The Arts of Japan

The Japanese Print Since 1900

Old Dreams and New Visions

Smith, LawrenceBritish Museum Publications · 1983

Cover of The Japanese Print Since 1900

Details

Title
The Japanese Print Since 1900
Subtitle
Old Dreams and New Visions
Publication Date
1983
Language
English
Media
Print
Page Count
144
Format
Paperback
Publisher
British Museum Publications
Author
Smith, Lawrence

Blurb

This is the first complete survey of modern, Japanese prints to be published in a European language. It begins with the popular prints of the Russo-Japanese War, continues with the widely recognised artists of the mid-century, such as Onchi and Munakata, and ends with Noda, who is today internationally influential. Drawing on his wide knowledge of previous centuries of Japanese art, Lawrence Smith shows that despite their modernity Japanese prints of the twentieth century have never lost touch with their traditional past. All the elements which make up the greatness of Japanese graphic art are still there - the perfect sense of design, the psychological insight, the sensitive use of colour - but they have been recreated through the eyes of artists open to Western influences. From the tension between East and West have developed some of the most remarkable and contrasting prints of the century.

Lawrence Smith is Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum.

With 50 colour plates and 100 monochrome, illustrations.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
    7
  • Introduction
    Japanese graphic art in the twentieth century
    9
  • The Prints
  • The end of a tradition
    Popular war prints and the end of Ukiyoe
    32
  • The 'Creative Print' movement
    Munakata, Onchi and Sōsaku Hanga
    39
  • A lost dream briefly resored
    The neo-Ukiyoe mochement between the Wars; female and actor portraits, townscape and landscape
    54
  • Between two worlds
    Attempts at synthesis of West and East; Yumeji, Bakusen and Fujita
    80
  • Holding on to the past
    Nationalist sentiment, 1930–50
    99
  • Entering the wider world
    The expansion of style, format and technique, 1950–70
    118
  • Old tensions revived
    The sharpening conflict between nationalism and internationalism in contemporary Japanese graphics
    119
  • Bibliography
    144
  • Index of artists
    144