Utamaro and the spectacle of beauty
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Utamaro and the spectacle of beauty
Reaktion Books, 2007
Available at 10 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-281) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) was one of the most influential artists working in the genre of ukiyo-e, pictures of the floating world', in late eighteenth-century Japan, and was widely appreciated for his prints of beautiful women. In 1804, at the height of his success, Utamaro published a set of prints related to a banned historical novel. The prints, entitled Hideyoshi and his Five Concubines, depicted the military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi's wife and concubines, and consequently he was accused of insulting Hideyoshi's dignity. He was sentenced to be handcuffed for 50 days, and was perhaps even briefly imprisoned. According to some sources, the experience crushed him emotionally and ended his career as an artist. In this book, Julie Nelson Davis draws on a wide range of period sources, makes a close study of selected print sets, and reinterprets Utamaro in the context of his times. Reconstructing the place of the ukiyo-e artist within the commercial print market, she demonstrates how Utamaro's images participated in a larger spectacle of beauty in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo).
Offering a new approach to issues of the status of the artist and the construction of gender, identity, sexuality and celebrity in the Edo period, this book is significant contribution to the field, and will be a key work for readers interested in Japanese arts and cultures.
by "Nielsen BookData"