10 Prints Kuniyoshi vs Kunisada By Martin Barnes Lorber


In the 1970s and early 1980s, Sotheby’s in New York and the auction houses in England and in Europe sold most late Utagawa School prints by Kuniyoshi (excluding his early works), Kunisada I aka Toyokuni III, Kunisada II and III, Yoshiiku, Kunisato,


Yoshitora, Kuniteru, Kuniteru I and II,


Kunitsugu and Kunitsuna either as accordion albums made by dealers in Tokyo for Western visitors, or in stacks which were valued by the inch. Ellis Tinios’ book, Mirror of the Stage: Te Actor Prints of Kunisada (University Gallery, Leeds,


1996) discusses


Kunisada in critical terms; another book, an earlier one, by the print scholar Arthur Davison Ficke, states in his Chats on Japanese Prints (1915),


‘Tis very undistinguished artist [Kunisada] was one of the most prolific of the ukiyo-e school. All that meaningless complexity of design, coarseness of colour, and carelessness of printing which we associate with the final ruin of the art of colour- prints finds full expression with him’. Te belief in the West about this group was that they were


vulgar


‘unworthies’ and were known as the Decadent School.


Tis belief


remained firmly entrenched until late in the 20th century. Tere are two main reasons why the modern revision in judging these prints took place: Jan van Doesburg’s What About Kunisada? (1990) and Kunisada’s World (1993) by Dr Izzard, now owner of Sebastian Izzard Oriental Art in New York, specialising in the best of Japanese prints and paintings. In these works Kunisada concentrated on the elaborate printing techniques and style of portraiture of the ‘big heads’ prints that he produced near the end of his life. Te related material of the Museum


of Fine Art’s exhibition in Boston refers to Kuniyoshi and Kunisada, aka Toyokuni III as ‘...the two best-selling designers of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan’. Due to their massive output, they were, indeed, the best-selling, but not the most famous in the long-term, this title belongs to Hokusai and Hiroshige I, both prized for their glorious landscapes, with Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ being just one example (and a highlight of a recent British Museum show, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave). At the time, Kunisada was considered the most famous and most popular of all, a point of view that was reversed by time. Since this exhibition has been created as something of a Japanese art version of ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’, what is missing from the 100 prints and five illustrated books (ehon) on view, from Boston’s own collection,


are the


beautiful landscape series that Kuniyoshi created in his early working life, Te Life of Nichiren, Views of the Eastern Capital and the like. Tese are not included in order for the exhibition to concentrate on the street art of Edo, the prints of actors, courtesans, classical heroes and battle scenes.


Te exhibition casts Utagawa


Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864) as rivals, which they were, but not of the


ASIAN ART OCTOBER 2017


Actors Iwai Hanshiro V as Agemaki (R), Ichikawa Danjuro VII as Sukeroku (C), and Onoe Kikugoro III as Shinbei (L), about 1829, Utagawa Kunisada


competition. Tis plan will probably be extremely successful. Te wish to attend is derived from the exhibition’s encouragement to the public to become involved in what is basically a popularity contest, but one that will benefit both the museum and the public at large. Interestingly enough,


both


Kunisada and Kuniyoshi were students of Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825). Toyokuni I, like his contemporaries Kita Utamaro (1753- 1806), Isoda Koryusai (1735-1790) and Kitao Masanobu (1761-1816) specialized in depicting beautiful women, bijin-e. Before the beginning of the 19th century, Toyokuni I, Koryusai and Masanobu depicted their subjects as tall, willowy and beautiful courtesans wearing simple but elegant kimono and with a restrained number of hairpins. Utamaro, however, specialised in half- length portraits of teahouse waitresses and the like, many being textbook- famous. By the early 19th century, however, tastes had changed and artists like Toyokuni I himself and Toyokuni II (1777-1835),


Keisai


Nozarashi Gosuke, from the series Men of Ready Money with True LabelsAttached, Kuniyoshi Fashion, about 1845, Utagawa Kuniyoshi


modern cut-throat variety. It was Kunisada who got Kuniyoshi to renew his efforts to create after about his 10 years of limited production, and it was also Kunisada who joined forces with Kuniyoshi years later to co-design several series and single prints. In any case, there was sufficient room in the market to absorb the constant flow of new prints from both of them, especially those by Kunisada whose total number of designs is probably over 20,000,


an


unimaginable number for an artist. Tese days, museums are highly dependent on strong attendance


Te In-demand Type, from the series Tirty-two Physiognomic Types in the Modern World, 1820s, Utagawa Kunisada


ARTISTS OF JAPANESE PRINTS IN 19TH CENTURY JAPAN


WERE THE TWO BEST-SELLING


KUNIYOSHI AND KUNISADA


figures to these exhibitions, as they are part of their main source of funding. Also, with the attendance at the exhibition, there is a strong possibility that viewers will wander the museum and view displays of vast categories of art from its world- famous collections.


Tis almost


guarantees return visits and possibly, membership, and of course, there is always the museum shop …. Te exhibition is a clever publicity stunt and the subject matter is not prone to attract those who have a deep scholastic interest in ukiyo-e prints, but rather those attracted by ‘action’ in


Eisen (1790-1848) and Kikugawa Eizan (1795-1844) depicted courtesans as coarser women in elaborately-patterned kimono and with an exaggerated number of hairpins, creating a Japanese version of the blatant, ‘come hither’ look. Frequently they were depicted with their attendants en promenade in public.


Prostitutes have always utilised notice for business purposes, so this is nothing new in the world of Japanese prostitutes or courtesans (as their bespoken colleagues are called). Particularly ‘famous’ prostitutes were depicted by Eisen,


Eizan and


Kunisada, but not by Kuniyoshi. Kunisada went so far as to depict variations of them in his series Tirty- Two Physiognomic Types in the Modern World. As a sign of the universitality of this profession,


well-known


prostitutes in Renaissance Venice advertised themselves by appearing in public in sumptuously elaborate robes and coifs and accompanied by two attendants. Why two? Because they the courtesans wore foot-tall shoes and needed them to keep from toppling over. It was this colourful ‘floating world’,


ukiyo-e, of Edo


prostitutes, wrestlers and actors that monopolised the vast majority of Kunisada’s opus. Kuniyoshi, however, took a different path in his works. Kunisada became a pupil of


Actors Onoe Kikugoro III as Nagoya Sanza (R), Iwai Hanshiro VI (C), and Ichikawa Ebizo V as Fuwa Banzaemon (L), about 1835-36, Utagawa Kuniyoshi


Toyokuni I somewhere between 1801 and 1805 at age 15 to 19 because Toyokuni saw remarkable talent in him. As proof that Toyokuni was right, Kunisada’s first print appeared in 1807. His first book illustrations and actor prints appeared in 1808- 1809 and in 1809 his first prints of beauties (bijin-e) and pentaptychs of views of Edo appeared. A reference was made about him by a contemporary source as a ‘star attraction’ and by 1813, at age 26, he was considered part of the ukiyo-e firmament in second place behind his Master, Toyokuni I. His early prints tended to be half-length portraits of beauties, very much in the manner of Eisen and Eisen. For the rest of his life he churned out prints whose subjects were kabuki actors in single- sheet portraits from different roles or,


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36