It's a broad look at materials used in arts crafted across East Asia, but as soon as I stepped into the exhibition space I was immediately drawn to the Japanese woodblock prints known as
Ukiyo-e. I studied Japanese art at university and (luckily for me) was asked to talk about a woodblock print when I first came for an interview with Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
Obviously, he's an experienced artist whose signature in katakana was a dead give away of his affinity to Japanese culture while in Manila
Ukiyo-E: Hidden Beauty exhibit he declares his deep connection to the city's simple folk and their way of living that leave him in awe every single day.
The art of the Edo period, dominated by painting and woodblock prints, came to be known as "pictures of the floating world" or
ukiyo-e.
Its style and subject matter are drawn from the visual treasure trove of Japanese popular culture, in particular the color woodblock prints of the early 19th century known as
ukiyo-e. Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout, "Tattoos in Japanese Prints" by Sarah Thompson (Curator of Japanese Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) tells the fascinating story of how
ukiyo-e first inspired tattoo artists as the pictorial tradition of tattooing in Japan was just beginning.
Unapologetically the works revolve around images that arouse awe: geisha and maiko in their high-contrast makeup; neon samurai amid rolling foamy waves;
ukiyo-e, artillery, robots and Godzilla-all in a writhing psychedelic procession.
Natalya Hughes is best known for works that explore feminism and art history, and borrow from the tradition of Japanese
ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
One of these aspects concerned
ukiyo-e and its artists.
In the spring of 1890, Mary Cassatt made multiple visits to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris to see an exhibition of Japanese prints by
Ukiyo-e masters: Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro and others.
Adapted from a woman-made manga ("Sarusuberi") by a female screenwriter, this intriguingly atypical toon eschews such common ingredients as fantastical creatures and schoolboy sexism in favor of the inner dynamics of an early-19th-century artistic family, focusing on
ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai's relatively obscure daughter, O-Ei, a painter about whom just enough is known that the film is free to invent the rest.