Japanese Kite Prints: Selections from the Skinner Collection

Stevenson, John A.

ISBN 10: 0295984546 / ISBN 13: 9780295984544

Verlag: University of Washington Press, 2004

Brings together two of Edo's colourful traditions, prints and kites. This book celebrates the significance of the mass-produced broadsheets known as ukiyo-e. It features illustrations from the Skinner Collection that are products of Tokugawa Edo and Meiji Tokyo. It is intended for kite aficionados and lovers of Japanese art. Num Pages: 200 pages, 115 illus., 100 in color, 14 foldouts. BIC Classification: 1FPJ; 3JF; 3JJC; AFH; AGC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 313 x 260 x 23. Weight in Grams: 1806. . 2004. hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers V9780295984544

Inhaltsangabe:

Color woodblock prints vibrantly convey the popular urban culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Edo, now called Tokyo. In a book that brings together two of Edo's most colorful traditions, prints and kites, John Stevenson celebrates the charm and significance of the mass-produced but often elegant broadsheets known as ukiyo-e. The term means "pictures of the floating world," a pun on a Buddhist concept of the fleeting world of desires that is, coincidentally but poetically, appropriate for a study of kites borne on the wind. Edo artists experimented with woodblock-printing techniques during the eighteenth century as kite-flying became increasingly popular. Each influenced the other: kite-makers copied woodblock-print designs to decorate their creations of bamboo, cloth, and paper, and printers used images of kites in their designs.

The prints from the Skinner Collection illustrated in this book are products of Tokugawa Edo (1603–1867) and Meiji Tokyo (1868–1912). They record highlights of the Kabuki theater, brothels, and Sumo wrestling, enthusiastically presenting star actors and celebrity courtesans and vignettes of everyday life. These images capture for us the character of life as it was lived and imagined by the printmakers and kite-fliers of Old Japan. It seems that everyone thrills to the sight of a kite straining upward into the sky, and woodblock prints are perhaps the most accessible form of traditional Japanese visual culture; kite aficionados and lovers of Japanese art alike will be delighted by this study.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Japanese Kite Prints: Selections from the ...
Verlag: University of Washington Press
Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: New