A WORLD of difference
OKC art museum’s exhibit showcases influence of Japanese woodblock prints
Dressed in a beautiful kimono and black-lacquered bamboo hat, Fuji musume — the Wisteria Maiden — gazes on her unrequited love and begins her evocative dance.
“In the Kabuki play she’s transformed out of a painting and becomes human. She falls in love with a guy that walks past the painting and looks at her. He won’t have anything to do with her,” said E. Michael Whittington, president and CEO of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. “This dance is all about … the simultaneous emotion of love and pain — which I think we can all identify with.”
The Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s new exhibition “After the Floating World: The Enduring Art of Japanese Woodblock Prints” is also a kind of dance: between visual and performing arts, Western and Eastern influences, traditional art forms and the contemporary expressions they’ve shaped.
It’s also a rare opportunity to see a singular part of the museum’s permanent collection.
“Actually, it’s the only area of Asian art that we collect. We don’t collect Chinese art. We don’t collect traditional Japanese sculpture and painting. But we do have this great collection of Japanese woodblock prints. And it’s important to us because there’s a real relationship of Japanese woodblock prints to the history of Western art, especially French Impressionism and American Modernism. So it’s a great area for us to collect in,” Whittington said. “It’s been shown piecemeal over the years. We’ve had curators who were very fond of this material and would bring some of it out. Certainly, it’s never been shown in the kind of dedicated exhibition we’re doing now.”
Permanent spotlight
“After the Floating World” is showing concurrently with another exhibit taken from the museum’s permanent collection, “The Unsettled Lens: Photography from the Permanent Collection.”The exhibits share both the first-floor special exhibitions gallery and the same origins, coming to the museum from the Kirkpatrick family. “We’re looking at a great artistic legacy of that family in collecting and then supporting this museum,” Whittington said.
The OKC institution is spotlighting this year its permanent collection with a series of exhibits, including “The Complete WPA Collection: 75th Anniversary,” which opened in December. In 2017, the museum is celebrating its 15th anniversary in its downtown home, the Donald W. Reynolds Visual Arts Center, and its permanent collection has been completely reconfigured and reinstalled on the second floor.
“We have around 4,000 objects in the permanent collection, so obviously we can’t have all of them out all the time,” Communications Director Becky Weintz said. “Shows like this are just a great opportunity to showcase different pieces that we don’t normally have on view.”
In conjunction with the exhibits, the museum will host its biannual Sonic Free Family Day on April 9, offering free admission and a host of hands-on art activities and childfriendly performances.
“We have some real treasures in the permanent collection, and we want to showcase those. Also, it’s a great opportunity to talk about ‘This is our legacy; it’s important to build it.’ So commiserate with showing it off, we’re putting a lot of effort into building the collection,” Whittington said. “It’s a marvelous collection, and the woodblock collection is very good.”
Exchange of influences
Traditional Japanese woodblock prints are known as“ukiyo-e,” which translates as “pictures from the floating world,” which Whittington said references the bustling theater and entertainment districts of Edo, now known as Tokyo. Ukiyo-e artists produced prints depicting a variety of subjects, including Kabuki theater actors, folktales, mythology, landscapes and courtesans.
“In the literature, you’ll see them referred to as courtesans, which is a more discreet way of describing a prostitute. But you can tell that they are prostitutes by the over-the-top way that they’re dressed, especially the hair ornaments, which when they would walk the streets of Edo would tinkle,” Whittington said.
“One of the interesting things about the history of Western art is that Japanese woodblock prints were exceedingly influential. So when Japan opened up in the late 19th century, these woodblocks flooded into Europe, and European artists collected them in droves.”
He said Vincent Van Gogh and Mary Cassatt were among the Western artists influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. While the ukiyoe was popular in Japan from the 17th through the 19th centuries, by 1900, the tradition had swiftly declined. “About 1915, a number of artists really revived it, and it was called ‘shin hanga,’ which means ‘new prints.’ And that’s our show,” Whittington said. “Through the early ‘60s —there was a break in World War II —we see this new style of printmaking … in which artists were looking at influences from Western art and incorporating them into their work.”
Revived tradition
“After the Floating World” features the work of two prominent early 20th-century Japanese printmakers: Torii Kiyotada VII (1875-1941) and Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950).
One of the greatest artists of the shin hanga tradition, Yoshida is known for his exquisite landscapes.
“He was an artist who started out as a painter and was deeply influenced by (John) Constable, by (J.M.W.) Turner and by the French Impressionists. And you can see that in his work because there is perspective in his work, there are tonal qualities,” Whittington said. “He, unlike the classical ukiyo-e woodblock printers, would do every stage of the process himself. So he would create the painting —the watercolor, the ink painting — he would carve the woodblocks himself. Then he would actually print them himself, which was unheard of. He pioneered a number of a new techniques, and he also traveled extensively and had a number of exhibitions in the United States.”
As he traveled, Yoshida didn’t limit his artwork to just Japanese vistas, depicting global landmarks like the Acropolis, the Taj Mahal and Nigara Falls.
“You can really see his mastery of the technique in the prints that have an element of water,” Whittington said. “To achieve that kind of depth and reflectivity in a woodblock print was just unheard of. It’s never been done before or since.”
Torii continued a family tradition of creating vivid portraits of Kabuki actors and characters.
“He actually was adopted into a long line of woodblock artists. There’s this tradition in Japan of adult adoption, so if you have a very prominent apprentice … you can adopt that individual and they take your name. It has the value of identifying brilliant and up-and-coming talent and getting them into the family business. It also has the added value of keeping your blood relatives always on edge, because they can be easily replaced,” Whittington said with a chuckle.
The colorful qualities of Kabuki theater informed Torii’s work.
“It’s rowdy. The actors wear makeup. At the time, the plays had really biting social commentary, which was really the only outlet for it. And these characters and these plays are wellknown,” Whittington said.
“We do have several clips of Kabuki theater ongoing in the gallery, so you can see the play and see the actors. Most of them were done in the late 1930s, early 1940s, and they were done really as advertisements for specific Kabuki performances.”
Not only will visitors have the chance to acquaint themselves with the Kabuki tale of the Wisteria Maiden and the equally tragic Shirabyoshi Hanako —who transforms into a fiery serpent spirit and accidentally kills the man she loves —but they also will see how the woodblock prints have influenced contemporary popular culture not just in Japan but worldwide.
“We’re actually moving into the manga tradition with shin hanga because they are incorporating these very strong graphic qualities,” Whittington said. “They were a precursor to some of the aesthetic styles that people are still familiar with in Japanese comic books and also in Japanese anime. So it’ll be very familiar to audiences.”