“Hashira-e: 18th Century Japanese Pillar Prints” Exhibition

Ronin Gallery

poster for “Hashira-e: 18th Century Japanese Pillar Prints” Exhibition

This event has ended.

Ronin Gallery presents an exhibition featuring some of the rarest prints from the 18th century, the golden age of innovation in ukiyo-e. During this period, woodblock print artists experimented with a variety of sizes, allowing for compositions that brimmed with grace and emotion, employing negative space and vertical dynamism to great effect. The most unique of these sizes was the long, narrow format of the hashira-e, or the pillar print.

Hashira-e were pasted to the pillars in traditional Japanese homes, and as such, they were often exposed to smoke and dust, making those that have survived exceedingly precious works of art. And while these more unusual sizes presented their own challenges to the printing process, they also allowed the artist to be experimental, imaginative, and innovative with the design’s compositional space and verticality. Subjects range from the traditional renderings of bijin (beautiful women), to legendary figures and heroes, to birds and flowers, but always the narrow plane of the hashira-e format provided a daring space for artistic imagination and expression.

This exhibition features work by the best artists of the golden age of ukiyo-e: most especially Utamaro, Kiyonaga, Masanobu, Harunobu, and Koryusai. Masanobu’s early pillar print designs are extremely rare, and feature the bold lines and dynamic compositions that speak to the exuberance of the artistic period. Harunobu’s tall and slender bijin were ideally suited to the narrow format of the pillar print, and Koryusai took Harunobu’s graceful compositions of women and transformed them into a body of work that is unrivaled in its stately, majestic elegance. Kiyonaga is regarded as the period’s other great artist of beautiful women. Utamaro’s hashira-e are perhaps the most complex compositions of the time, but they still retain at their core the undulating S-curve that serves the narrow, vertical format so well.

Media

Schedule

from September 09, 2014 to October 06, 2014

  • Facebook

    Reviews

    All content on this site is © their respective owner(s).
    New York Art Beat (2008) - About - Contact - Privacy - Terms of Use