Utagawa Kuniyoshi

October 21, 2018 Roberto Matteucci

Utagawa Kuniyoshi: The Edo-Period Eccentric

edited by Rossella Menegazzo

Skira publisher, Milan

Edition 2018

In the early 1800s, books and images of Japanese artworks began to circulate in Europe. With the opening of Japan to foreigners, the first Japanese art collections appeared along with the translation of books. The cultural difference, the new stimuli will affect and influence the major European artists of the time, the movement called Japonisme. We know the suggestion, among others, for James McNeill Whistler, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, up to Paul Gauguin and mainly Vincent van Gogh.

The artistic movement of ukiyo-e, the Floating World, with Hokusai, Hiroshige had penetrated into the west.

At the same time, the opposite phenomenon occurs. Western artistic influences spread in Japanese paintings.

Hiroshige and Hokusai were already famous when Utagawa Kuniyoshi achieved notoriety, he was important because he had added his extraordinary personal peculiar characteristics.

A gorgeous exposition was held in Milan in 2017 at Palazzo della Permanente, organized by Rossella Menegazzo, who also edited the exhibition catalogue with the book Utagawa Kuniyoshi: The Edo-Period Eccentric (original title Kuniyoshi – Il visionario del Mondo Fluttuante) (publisher Skira, Milan, 2018).

Everything began at the end of the sixteenth century. The samurai Hideyoshi had defeated the Hojo clan, and he had expanded his power throughout Japan. To thank the closest ally Ieyasu, he had awarded him with a small fishing village in Edo Bay. It was a calm and peaceful place then turned into the lively, wild, delirious city later called Tokyo.

It was the Machiavellian and concrete policy of the daimyo that made Edo grow so much and in a short time. The feudal lords were forced to reside for months in Edo and constrained to leave the family when they will have returned to their feuds. The lords travelled with parades of people and samurai. They needed buildings for them and for their retinue. The feudal lords, therefore, spent a lot of money on strenuous, long and expensive expeditions and did not have much left for any war ambitions. Next to the palaces, houses, temples, theatres, tea houses and, of course, the brothels were built.

The artistic representation of the city, of the journey and of the crossed landscapes brought to the diffusion of the artistic movement of the ukiyo-e: the fragility existence according to a Buddhist concept of the seventeenth century.

In the presentation of Kuniyoshi's work, Rossella Menegazzo highlights the importance, the reasons for success, and the differences with the most illustrious artists.

Kuniyoshi has the same subjects, themes, styles, compositions and atmospheres of tradition.

But we can perceive in some artistic traits the influence of the West. The author confirms her thesis by describing many artworks with exactness and attention, highlighting how much Kuniyoshi has learned from European pictorial culture: different colours in the sky, lowering of the horizon line, perspective.

Western influences are also read in similarities with illustrations of European books, up to the presence of a realism, non-existent previously. Brilliant is the approach to call Kuniyoshi with the name of the Arcimboldo of Japan, for his compositions of people and subjects with as many smaller ones.

Another characteristic of Kuniyoshi is the determination to astonish and amaze with the presence of fascinating huge monsters in scary and elegant shapes. Will accentuate with the use of many sheets up to four or five indifferently horizontal and vertical.

The skill is indisputable in the design of human bodies drawn with seductive and allegorical tattoos. It is the art of the Horimono: "... the colourful tattoos that often replace the garments like an embroidery on the skin ..." (page143).

The bodies are muscular, powerful, naked and the tattoos complete the work, as in the sensual Rôshi Ensei of the series: The 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden (Roshi Ensei Tsûzoku Suikoden gôketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori). He is defeating his enemy who is on the ground without hope while the warrior fills the sheet with his back: the energy seems to come from tattoos. Behind the elegant doodles and arabesques design, there is the strength – it appears in human, animal, supernatural shapes - that constitute the true power of the samurai.

The sensitivity and irony of Kuniyoshi were shown from its beautiful and fashionable cats. In 1842 a ban was imposed on drawing women, actors and portraying the most popular activities, such as entertainment. With cunning, the harlots, the actors were replaced by their allegories. For Kuniyoshi, it was the use of domestic felines through their often sarcastic and ironic anthropomorphism. Transformations allow us to recognize what has been forbidden in gestures, poses, caricatures of cats.

In "Illustration Upstairs Floor of the Kado Ebiya at n. 1 of Kyomachi to Shin Yoshiwara” (Shin Yoshiwara Kyomachi 1 chome Kado Ebiya) Kuniyoshi represents the interior and the frenetic dynamism of a brothel.

The same excitement, appears Pale Moon, Cats in Season (Oborozuki neko no sakarì) where ladies are courting, flirting with their refined clothes. The only discrepancy is that the elongated faces of women are replaced by the cheerful faces of many cats.

The exhibition catalogue of Rossella Menegazzo is an intelligent work, well written with many examples and explanations, allows us a knowledge of ukiyo-e in-depth compared to the most famous Hokusai and Hiroshige: "Visionary. This adjective alone is enough to make the idea of the extraordinary nature of Kuniyoshi ... " (Pag. 13)

Bibliography:

Leonardo Vittorio Arena, Samurai, 1st edition February 2003, Mondadori, Milan
Gioia Mori, Impressionism, Van Gogh and Japan, ArtDossier n. 149, November 1999, Giunti Editori, Florence
Japan and Japan, Art and dossier n. 326, November 2015, Giunti Editori, Florence

Roberto Matteucci www.sololibri.net/Hiroshige-Melanie-Trede-e-Lorenz.html