Review: Utagwa Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Royal Academy in London
When you look at works of art that are very foreign to your experience, you naturally seek connection across the divide. Among modern civilisations, Japan provides an extreme example of this gap. Between the 17th century and the 1860s, it pursued a policy of almost complete isolation. Its art was therefore produced solely by its own people, for its own people, from its own materials.
In order to establish a link in the minds of potential punters, the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (currently on show at the Royal Academy), who lived from 1797-1861, is being reported as the forerunner of the universally popular modern Japanese cartoon genre of manga.
This may be true, but I doubt if it is the best way to approach this wonderful exhibition. If, like me, you are ignorant of the subject, use the blankness of your mind to collect fresh impressions. Don't categorise in advance.
The combination of strangeness and recognition is exciting. Few of us will know what the famous "Successful Deal pine-tree" is, or what it signifies (something to do with playboys' conquests, apparently), but we can be fascinated by the way the artist depicts the crustaceans on the rocks in front of it. We will not know the story of Princess Anju, or be able to read the writing about her which covers the top of the print, but we can enjoy the delicacy of her foot under water as she bends to collect brine for salt at the edge of the sea.
There is also a pleasing doubt about what sort of thing we are looking at. In the West, we recognise our own genres, but with Kuniyoshi, we are easily confused. Sometimes one feels like a person who is reading a Tintin story without understanding the captions. Sometimes the subject looks more like a Victorian book illustration, or a visual equivalent of the Iliad, or a spiritual theme, or even an old Punch cartoon.
There is a print called Three women in a pleasure boat. The ladies are in choppy waters on a river, and two of them are gripping the gunwales of a light, fast boat which threatens to bump another, larger one containing the third woman.
My own reaction was to gasp at the exact way the artist catches the women's arms trying to maintain their balance, and to admire the picture's elegance. But I also suspect that I was missing lots of jokes. Is this Japan's equivalent of Three Men in a Boat – jolly japes on the river? Or is it – given that "Successful Deal pine-tree" is in the background – faintly naughty?
Again, a triptych called The Last Stand of the Kusunoki heroes has an aspect which the Western eye would see as cartoonish: the heroes carry grotesque severed heads of their enemies as they advance under the rain of arrows. But this is also a noble picture, of brave men who are dying – bending against the onslaught, but not breaking.
This is not one of those shows where one's ignorance makes one baffled and bored. It has the opposite effect: so much is recognisable and beautiful that one wants to know more about the many things that seem strange.
Kuniyoshi appears to have felt the same thing the other way round. Despite the strict rules that cut his country off from foreigners, he discovered examples of European art, and adapted them. The catalogue illustrates how his picture of "loyal retainers" attacking a mansion at night lifts its entire composition from a 17th-century Dutch print of government officials' houses in Batavia. How exciting it must have been for him to make use of these forbidden fragments of a distant civilisation...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
In order to establish a link in the minds of potential punters, the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (currently on show at the Royal Academy), who lived from 1797-1861, is being reported as the forerunner of the universally popular modern Japanese cartoon genre of manga.
This may be true, but I doubt if it is the best way to approach this wonderful exhibition. If, like me, you are ignorant of the subject, use the blankness of your mind to collect fresh impressions. Don't categorise in advance.
The combination of strangeness and recognition is exciting. Few of us will know what the famous "Successful Deal pine-tree" is, or what it signifies (something to do with playboys' conquests, apparently), but we can be fascinated by the way the artist depicts the crustaceans on the rocks in front of it. We will not know the story of Princess Anju, or be able to read the writing about her which covers the top of the print, but we can enjoy the delicacy of her foot under water as she bends to collect brine for salt at the edge of the sea.
There is also a pleasing doubt about what sort of thing we are looking at. In the West, we recognise our own genres, but with Kuniyoshi, we are easily confused. Sometimes one feels like a person who is reading a Tintin story without understanding the captions. Sometimes the subject looks more like a Victorian book illustration, or a visual equivalent of the Iliad, or a spiritual theme, or even an old Punch cartoon.
There is a print called Three women in a pleasure boat. The ladies are in choppy waters on a river, and two of them are gripping the gunwales of a light, fast boat which threatens to bump another, larger one containing the third woman.
My own reaction was to gasp at the exact way the artist catches the women's arms trying to maintain their balance, and to admire the picture's elegance. But I also suspect that I was missing lots of jokes. Is this Japan's equivalent of Three Men in a Boat – jolly japes on the river? Or is it – given that "Successful Deal pine-tree" is in the background – faintly naughty?
Again, a triptych called The Last Stand of the Kusunoki heroes has an aspect which the Western eye would see as cartoonish: the heroes carry grotesque severed heads of their enemies as they advance under the rain of arrows. But this is also a noble picture, of brave men who are dying – bending against the onslaught, but not breaking.
This is not one of those shows where one's ignorance makes one baffled and bored. It has the opposite effect: so much is recognisable and beautiful that one wants to know more about the many things that seem strange.
Kuniyoshi appears to have felt the same thing the other way round. Despite the strict rules that cut his country off from foreigners, he discovered examples of European art, and adapted them. The catalogue illustrates how his picture of "loyal retainers" attacking a mansion at night lifts its entire composition from a 17th-century Dutch print of government officials' houses in Batavia. How exciting it must have been for him to make use of these forbidden fragments of a distant civilisation...