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13 opere 195 membri 9 recensioni

Opere di Sarah E. Thompson

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A wonderful catalog to a wonderful exhibition.
 
Segnalato
aulsmith | Apr 13, 2015 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi: The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido by Sarah E. Thompson, Assistant Curator, Japanese Prints, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is a beautifully bound and illustrated book published by Pomegranate Communications, Petaluma, California (San Francisco is on the book’s title page). The print maker Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798—1861), or Kuniyoshi Utagawa, the name-authority entry of the Library of Congress, was one of the last artists of the Ukiyo-E, or ‘floating world’ tradition of Japanese visual art expressed in paintings and woodblock prints.

The concept of evanescent, transient beauty of the immediate present expressed in images of landscape, in song, and in hedonistic ‘happy hour’ revelry, captivated Japanese artists in Japan’s early modern Edo or Tokugawa Period (1603-1868). Some other Ukiyo-E artists include: Moronubu (1618—1694), Utamaro (1753--1806), Hokusai (1760--1849), and Kuniyoshi’s contemporary, Hiroshige (1797—1858), whose work will be found in the Masterworks of Ukiyo-E series of color-illustrated, paperbound books published at Tokyo and Palo Alto, California, during 1968 and 1969, by Kodansha International.

The Kisokaido, as Thompson explains in her elegant and informative introduction, was the inland road between Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, and Edo (today’s Tokyo), headquarters of the Tokugawa shoguns (generals), on which travelers found sixty-nine stations, or official rest stops. The coastal route between the two major cities of Japan was the Tokaido, whose fifty-three stations were illustrated by Hiroshige, and its 300-plus miles walked in the 1920s by Muneshige Narazaki, author of Hiroshige: The 53 Stations of the Tokaido (Palo Alto: Kodansha, 1969)

This clothbound volume includes seventy-two colored prints (one of each of the 69 stations, plus one for each terminus point (Kyoto and Edo) and one of the original publication’s title page) with explanatory narrative about each print on facing pages. It includes also an introduction, bibliography, and index.
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chuck_ralston | 7 altre recensioni | Dec 30, 2009 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
This is a beautiful book with richly colored, full page reproductions of each of the seventy two prints in this series – title page, all 69 stations, plus the starting and ending cities of Edo and Kyoto – and provides a wonderful introduction to this period, and to the history and legends of Japan.

For this series showing the overland route between the shogun's and the emperor's capitals, the landscape takes a minor role. Instead, Utagawa Kuniyoshi chooses to focus on heroes from legendary tales, characters from dramas, and historical figures. In each print, Kuniyoshi cleverly combines images within images and uses puns & wordplay in his titles to identify each station on the road.

An example from one print "Ageo: Takao of the Miurya". In the print, a courtesan is being weighed against a heaping chest of gold. The story is from an urban legend that was made into a kabuki play where a lord offers to buy the contract for his favorite by paying her weight in gold. Ageo is the name of the station on the Kisokaido, but there's also a variety of wordplay and visual punning going on in the image: between the print title and Takao's name which uses similar characters; the name "Takao" was sort of an historic one since it was passed down over 'generations' of courtesans; the lord's name in the play was a stand-in name for an historical figure; and throughout the print there are visual references to Takao's signature maple leaf crest.

The Edo-era viewer of this print and this series would be familiar with these stories and could readily appreciate Kuniyoshi's visual puns and word-play. Modern readers can begin to appreciate all of the intricacies of these prints thanks to the detailed descriptions by the author, an assistant curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The introduction provides the necessary background to 19th century ukiyo-e and to Kuniyoshi, and the layout of the book, with the print title and description immediately facing the image, make this an easy and enjoyable read.
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SeiShonagon | 7 altre recensioni | Dec 2, 2009 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per Recensori in anteprima di LibraryThing.
During Edo era Japan a network of roads were established connecting Edo, the site of the shoganate, and Kyoto, the home of the emperor, and was maintained as a way of controlling transport of people and goods through the country. The main roads were the Tokaido, along the coast, and the Kisokaido, through the mountains. The post stations along each served as checkpoints as well as providing accomodations and food for the travelers.

Over time the roads and the post stations became the subject of fiction as well as wood block prints. Two of the series of prints of the Kisokaido appeared in book form in recent years. One, by Hiroshige and Eisen, was originally printed between 1834 and 1843. Another, by Kuniyoshi, appeared in print in 1852-53. The former is probably the most known and is in the landscape style. The second, which is the subject of this book by Sara E. Thompson, includes instead of the artist's visual interpretation of the post station but stories from legends, dramas, fiction associated with the post stations. Of note, there is no evidence that any of these artists actually viewed the Kisokaido.

Ms Thompson presents a very thorough introduction to Kuniyoshi's series, places it in context of Edo-era prints, gives much information about the history and culture. The prints are small but excellent in reproduction quality. Each print is accompanied by the story of the image, how it relates to the post station. This book is a great contribution to the knowledge of wood block prints as well as providing the reader with much information about the Japanese culture.
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Segnalato
catarina1 | 7 altre recensioni | Jul 27, 2009 |

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Statistiche

Opere
13
Utenti
195
Popolarità
#112,377
Voto
½ 4.3
Recensioni
9
ISBN
13

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