Product Description

Designed for Pleasure brings together paintings, prints, and illustrated books featuring images known as ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world. The carefully selected images present the principals of that realm - the actor, the artist, the courtesan, the poet, the publisher, the patron - and they also reveal the confluences and contradictions in a time of enormous social, cultural, and economic change in Japan.

This book examines the floating world of popular culture centered in Edo [modern Tokyo] during the period between 1680 and 1860, when Japan transformed itself from an agrarian to a booming commercial economy. By 1710, Edo was the largest city in the world, with a population of over a million. We know so much about this time in part because of the vast body of imagery created and treasured by succeeding generations. The artists and writers held a looking glass up to their heady world and, in the process, to themselves. Fads and fashions proliferated, and this highly literate, consumer-driven society insisted on being up to date. Innovative color printing techniques fed the demand for ever-new information.

Print publishers, mindful of a business opportunity, also responded to the clamor for representations of the public's cherished heroes. Their stables of artists not only produced mass-market prints and books, but used their connections in the literary salons of the day to secure commissions from the wealthy and elite for luxury paintings and printed works.

Building on the existing body of ukiyo-e scholarship, a team of renowned experts presents a new perspective and an expanded view of the visual culture of Edo Japan and the way in which art became more accessible to a new class beyond the ruling elite. The volume authors showcase individuals - adding to the already substantial scholarship on Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Utamaro - including the father of ukiyo-e, Hishikawa Moronobu; the artist and publisher Okumura Masanobu; the color innovator Suzuki Harunobu; the master publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo; and the brilliant painter Katsukawa Shunsho. Rather than focus on one artist, one school, or one artistic medium, Designed for Pleasure presents the best of ukiyo-e, in their three primary manifestations: paintings, prints, and illustrated books.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #693946 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Julia Meech is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan and the editor of Impressions, the journal of the Japanese Art Society of America. Jane Oliver is an editor and consultant in Asian art. Other contributors include John T. Carpenter, Timothy Clark, Julie Nelson Davis, Allen Hockley, Donald Jenkins, David Pollack, Sarah E. Thompson, and David Waterhouse.

Customer Reviews

Highly recommended for the Ukiyo-e connoisseur.
This book introduces and catalogs an exhibition co-organized by the Asia Society and the Japanese Art Society. It is highly recommended to students, scholars and collectors of Japanese ukiyo-e (floating-world pictures i.e. wood block prints and paintings). Many of the important Japanese print artists took up painting as their career's progressed which this catalog documents. This catalogue, like two earlier ones, "The Floating World Revisited" and "Women of the Pleasure Quarter", that are among my favorites, integrate these activities exceptionally well with a new added twist, the commercial impetus for this art. In addition to copiously illustrated articles by among the best ukiyo-e scholars, the catalog includes an appendix of 141 items, mostly prints and paintings that are color illustrated and briefly but authoritatively annotated.

The book is clearly and beautifully illustrated - all color. It could easily grace a coffee table. A great deal of attention must have gone into presenting the illustrations since they are nearly all size appropriate i.e. clearly viewable. Interesting details are enlarged when called for by the text. The selection of art and prints is with few exceptions superb and not without surprises for even the most knowledgeable collector. I appreciated the translations of many poems, which like captions are integral to understanding the prints and paintings but often ignored because of translation difficulties. To see for yourself the quality of the selections included in this volume, goggle the Asia Society Museum exhibition.

The deciding factor that led me to purchase the book in addition to the exhibition site was the list of contributing authors which includes authors of several books and articles that I consider among the finest in the field.

Article List:

1. Donald Jenkins on A Mirror on the Floating World (Introduction/over view by the world class curator of Japanese ukiyo-e and Director emeritus of the marvelous Portland, Oregon Museum of Fine Arts)
2. David Waterhouse on Moronobu, the founder of Ukiyo-e: Tracking Down an Elusive Master (New facts and insights that distinguish this long standing scholar further)
3. Sarah Carpenter on The Original Source - Accept No Substitutes! Okumura Masanobu (Thank you! It is about time that we hear more about this incredible man).
4. Allen Hockley on Harunobu: The Cult and Culture of Color (This Dartmouth professor and prolific writer succeeds again with a provocative take).
5. Timothy Clark on Katsukawa Shunsho: Ukiyo-e Paintings for the Samurai Elite (A perfect choice for THE expert on both Shunsho and floating world paintings).
5. Julie Nelson Davis on Tsutaya Juzaburo: Master Publisher.
6. John T. Carpenter on The Literary Network: Private Commissions for Hokusai and his Circle.
7. David Pollack on Designed for Pleasure: Ukiyo-e as Material Culture. (This one can be skipped).