The early modern world
Ukiyo-e
c. 1670–1868
Woodblock prints of the “floating world” that brought actors, beauties and landscapes to a mass audience in Edo Japan.
Overview
Ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world,” grew out of the urban culture of Edo, modern Tokyo. Publishers, designers, block carvers and printers worked together to produce affordable prints of kabuki actors, courtesans and scenes of city life, and full-color printing was perfected in the 1760s.
In the nineteenth century Hokusai and Hiroshige turned the medium toward landscape. After Japan reopened to foreign trade in the 1850s, their flat color, bold outlines and cropped compositions had a deep influence on European painters, including the Impressionists and Van Gogh.
What defines it
- Woodblock printing in many colors from separately carved blocks
- Flat areas of color, strong outlines and asymmetrical composition
- Subjects from theater, city life, travel and landscape
Works to know
- Three Beauties of the Present Day
- The Great Wave off Kanagawa
- The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō