Hiroshige: Nature and the City – це найширший огляд кар’єри відомого японського художника-графіка Утаґави Хіросіге (1797–1858) англійською мовою на сьогодні. Він заснований на найбільшій колекції Хіросіґе у приватних руках за межами Японії, колекції Алана Медо.

Каталог складається з 500 записів, з акцентом на міські та сільські пейзажі, віялові принти та принти птахів і квітів. Згруповані в хронологічному порядку за темами, вони представляють інтерпретацію Хіросіґе міських сцен із його рідного міста Едо (сучасний Токіо), велику серію, що документує подорожі відомими шосе Японії, та ідилії природи, представлені на його гравюрах із птахами та квітами.

Хіросіґе часто включав поезію у свої твори, і вперше весь текстовий вміст транскрибується та перекладається. Крім того, в каталозі приділяється належна увага відмінності між варіантами видань його гравюр. Таким чином, він надає важливий порівняльний матеріал для кожного вченого, дилера та колекціонера.

Розділу каталогу передують п’ять есе, кожне з яких написано фахівцями в цій галузі. Ріаннон Педжет (куратор азіатського мистецтва в Музеї мистецтв Джона та Мейбл Рінглінгів) дає загальний огляд життя та кар’єри Хіросіґе. Андреас Маркс (куратор Художнього музею Міннеаполіса) пише два есе: про видавців гравюр Хіросіґе та про спільні роботи Хіросіґе, створені разом із його колегами. Шіхо Сасакі (спеціаліст із збереження в Музеї азіатського мистецтва Сан-Франциско) обговорює використання пігменту в гравюрах Хіросіґе, а Джон Карпентер (куратор японського мистецтва в Метрополітен-музеї) досліджує джерело поезії гравюр Хіросіґе з птахами та квітами.

Про автора:

Джон Карпентер є куратором японського мистецтва в Метрополітен-музеї, де він працював з літа 2011 року. З 1999 по 2009 рік він викладав історію японського мистецтва в Школі східних і африканських досліджень (SOAS) Лондонського університету та працював головою Лондонського офісу Інституту вивчення японського мистецтва та культури Сейнсбері. Він також викладав курси в Гейдельберзькому університеті. З 2009 по 2011 рік він був запрошеним професором Токійського університету. Він має багато публікацій про японське мистецтво, особливо в галузі каліграфії, живопису та ксилографії. Серед його останніх публікацій – каталог виставки в Метрополітен-музеї Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese (2012).

In 1868, Japan underwent a dramatic transformation following the overthrow of the shogun by supporters of Emperor Meiji, marking the end of feudal military rule and ushering in a new era of government that promoted modernizing the country and interacting with other nations.

Japanese print culture, which had flourished for more than a century with the production of color woodcuts (the so-called ukiyo-e, or “floating world” images), also changed course during the Meiji era (1868–1912), as societal changes and the once-isolationist country’s new global engagement provided a wealth of new subjects for artists to capture. Featuring selections from the renowned Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts’ permanent collection, Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World documents the shift from delicately colored ukiyo-e depictions of actors, courtesans, and scenic views to brightly colored images of Western architecture, modern military warfare, technology (railroad trains, steam-powered ships, telegraph lines), and Victorian fashions and customs.

About the Authors:

Rhiannon Paget is the curator of Asian art at the John & Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. Karin Breuer is curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts.

Meet the artist whose majestic breaking wave sent ripples across the world. Hokusai (1760–1849) is not only one of the giants of Japanese art and a legend of the Edo period, but also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific gamut of prints, illustrations, paintings, and beyond forms one of the most comprehensive oeuvres of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark of Japonisme. His influence spread through Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and beyond, enrapturing the likes of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh.

Hokusai was always a man on the move. He changed domicile more than 90 times during his lifetime and changed his own name through over 30 pseudonyms. In his art, he adopted the same restlessness, covering the complete spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world”, from single-sheet prints of landscapes and actors to erotic books. In addition, he created album prints, illustrations for verse anthologies and historical novels, and surimono, which were privately issued prints for special occasions.

Hokusai’s print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published between c. 1830 and 1834 is the artist’s most renowned work and, with its soaring peak through different seasons and from different vantage points, marked the towering summit of the Japanese landscape print. The series Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known simply as The Great Wave, is one of the most recognized images of Japanese art in the world.

This TASCHEN introduction spans the length and breadth of Hokusai’s career with key pieces from his far-reaching portfolio. Through these meticulous, majestic works and series, we trace the variety of Hokusai’s subjects, from erotic books to historical novels, and the evolution of his vivid formalism and decisive delineation of space through colour and line that would go on to liberate Western art from the constraints of its one-point perspective and unleash the modernist momentum.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Station to Station. A historic trail through the heart of Japan, as told by two legendary woodblock artists

This XXL edition reprints Keisai Eisen and Utagawa Hiroshige’s legendary series The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, a stunning representation of the historic route between Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. Sourced from one of the finest surviving first editions, this vivid tapestry of 19th-century Japan is in equal parts a major artifact of its imperial past and a masterwork of woodblock practice.

The Kisokaidō route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country’s then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travelers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaidō journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838.

Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, we find the artists’ distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figuration, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it’s the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki.

Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of color, but also a charming tapestry of 19th-century Japan, long before the specter of industrialization. This TASCHEN XXL edition revives the series with due scale and splendor. Sourced from the only-known set of a near-complete run of the first edition of the series, this legendary publication is reproduced in optimum quality, bound in the Japanese tradition and with uncut paper. A perfect companion piece to TASCHEN’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, it is at once a visual delight and a major artifact from the bygone era of Imperial Japan.

The editor and author:

Andreas Marks studied East Asian art history at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD in Japanese studies from Leiden University with a thesis on 19th-century actor prints. From 2008 to 2013 he was director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, and since 2013 has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, head of the Department of Japanese and Korean Art, and director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The author:

Rhiannon Paget studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and received her doctorate in Japanese Art History from the University of Sydney, Australia. The curator of Asian art at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, she has published research on Japanese woodblock prints, textiles, board games, and nihonga.