For concision, power and delight, it’s hard to beat woodblock prints, the products of an artistic tradition that is aging very well indeed.
The genre, unique to Japan, grew out of 17th-century developments in printing and book publishing. The form became known as “picture of the floating world,” an evocative name that captures the dreaminess of many of the scenes (which were often erotic). In an overview of the years from 1680 to 1938 in Taschen’s Japanese Woodblock Prints, author Andreas Marks presents the reader with a brief history of the development of woodblocks, describing for example how extra colors were added, and then devotes most of the following chapters to significant individual artists over the centuries. Four of the most common subjects are delineated: beauties, actors, landscapes and bird-and-flower compositions. Famous for book illustrations as well as paintings, Japanese ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai captured the grand power of nature by depicting Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest peak, as a tiny triangle seemingly being swallowed by an enormous wave in his The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Some of the great creators of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), are still well known, their works frequently shown in museums today. European artists like Van Gogh and Manet were indelibly influenced by them, for reasons that are plain.
But Marks’s stated aim is to spread his attention around and not “single out the handful of ‘stars’ commonly found in books and exhibitions.” Some of the later talents covered in his compendium — like the relatively unfamiliar Yamamura Koka (also known as Toyonari), whose beguiling 1920s works convey suggestions of the Jazz Age — the heady, optimistic era between the end of World War I and the crash of 1929 — may be the biggest revelations.
Find a collection of original woodblock prints for sale on 1stDibs.
