Splendors of courtesans Japan
Japan, ukiyo-e paintings of Idemitsu Museum
from 19 September to 9 November 2008
and 18 November to 4 January 2009
Young woman getting dressed,
Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806)
Meaning of the game and taste of poetry, hedonism mixed with distance, the values of Ukiyo-e still permeate modern urban Japan.
The Idemitsu Museum in Tokyo has one of the richest and most beautiful collections in Japan in the field of ukiyo-e painting. The exhibition to be held at the 19 2008 Cernuschi Museum on September 4 2009, will present a selection of 112 paintings (hanging rolls or kakemono, folding screens, and length rolls or e-maki) made by the greatest artists of this school . In particular, it traces the history of this painting from the painting of manners or fuzokuga, in the seventeenth century, to the great masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. For reasons of conservation, the works will be presented in rotation in two stages over a period of three months.
Appeared at the end of the 17th century, the Ukiyo-e school, or "painting of the floating world," flourished until the mid-19th century. This school is linked to the development of major Japanese cities, Kyôto, Osaka and especially Edo (Tokyo), shogunale capital. From the end of the nineteenth century, it enjoyed international renown, particularly because of the popularity and circulation of Japanese prints in the West, and illustrated books. But the paintings of these artists are often much less well known.
The Ukiyo-e School has counted some of the greatest artists of Japanese painting, including Kaigetsudô Ando (? -1743), Suzuki Harunobu (1724 - 1770), and of course Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), KatsushikaHokusai (1760-1849) and Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858). Their themes are modern life, Edo, its kabuki theaters and neighborhoods of pleasure where noble and wealthy bourgeois live side by side. Ukiyo-e's favorite subject is pretty women, especially courtesans of Shin-Yoshiwara, the district of pleasures in Edo. Presented in an idealized light, the "beauties" of green homes embody the taste of luxury and pageantry that characterizes the wealthy urban population of the Edo period (1615-1867).
