Wang Cai

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Traditional woodblock prints were initially used as early as the eighth century in Japan to disseminate texts, especially Buddhist scriptures. The designer and painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu (died ca. 1640) used wood stamps in the early seventeenth century to print designs on paper and silk. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/gallery-%E7%94%BB%E5%BB%8A

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Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)

Katsushika Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also called The Great Wave has became one of the most famous works of art in the world—and debatably the most iconic work of Japanese art. Initially, thousands of copies of this print were quickly produced and sold cheaply. Despite the fact that it was created at a time when Japanese trade was heavily restricted, Hokusai’s print displays the influence of Dutch art, and proved to be inspirational for many artists working in Europe later in the nineteenth century.

mount Fuji does not always dominate the frame. Instead, here, the foreground is filled with a massive cresting wave. The threatening wave is pictured just moments before crashing down on to three fishing boats below. Under the Wave off Kanagawa is full of visual play. The mountain, made tiny by the use of perspective, appears as if it too will be swallowed up by the wave. Hokusai’s optical play can also be lighthearted, and the spray from top of the crashing wave looks like snow falling on the mountain.

Hokusai has arranged the composition to frame Mount Fuji. The curves of the wave and hull of one boat dip down just low enough to allow the base of Mount Fuji to be visible, and the white top of the great wave creates a diagonal line that leads the viewers eye directly to the peak of the mountain top.

Across the thirty-six prints that constitute this series, Hokusai varies his representation of the mountain. In other prints the mountain fills the composition, or is reduced to a small detail in the background of bustling city life.

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Vibrantly colorful artworks undoubtedly have similarly profound psychological impact, but in Asia for many centuries, such art was not always easy to find. In Japan up until the late 19th century, woodblock prints could only be displayed briefly in order to avoid their colors fading from exposure to ultraviolet light. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/

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ART MUSEUM EXHIBITS JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS

Drawing on its rich collection of Japanese prints, the University of Virginia Art Museum will feature an exhibition, in two parts, of 19th-century Japanese color woodblock prints.

Curated by Stephen Margulies, "Love: Japanese Color Woodblock Prints" runs through April 22; "Legend: Japanese Color Woodblock Prints" will be on view from April 24 through Aug. 5.

"Nineteenth-century Japanese color woodblock prints can be beautiful, funny, moving and brilliantly imaginative," Margulies said. "Their irony and innovative, even tricky, design and subject matter had a great influence on modern Western art."

Japanese woodblock prints satisfied the psychological needs of commoners in a highly repressive, still-feudal society, he said. The prints differed from aristocratic art as they depicted the world of kabuki theater, high-class courtesans, legends and ordinary life. The Japanese phrase for prints made for the common people is ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world. This refers to the Buddhist concept that reality is unstable and deceptive, but also suggests the rare freedom to be found in the entertainment district of Edo, the old name for modern-day Tokyo, he said.

Many prints, though great art, were advertisements for the district. Their production required an artist who drew the design, a carver who carved it into the multiple wooden blocks used for printing a sheet and an inker who applied color to each block. The resulting work was popular, yet evocatively literate. Daring much, it explored dream and fact, Margulies said.

This first part of the exhibition is about love – perhaps the doomed love of people from different classes, courageously romantic love, or the illusory but gaudy love found in Edo's entertainment district, Margulies said.

The second part of the exhibition is about legend. Often employed to advertise kabuki theater, these melodramatic prints turned tabloid events into heroic stories of self-sacrifice. "They disguised the commercial realities of the Entertainment District of Edo in the mask of lofty literature and brought heroic legend down to Earth by ironically putting commoners in roles associated with supposedly virtuous aristocrats," Margulies explained. "Thus, these popular prints invoking legend turned suffocating reality into liberating poetry.

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义经一代记之内 八回 Ushiwakamaru Defeats Tankai of Shirakawa at the Gojo Shrine, from the series of The Life of Yoshitsune. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/gallery-%E7%94%BB%E5%BB%8A/

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Ukiyo-e prints, which is frequently translated as "pictures of the floating world," is a term for Japanese paintings and woodblock prints that originally portrayed the pleasure areas of cities during the Edo Period, when the Shoguns' peaceful rule over Japan encouraged sensual attributes of life in a peaceful environment.For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/

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History of Woodblock Printing in Japan

Woodblock printing was a very important art form in Japan. In this lesson, we are going to explore the history of woodblock printing and see how it impacted Japanese arts.

Japanese Woodblock Prints

Printing is a pretty useful technology. It lets you reproduce information much more quickly, which makes that information more available. However, printing technologies didn't only impact the written word. Around the world, printing also became an important part of art.

This was especially true in Japan, where woodblock printing came to define the national aesthetic. Woodblock printing involves the engraving of an image or words onto a block of wood, which is painted with ink and pressed against paper. As long as the woodblock survives, you can reproduce that page countless times. This technology became extremely important to Japanese arts, and printed images became among the most celebrated popular works. In fact, woodblock prints were so influential that they've defined Japanese arts to this day; the aesthetics of both manga and anime are directly descended from woodblock prints. So, let's take a look at this history, and see how it came to define Japan.

Early Printing

The basic technique of woodblock printing was developed in China in the 7th century CE, and possibly earlier. That's the origins of all printing technologies of East Asia. Chinese woodblocks made their way to the seclusive islands of Japan in the 8th century, and the technology was adopted.

For the first several centuries, woodblock printing was used almost exclusively to reproduce written works, notably Buddhist texts and Chinese political philosophy. Printed texts of this time were almost always foreign. In fact, it wasn't until the 1500s that Japanese literature and philosophy started to appear regularly in print.

With the printing technologies of the time, printers could create monochromatic pages only. Since they were mostly printing written works, this was enough. Every now and then, however, illustrations were added to the texts. When images were printed, they were also monochromatic and had to be painted in by hand. So, we can see how an artistic culture based around printing would be time consuming and not highly practical.

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In appreciation of the color in Japanese woodblock prints

In this season of giving thanks, I would like to jot down my appreciation for the visual spectacles that we enjoy on a daily basis here in the islands: the brilliant flora, majestic sunsets, and that curious aerial phenomenon that we call a rainbow. Vibrantly colorful artworks undoubtedly have similarly profound psychological impact, but in Asia for many centuries, such art was not always easy to find. In Japan up until the late 19th century, woodblock prints could only be displayed briefly in order to avoid their colors (derived from such organic dyes as safflower and bellflower) fading from exposure to ultraviolet light. Vibrant textile dyes, furthermore, were revered so deeply that, in order to maintain social order, government officials enacted sumptuary laws that forbade commoners from displaying them in their clothing!

Over the past two centuries, we have witnessed a remarkable evolution of color throughout the world. A particularly dramatic chapter in that history occurred 150 years ago, when German chemists discovered that the chemical aniline could be extracted from tar to produce a variety of synthetic dyes. Mauveine (mauve) was created in 1856, followed by a dozen others within the course of a few decades, including rosaniline and pararosaniline (similar shades of magenta), methyl violet, eosine (pink), and xylidine Ponceau (scarlet). From the 1860s through the 1880s, these dyes were introduced to Japan, and the palette of woodblock prints suddenly began to intensify. In 1868, when a constitutional monarchy replaced Japan’s military government, many artists were inspired to use such newly available imported pigments to document their country’s transformation.

Some of the first works to use synthetic pigments are currently on view in the Robert F. Lange Gallery for Japanese Prints. The wall text in this print rotation, as implied by its title—Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Meiji Restoration and Immigration to Hawaii—deals mainly with historical context. When you enter the gallery for the first time, however, the first thing that you will notice is the vibrancy of these prints. Fans of traditional ukiyo-e might find them a bit startling, but bear in mind that any technological breakthrough (in this case, the discovery of aniline dyes) is followed by a period of erratic experimentation through which artists develop mastery of the materials. Think of these prints as the Japanese equivalent to Fauvism, the avant-garde painting movement that began in 1905 and in which Henri Matisse (1869–1954) rose to fame. Not surprisingly, Matisse and his fellow Fauvists credited Japanese prints as the source of their inspiration.

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japanese wood block print

Art of Ukiyoe sells authentic, high-quality Japanese woodblock prints, with a focus on the Chinese market. We feature prints from the Edo period to the 20th Century. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/gallery-%E7%94%BB%E5%BB%8A

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Here is something very unusual: during his prolific career, Yoshitoshi was one of the Ukiyo-e artists producing Yokohama-e, or prints depicting the foreigners who'd recently begun to visit Japan. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/product-page/%E6%9C%88%E5%B2%A1%E8%8A%B3%E5%B9%B4-tsukioka-yoshitoshi-1839-1892-9

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Hasui: Snow at Koshigaya

hasui kawase prints - this great master of the twentieth-century shin-hanga school spent most of his adult life as a woodblock printmaker. Unlike earlier ukiyo-e artists whose landscapes typically featured famous sites, Hasui was one of the first artists to record the unknown rural places and urban corners that he found so captivating. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/product-page/%E5%B7%9D%E7%80%A8%E5%B7%B4%E6%B0%B4-kawase-hasui-1883-1957-2

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Kunichika: No.51, Genji Gojuyo Jo, Contemporary 54 Feelings

Kunichika: No.51, Genji Gojuyo Jo, Contemporary 54 Feelings - a winter view with a beauty holding an umbrella while approaching a boat along a dock; signed Toyohara Kunichika hitsu, the date on the left-hand margin, on todoke Meiji - nen - getsu - nichi followed by the address of the publisher.For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/product-page/%E8%B1%90%E5%8E%9F%E5%9C%8B%E5%91%A8toyohara-kunichika-1835-1900-4

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Hiroshige: Hamamatsu, 53 Stations of the Tokaido

Hiroshige was appointed by Bakufu, the feudal government of Japan, to accompany an official procession from Edo to Kyoto and then the residence of the emperor along the Tokaido road. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/product-page/hiroshige-hamamatsu-53-stations-of-the-tokaido

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Who was Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Utagawa Kuniyoshi was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting. He was a member of the Utagawa school. The range of Kuniyoshi's subjects included many genres: landscapes, beautiful women, Kabuki actors, cats, and mythical animals. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/%E5%89%AF%E6%9C%AC-%E5%B7%B2%E5%94%AE

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woodblock printing has largely been replaced by modern printing techniques, but some artists still employ the technique to create art works in a variety of styles. Made by well known masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige, Fine Japanese Prints are highly collected worldwide. The most common subjects in Japanese woodblock printmaking are landscapes, beautiful women, scenes from the theatre, animals and flowers, and historic events. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/

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What is ukiyo-e Japanese print?

Ukiyo-e, which is frequently translated as "pictures of the floating world," is a term for Japanese paintings and woodblock prints that originally portrayed the pleasure areas of cities during the Edo Period, when the Shoguns' peaceful rule over Japan encouraged sensual attributes of life in a peaceful environment.For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/

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What is the most famous Japanese woodblock print?

Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa is likely the first picture that comes to mind when most people think of Japanese woodblock prints. He is best known for his landscape paintings, many of which feature waterfalls, bridges, and mountains, particularly Mount Fuji, but he also took a lot of images of ghosts, animals, and erotica. For more information please visit here https://www.artofukiyoe.com/