The production of ukiyo-e prints involved a team of artisans: A publisher would commission an artist to draw a design, which would then be transferred to multiple woodblocks by the carver. They featured beautiful women ( bijin-ga 美人画), Kabuki actors ( yakusha-e 役者絵), folk tales, and scenes of famous places ( meisho-e 名所絵). Ukiyo-e prints were produced in the Edo period as popular culture merchandise. This approach enabled artists to create images with vibrant colors, delicate contours, and smooth color gradients. Japanese printers used water-based inks, as opposed to the western oil-based ones. Although as the companion exhibition reveals, there is a long, deep history of the woodcut outside of Asia. Originating in China, Japanese moku-hanga printers exclusively used carved woodblocks instead of metal plates or lithographic stones prevalent in western printmaking. The technique of woodblock printing is known for its use in ukiyo-e (浮世絵), or “pictures of the floating world” in the Edo Period (1603–1868), but it was also used in book publishing. Woodblock printmaking, or moku-hanga (木版画,) has a history in Japan dating back to the seventeenth century. This companion presentation includes editions by Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Kiyoshi Saito, and Takahashi Hiroaki (Shotei), among other Japanese artists working in the woodblock print medium over these two centuries. Presented in conjunction with the Gallery’s current exhibition Then & Now: Five Centuries of Woodcuts, this display of work from Vanderbilt University’s collection reveals the enduring influence of traditional woodblock motifs, such as ukiyo-e (pictures of the “floating world”) prints, while highlighting examples of more contemporary, artist-driven expressions of the form. Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery intern Echo Sun (class of 2020) has put together a vibrant presentation of Japanese woodblock prints from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, now on view in Cohen Memorial Hall. The Actor Ichikawa Kondaji IV as Torii Matasuke, 1860. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi ( Japanese, 1839–1892).
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