Museum Open House; Made in Japan: Ukiyo-e Prints; 60; Museum Open House: Made in Japan: Ukiyo-e Prints

Jamie. I thought you might like to see a picture of. The kind of kimonos I used to wear in the old days. I can imagine you just wear one look. She must be wearing at least 12 kilos. Would you like to have 12. C'mon. You know you look very funny out in the jungle gym with smoking on the lawn where you think you're doing good just standing there. What they're looking they're looking at something and you find it. Yeah kiddies don't want you almost can't see it. And how would you like to wear your hair that way. Sorry I thought it. Would you think I was prettier than Jews. You like woman the way she is me too. Listen why don't you go back and ask her if she'll play the koto for us a little later. OK. You. Know. The expression made in

Japan has lost much of its old connotations in recent years it's become frequently a sign of rare quality in art. It has always been synonymous with excellence. Japanese woodblock prints are but one aspect of Japanese art. They are esteemed for themselves and for the extraordinary influence which they have had on the course of modern art. They are often delicate in design. They're always delicate in materials and that's why this and all the other prints we're showing on this program would cut reproductions. Many of the originals are in the great collection of this museum. This one is by NOT guy. It's one of the Central. He was one of the central figures in printmaking and will return to him later. It's a looking back a nostalgic education of Japan's classic period of refinement in art they later hey on the period of the 10th to 12th centuries where the

Japanese print developed in a vastly different world than most one of court ladies and adrift in a dozen came out I was and gallant princes and judge them by the elegance of their calligraphy. This is its proper setting or improper depending on your point of view. In a 17th century house in Yoshi WADA the court isn't district or licensed quarter of which is now called Tokyo. A guest at the left peeks through a hole in a screen at one of the milder diversions two couples engaged in a variation of the old scissors paper stone game while a group in the back room attends to the twining of a three string shammy scent. It's called a prospective print because the artist takes delight in creating the sort of illusory space which the Japanese had seen and engravings brought in by Dutch traders. It's one of the early and colored prints in which only the key block of the black lines is printed.

A Japanese writer of the period summed up the philosophy pretty well when he wrote. Living only for the moment. Turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon the snow the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves singing songs drinking wine and diverting ourselves just in floating floating caring not equipped for the populism staring us in the face refusing to be disheartened. Like a gourd floating along with a river current. This is what we call the floating world. That's a 17th century writer named us I think the word he used for this fleeting floating world was okie Oh and it means picture. Thus the name footprints and paintings in the style pictures of the floating world. It was the popular art of the ATO period from 16 hundred to roughly the middle of the 19th century. When the feudal government resided

in ATO while the Emperor remained a mere figurehead in Kyoto its first known master was a man named Mauro noble. He was a painter. He did this scene of two lovers frolicking in the flowers in simple black and white. The one on the right is the man you can see part of his head has been shaved. He left his sword leaning against a tree and that's symbolic in a funny way the Japanese had isolated themselves from foreign conflicts and wars so as to get to know one another better to consolidate and centralize the power of the of the petty feudal lords and increased into the trade board money and Ato and gave rise to a bustling pleasure loving new middle class which demanded this kind of art. It began with paintings of every day life and. Of course most artists consider themselves painters first and illustration developed and when the demand

for prints came along they the painters combined with the Japanese woodblock Carver is highly skilled after 400 years of printing an illustration of Buddhist texts in the Chinese Classics. This one is the frontispiece to an album of what connoisseurs would call erotica in the post office would call pornography. Whether the conspicuous indulgence in sex and its imaginative depiction in art which marked the period a more reprehensible in some bizarre manifestations in our. Enlightened culture is happily irrelevant here. Art always contains a moral judgment by statement or omission and we don't need to share it to enjoy the eloquence with which it is revealed. Color printing took a while to appear. This is a hand colored illustration by Suki want to jihad showing the hero of Japanese history. Soon a siren aiding a famous beauty while perched rather precariously on a bullock.

The line is here fairly characterless the color that's dominant. You see how that tree is replaced in the middle where the fold of the album was. Some of the early work that I respond to most enthusiastically myself was made by the Kai get pseudo school the school derived from a master painter whose pupils as well as descendants inherited his name in this custom which often causes difficulties of attribution. His successful career as a painter as the painter of the beauties of Ato was cut short and he was exiled from his involvement in a characteristic scandal of the period a principal lady in waiting at the Shoguns court was discovered in an affair with a man in a very shady profession. He was an actor in the New Theatre. This one is by gets a dodo hime. And it was one of the most famous pinups of its day.

We can see here how. A painting style is being transcribed into Prince beginning to be conscious of its own character. The new leading line cut Shockley in the resisting would marvelous vigor of it came along. Those lines that swirl and swirl and they contrast with the delicate creature inside. Was revealed just by that little head. The ideal of beauty takes a while to get used to it. It's related in some ways to the ideal of the ancient Chinese court and to the ideal conceptions of the Buddha which had developed over the centuries. By the time Tony Noble began his great series of actor Prince the Cubbie theatre was already assembling a

violently colorful history. The style was brilliantly suited to the extravagantly stylized realism of the plays that dealt often with scenes of nightly valor and devotion. His strength was in the dramatic tension with which he electrified his characters. It's even been suggested that this kind of work perhaps influence the style of the acting above the actor's portraits of their family crest the house crests and these active prints. They really had as many female collectors as the chorus and Prince had among the men. Okamura was one of those artists who by their personal genius expand the entire style of the subject matter and the technical range of an art in the first half of the 18th century he tackled everything from Buddhist subjects to scenes from classical modern literature and legend birds flowers animals landscapes gorgeous and the festivals and sights of a dome. He was also a

writer and his prints often contain literary puns and allusions which are lost unless we know the source and the language it's probably just as well that we can't translate the poem on the curtain. It's decorated with a pillow. This couple really belonged to a floating world that came out of those milling like way use. Of course the Camorra kimono was justly appreciated as a work of art in itself. These prints often served as fashion plates. This lovely girl strolling among the plum blossom is a man. The authorities found the performances of the women in early cup a little too exuberant and have them replaced by fair young men as on the Elizabethan stage of Shakespeare and that created other problems. So they ordained that the women be played by mature men and so we have the institution of

only got to the female impersonators of the stage. This takes a bit of getting used to but devote Tay's of the book you learn to accept it is just another convention. She's a little more convincing here than on stage for the artist is simply envisioned an ideal feminine beauty. It's a theatre souvenir after a performance by not coming to us and yet we see on his sleeve the house crest again gold leaf is printed by the first. Q Massu The second was not I think as fine an artist but he was one of his better prints of the most famous actor of the 18th century each done zero The second was greater than the first the rice measure crest of Concentra squares adds a striking pattern to many print. And this is the most dramatic

moment in a famous play called XI but ACO which means Wait a moment. The Superman hero appears for the first time in the rear of the audience and he calls out to halt an act of treason. Once one dungeon made his entrance and shouted she but aku jealous actor on stage decided to spoil the entrance by not picking up the cue and kept shouting it until he was red in the face. The audience loved it. And that's the way it still played. In Tokyo today. A primitive form of color printing began to replace the hand colored prints around this time and I worked like this. Girls at folk who go out and buy kewl me too. Excuse me has two colors been Earth green and the vermilion faded to pink. And they're printed on top or printed after the initial ink print of the outline. And within that limitation that. Extraordinarily rich effects were

obtained. You have AA and the original key block here. It's very economically made there are 4 different prints on it by three different artists. And we have a print that was taken from this block by Mr. Hugo chief of the museum staff. It's a scene from the cub girl holding up a robe which a writer is just decorated with a poem because of the ambiguity of the written language the Japanese take a Joycean delight in Wordplay this one can be read. The fortress of Koran has fallen or the chords of the chemo are broken from this simple technique. They're now gradually evolved to an elaborate process of full color printing. The man who gets most of the credit for it was Suki How do I know. Before we look at his

work it might be well to examine the method of production which I've developed now and again usually with a publisher or a connoisseur who commissioned the work frequently suggesting the subject sometimes even the general design. He also put up the money supervised production details the artists came next with a finished drawing of the final design on which everything else rested. Then the engraver who cut to cherry wood block for the ink outline and then the color block sometimes allowing for several colors on one block. The printer came last with the job of printing them all in perfect register and superb a handmade paper usually guided in color selection by the artist. This is one of the richly textured results which made our noble world famous the KOG tea house on the left a young rake as they always describe them in art books delis with a reluctant waitress outside the tea house while some lovely prospective customers seem to be eyeing each other's kimono was.

Behind the post. A child carries a sprig of cherry blossoms. The how noble ideal of feminine beauty created a new sensation A frail poignant creature who looks as though she might drift away like a leaf in the wind. She makes. An interesting contrast with the snub nosed plainly dressed woman who is seated preparing tea and cakes but even she is endowed with a limp and flowing grace in her pose in those tiny little hands seeing no more fit for labor. How noble was a master of the. Oh bleak unexpected view. See how we're looking. Down on this scene. He knew how to exploit supreme Lee Well only the play of the languorous curves of the kimono against the geometrical exposed structural elements of Japanese architecture. This one shows ostensibly a sporting young couple

whose rousing game of battledore and shuttlecock was something like netlist badminton is suspended so that the shuttlecock can be retried retrieved. It's actually a subtly ambiguous. Illustration for a poem which normally is printed in that cloud form at the top as fast the Minas stream down down mounts about to fall into deep pools. They have to be caught so love profound holds me in thrall. And I'm sure it's much prettier in Japanese. His work is just how noble it is justly known as one of the peaks of collectors often cherished with even deeper affection artists that are not as well-known. Such is the pizza side wouldn't show he was overshadowed much of his life time by how to Noble this lovely lady is again nominally a couple actor but the print is a

magnificent avocation of feminine grace. He walks in the garden by night past a sprinkle of chrysanthemums some Japanese names are difficult but they improved on that when they call them. She derived from her note was ideal but when she was ladies are marked with a special somber dignity the color limited and restrained. With that she booie character of much Japanese art. It doesn't ask to be liked but only to be discovered. We are. Of course omitting many distinguished artists in this casual survey but we can't overlook the last great artist of the Tory line which began with noble that is Tory Keo Naga who did the first print we looked at of the Court ladies. He's particularly well represented in this museum. The court isn't by the window is gazing out over a moonlit Shinagawa bay with its flickering lights of fishing boats.

Dr. Ernest fellows I once wrote glowingly of this print. The lines to falling from the standing figure and then curling into the coaching girls upon the floor are more harmonious than Bata Cheli more suave and flowing than a Greek painting and indeed suggest the finest line feeling of Chinese Buddhist painting and even Greek sculpture. There is in those words the fervor of a great scholar devoted to making a distant exotic art excessive to the west by measuring one of perhaps the measurable things. But this print gains a a strong hold over us. As you look at it as a sort of innocent Majesty in very an innocent surroundings the bars of the window take on a prison look without sentimentality we become engaged in the fate of these three splendidly wistful creatures as vulnerable to chance as the folds of their kimono.

This print bike you're not guys cold. Sudden shower at the Mina goody shrine at the gate. A group takes shelter. Samurai wipes his head with a towel while another man folds his cloak. Lady looks thankfully at the sky while her maid 6s or Obi. But there's a rescue on the way from the not to die a restaurant advertised on the umbrella and she's getting $200 in a pair of rain clogs like your own. She's followed by a running geisha with her face wrapped in a towel. Rice field in the background and then. There are two married women sharing one umbrella followed by a last geisha whose O.B.. And poise have come undone. Above the clouds. A group of humorous thunder gods in ordinary human clothes are having a conference concerning a poem if thou art indeed God who watches Dora farmers send forth I pray.

Showers. Now we come to the great mystery man took you away. We know that he just a few things out of a lot of history about him that he designed portraits of the actors and was criticized for attempting to achieve an extreme of of realism and therefore he was not long in demand and he was recorded as being a no actor in the service of the Lord of the hour. But that's all that is known about him. That's all it was ever recorded. And historians wish that that record a little bit more. He's a dramatic artist. His real ism included a great deal of wit also witty exaggeration this is the great character actor. There's some question as to what role he's playing here the conventions of the Kabuki hairstyle tell us that

he's portraying a villain not to exalted station Chirac whose figures bulge out and almost burst the confines of the picture. He takes us Beyond the pageantry to the actor playing a role to the hilt and then beyond the role he helps us to see the actor is a gifted extroverted human being human quirks the simple looped line with which he gives the character to that mouth is something that Toulouse Lautrec would well of admired. It's been said that Shakur was the only artist to trade the female impersonators of Cubbie without any illusion that they might be girls in this role the actor was playing a beautiful chord as a New Avengers the murder of her father. Judging by Sherlock whose portrait it must have been a summit of the art of acting. This actor is portraying a young man servant of a type often used by Samurai masters at least on the stage to perform deeds of violence.

He lurches into our consciousness with a fierce growl his eyes crossed in dark malevolence. Completely theatrical but frightening anyway Stockley designed against a simple dark like a ground. Beautiful women were a cause for celebration in art and poetry wherever they were found. Which I model is perhaps best known in the western world for portrayals like this one of the famous Tea House waitress named okey tack. She was the subject of many prints and of this testimonial by a satisfied tourist written while resting. Anyone who goes near it is just as sure to stop at the famous tea house to look at the pretty waitress as they are to stop at the post station and harbor for which it was named who tomorrow was a prodigious producer of erotica. What we have here is a glimpse of a domestic side of the tomato. The

mother examining a bolt of silk and its really marvelous the way he's. Suggested the transparency. And below there is a bold and I find slightly sinister little child playing with a fan. But look look how he puts He varies the thickness of that line now it. Is a strong bending right bending around the mother's knee and so thin and delicate for the child's body. But. This is absolutely one of the worst prints in the history of the way things are static and ridiculous the design is clumsy and dull. But the artist persevered and one day he made another great wave. And it is probably the most famous print ever produced hoax I was a phenomenal figure to just about everything in art died at the age of 89 saying that if you had

10 more years he might have been a great artist. He stands at the end of the great days of working your way with another giant you know she gave you this painting the sprint that we've been looking for it for years it has the ideal dimensions for television. The key to Chief contribution to be of the genius of hoax II and Hiroshi game was in landscape and we thought their mood might be echoed by the music of the koto. In an ancient composition called broken down played by my wife to go.