period.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the government of Japan, determined to establish Japan's standing internationally, participated in several international expositions. In 1876, the year in which the United States celebrated its first century of independence, a half-year long Centennial Exposition was held in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. That was the first of the exhibitions at which Japan showcased the extraordinary skills embodied in Japanese arts and crafts. The response was enormous. It was at that exposition that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (the MFA) purchased its first Japanese works of art.

Three prominent Bostonians, Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925), Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908), and William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), who played key roles in forming the museum’s collection, all first encountered Japanese art at the Centennial Exposition. It was less than a year later than Morse traveled to Japan, followed by Fenollosa in 1878 and Bigelow in 1882. Their private collections, assembled during their long involvement with Meiji Japan and their growing admiration for the spirit of Japanese art, became the foundations on which the MFA’s collection was built.

Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925)

Professor of Zoology at Tokyo Imperial University. Was entranced by the beauty of Japanese ceramics and built a collection of over 5,000 works, mainly ceramics.

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908)

Was invited to lecture on philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University. In 1890, was appointed head of the Japanese Art Division (now the Asiatic Art Division) of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Collected more than a thousand Japanese prints, paintings, and other works of art.

William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926)

Was appointed curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1890. During his trips to Japan, he collected more than 40,000 examples of paintings of many schools, swords, sword accessories, textiles, lacquerware, woodblock prints, and sculptures.

The MFA collection of ukiyo-e prints is particularly famous and includes more than 50,000 woodblock prints ranging from the early Edo through the Bakumatsu to the Meiji periods. Among the outstanding works selected for this exhibition, many are from the William Sturgis Bigelow collection. In addition to works already famous worldwide, this exhibition showcases many prints that have been thoroughly researched only recently and are being shown for the first time in Japan.

Edo Print Trendsetters Part 4. End of Edo Era:
Ukiyo-e Prints and Artists

Venue: Tobacco & Salt Museum
Schedule: From 2008-01-26 To 2008-03-09
Address: 1-16-8 Jinnan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0041
Phone: 03-3476-2041 Fax: 03-3476-5692
http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2007/CE89


Revisiting Modern Japanese Prints:
Selected Works from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection

January 15 - March 7 2008

Mid-twentieth century Sôsaku Hanga (creative print movement) prints from the Museum's Richard F. Grott Family Collection will be examined thematically to explore Japanese concepts of nationalism and internationalism in the modern era.
This exhibition, along with the accompanying exhibits of pottery and ukiyo-e prints, is part of the project "National/International Conciousness in Japan: Self, Place and Society During the Ninteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries" and honors the generous donation of artwork from the Richard F. Grott Family to the NIU Art Museum.
The exhibitions were co-curated by NIU Assistant Professor of Art History Helen Nagata and NIU Professor Emerita Helen Merrritt with the assistance of NIU graduate and undergraduate students participating in Art History and Museum Studies courses.

Exhibition Catalogue available here: http://www.vpa.niu.edu/museum/html/pubs.html

Exhibition Website here: http://www.vpa.niu.edu/museum/modernjapaneseprints/


Sosaku Hanga: Modern Japanese Prints

February 1 – April 26, 2008


Two schools of printmaking existed in twentieth-century Japan: Shin hanga and Sosaku hanga. Shin hanga or “new prints” continued the traditional ukiyo-e subjects and workshop method of print making, but with a new Western influence. Sosaku hanga or “creative prints” were more fully Westernized in style, blending Japanese aesthetics with international trends in art, especially European methods of painting and printmaking. The artist did everything himself: selected the paper, carved his design in the wood blocks, mixed the pigments, printed the images and marketed the prints.

This exhibition of approximately twenty Sosaku hanga prints displays a wide variety of subjects, techniques and artists. The works mostly date from the 1950s and 1960s, when the sosaku hanga movement finally achieved international recognition. The prints reveal a close relationship with nature. Others capture the human figure, including depictions of children. There is also a tea house, a circus scene, and works titled Zen and The Universe. These prints create a vivid picture of the eclecticism and renovation of Japanese printmaking in the mid-twentieth century.


This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida.

IMPORTANT NEW PUBLICATION!

Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty

by Julie Nelson Davis

One of the most influential artists working in the genre of ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’) in late-eighteenth-century Japan , Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?–1806) was widely appreciated for his prints of beautiful women. In images showing courtesans, geisha, housewives, and others, Utamaro made the practice of distinguishing social types into a connoisseurial art. In 1804, at the height of his success, Utamaro, along with several colleagues, was manacled and put under house arrest for fifty days for making pictures of the military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi enjoying the pleasures of the ‘floating world’. The event put into stark relief the challenge that popular representation posed to political authority and, according to some sources, may have precipitated Utamaro’s subsequent decline.

In this book, Julie Nelson Davis makes a close study of selected print sets, and by drawing on a wide range of period sources, reinterprets Utamaro in the context of his times. Reconstructing the place of the ukiyo-e artist within the world of the commercial print market, she demonstrates how Utamaro’s images participated in the economies of diversion and desire in the city of Edo (modern-day Tokyo ).

Offering a new approach to issues of the status of the artist and the construction of identity, gender, sexuality and celebrity in the Edo period, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty is a significant contribution to the field and a key work for readers interested in Japanese art and culture.

Julie Nelson Davis is Assistant Professor of East Asian Art in the Department of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania . Dr Davis was Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow 2002-03 at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC)

Happy New Year of the Rat!!!



Japanese writing, composed of Chinese ideographs and kana syllabary, is pictographic in origin and as such combines seamlessly with pictorial imagery. In prints, paintings and decorative arts, the interweaving of poems or bits of famous poetry with associated pictures was continuous from at least the eleventh century forward. In Western art, words entered pictorial imagery in the early twentieth century with cubist collage, stimulating a new look at words, poems, and pictures in Japanese art. This exhibition shows some of the ways in which words and images have been blended in art since the eighteenth century, with a concentration on modern artists' and poets' interpretation of mixing single words, continuous prose, or poetry with images.

Curator: Hollis Goodall, Japanese Art.

Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints


The Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery presents the first exhibition to comprehensively examine the thirty-year career of one of Japan’s most popular and prolific woodblock print designers, Yoshu Chikanobu (1838–1912). Born into a samurai family, he became an artist famous for images of warriors, kabuki actors, beautiful women, children, and the imperial family. Chikanobu was known for creating brocade prints (nishiki-e) in rich colors and extraordinary detail. This exhibition features fifty prints that document the artist’s career as he initially advocates modernization in the 1880s, but then turns to promoting traditional Japanese values in the 1890s.

Boston University Art Gallery
855 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 353-3329
www.bu.edu/art


Utagawa Hiroshige: The Moon Reflected

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK: Until 20 Jan 2008
Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK: 8 March-26 April 2008

This exhibition, curated by renowned British artist Julian Opie, consists of woodblock prints by 19th century Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige. An intervention in Ikon’s normal sequence of contemporary exhibitions, it demonstrates the relevance of historical work to current artistic practice, and provides another look at printmaking which is an important part of the gallery’s programme.

The Moon Reflected is the result of Opie’s longstanding interest in Hiroshige. Rather than being an exercise in contemporary/historical mix-and-match, it couldn’t be more serious and personal from the British artist’s point of view. His preference for Hiroshige’s later work is significant as it tends to be broader in style and less narrative, thus accentuating more aesthetic concerns.

Born in Tokyo in 1797, Hiroshige studied printmaking and painting, becoming an illustrator of comic poetry and story books. By 1830, he was concentrating on making prints of famous Japanese landscapes. This exhibition features three series as well as a number of the artist’s sketchbooks and the famous Snow, Moon and Flowers triptychs. Beautiful and unpretentious, these works, assembled from three separate prints, epitomise Hiroshige’s vision, extraordinary for their breadth and ambition.

The artist’s last series, exhibited here, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856-58), was originally intended to be 100 prints but there are more in fact due to popular demand. The imagery features fascinating details amidst a range of evocative landscapes. Rivers, hills, bridges and temples are depicted in these breathtaking compositions, each work revealing their different aspects depending on the weather, time of day and season. Hiroshige tragically died before completing this series, at the height of his creative powers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an interview between Julian Opie and Tim Clark (Japanese Section, The British Museum) and an essay by Henry Smith (Columbia University).

Japanese ukiyo-e exhibition opens in Beijing

An exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e painting masterpieces is currently being shown at the Beijing World Art Museum. The month-long exhibition is hosted by the Chinese Association for International Understanding (CAFIU), showcasing a total of 100 ukiyo-e paintings, more than 40 of which are first shown outside Japan. The exhibits are provided by the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum.
Li Chengren, vice chairman of the CAFIU, said the exhibition was part of the activities marking the 35th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic relations and the 2007 China-Japan Year of Culture and Sports Exchange.

Ukiyo-e auction at Lempertz Auction House in Cologne on December 7th 2007.

Includes works by Hokusai, Utamaro, Eisen etc.


URL: http://www.lempertz.com/



Sublime Worlds of Edo: Gallery Tour


http://www.asia.si.edu/




Explore the extraordinary beauty of idealized and imaginary places expressed by master artists of the Edo period with Deputy Director James Ulak. Discover how Edo Japan, detached from the outside world, inspired these unique and exquisite depictions.

This is the ninth of a series of gallery talks in the Articulations 2007 series, Making Place, which explores the relationships among people, perceptions and place.


Ukiyo-e
by Woldemar Von Seidlitz and Fredrich H Spiegelberg

New general survey ~ to be published on December 1st 2007. Amazon link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ukiyo-E-Woldemar-Von-Seidlitz/dp/1844843882/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195391780&sr=1-4


Japan Envisions the West: 16th-19th Century Japanese Art from the Kobe City Museum:

Organized by the Seattle Art Museum in collaboration with Kobe City Museum, this international exhibition explores how the Japanese saw Westerners and how Japanese artists responded to and interpreted Western art and culture from the 16th to the 19th century. Japan Envisions the West features 140 objects from Kobe City Museum, including paintings, prints, maps, ceramics, lacquerware, metalware, glassware and textiles, along with 20 objects from SAM’s collection. This exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the sister city relationship between Kobe and Seattle.
Part I ends Nov. 25. Part II opens Dec. 1 and runs through Jan. 6, 2008.


Competition & Collaboration: Japanese Prints and the Utagawa School:

A massive new exhibit running through Jan. 6 in the Chazen Museum of Art, displaying Japanese woodblock prints, or ukiyo-e, that flourished in the “floating world” culture of Edo-period Japan. The exhibit is comprised of the University of Wisconsin’s own Van Vleck collection, reputed to be the eighth largest collection of ukiyo-e prints in the United States, and it centers on prints by artists in the Utagawa School, a vast coterie associated with hundreds of artists who lived almost two centuries ago.
(Jason Lester)

MFA Ukiyo-e & Japanese Art Exhibits:

Currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, you can see two beautiful exhibits highlighting Japanese artworks.
The focused “Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690–1850″ exhibit runs until December 16, 2007. Woodblock prints from Harunobu, Utamaro, and Hokusai are on display. The MFA’s collection of more than 700 ukiyo-e paintings has been noted by the Japanese press as one of the finest collections anywhere in the world. This is the first exhibition highlighting the MFAs collection of ukiyo-e. Check out the MFA’s website where you can find a postcast and online tour of the exhibtion.

Also the newly opened exhibit entitled “Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection” runs through January 13, 2008. Stop by to see Dr. John C. Weber’s collection - one of the finest private collections outside of Japan. Nearly 80 works of scrolls, screens, textiles, ceramics and lacquerware will be on display. The exhibition draws a comparison between the Early Bostonians collection of Japanese artwork and Dr. Weber’s personal selection of artworks. According to the MFA’s website this exhibit is “the largest loan of its kind ever shown at the MFA, “Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection” will give Bostonians the chance to experience aspects of classic Japanese art not usually accessible to American museum-goers.” ...