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Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Japanese Paintings: Figures from Life, Figures from Allegory
Pavilion for Japanese Art, East Wing
Dec. 12, 2015-May 29, 2016
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Katsukawa Shunsho (1726-1792) Child Dancing with Chrysanthemum Branch (detail), Alternate Title, Kikujido. Hanging scroll, ink and colors on silk. Image: 33 1/2 x 12 1/4 in. Gift of Caroline and Jarred Morse. Photo (C) 2015 Museum Association/ LACMA
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Ukiyo-e, pictures of the "floating world" of the entertainment and theater district, were a product of the popular culture of the Edo period (1615 - 1868) in Japan, and were mostly produced in the shogual capital of Edo, present Tokyo.
Early ukyo-e paintings, which developed in the late 17th century, ultimately derived from the style of genre screens of the 16th and 17th centuries, and selected as their subjects the icons of pleasure, either beautiful woman of the town, popular actors or courtesans.
Subjects from classical literature and parodies of those tales or court poems, satires of the upper classes, as well as landscapes of famous scenic spots were seen more frequently as the tastes of townsmen broadened in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
Ukiyo-e paintings were made for townspeople, and differed distinctly from the more refined arts practiced by painters for the aristocracy and military leaders, both in treatment of subjects and in their themes.
Zen paintings also displayed in this exhibition, were painted by monks rather than professional artists, and give pure expression to the spirit through calligraphic style.
In ukiyo-e, great attention was given to the figures and their activities, their clothing and the surrounding genre elements, rather than to the details of the natural environment which would be emphasized in other, more literary -based or Chinese-inspired styles of Japanese painting.
Lacking restrictions imposed by tradition, ukiyo-e painters felt free to experiment with composition and technique, and to play with humorous, irreverent or even erotic subject matter.
Exquisite paintings of women were central to painted ukiyo-e, for in the town of Edo where men outnumbered women by a considerable percentage, beautiful women were venerated.
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