Famous Views of Tokyo

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapades looking at Japanese woodblock prints of Tokyo.

I know very little about Japanese woodblocks other than their influence on Western artists so I really enjoyed this talk by Clare Pollard of the Ashmolean Museum to coincide with their exhibition “Tokyo: Art and Photography”. She explained the early links between poetry and prints and the idea of famous areas known through poetry.

I was particularly interested in the idea of 19th century guidebooks when peace enabled people to travel around the country and how one of these guidebooks by Utagawa Hiroshige was then expanded into a series of prints “One Hundred Views of Tokyo” in 1856-8. These were beautiful clear compositions and Pollard talked us through a number of them including the wonderful picture of a heavy rain shower used here.

She bought the talk up to date by looking at Modernist prints from the start of the 20th century some of which showed the rebuilding of the city after an earthquake in 1923 and used traditional techniques to show modern subjects, as well as looking at a few contemporary prints.

 


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