As long ago as 1923, Laurence Binyon and J. That history is the focus of "Undercurrents in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints," a serious and groundbreaking show at the Asia Society.
The strictures were rarely enforced as fiercely as they were in Utamaro's case, but the history of the ukiyo-e print is in part the history of artists and their publishers concocting ways to elude the censors. Erotica, Christian images, portraits of courtesans and actors, scenes of contemporary events, even certain calendars were banned. It was also illegal to represent the Tokugawa family, even flatteringly. Under the Tokugawa family, which ruled Japan for the better part of three centuries, it was treasonous simply to depict Hideyoshi, the warlord who had been treacherously overthrown at the end of the 16th century by the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. One of the supreme practitioners of the ukiyo-e woodblock print, Utamaro never recovered from the punishment and died a year later at the age of 53. Almost like a frieze in its arrangement of figures roughly in a line across the foreground, "The Taiko Hideyoshi and His Five Wives," of 1804, is a formal and sedate image, remarkable on first glance mostly for the subtle interplay of the patterned robes in which the artist, Utamaro, clothes his characters.įor this work, and for a trio of prints on related themes, Utamaro spent 3 days in jail and 50 more in handcuffs under house arrest. The print depicts a man seated in serene comfort, surrounded by nearly a dozen women.
0 kommentar(er)
