The University’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art recently introduced its fall 2005 exhibition, “Inside the Floating World: Japanese Prints from the Lenoir C. Wright Collection,” which will be on display through Jan. 8, 2006. Admission to the museum is free for University students, faculty and staff.
The exhibit features colored woodblock prints from the early 18th through late 19th centuries that depict the urban culture of Edo, Japan, at the time. The artistic movement of this period is known as ukiyo-e, meaning “pictures of the floating world,” which references with the world of escapism and pleasure characterized by the Kabuki theater and the Yoshiwara, a licensed brothel district on the outskirts of Edo.
The prints range from simple and faded to intricate and vibrant, depicting different scenes from Japanese plays, landscapes of Mt. Fuji and pictures of Japanese women.
The Kabuki theater often told stories of samurai vendettas, ill-fated romances, slapstick comedies and tragic love-suicides. Many of the prints show dressing-room antics and climactic scenes from the performances.
Bijinga, pictures of women, was also a popular theme of the time and makes up a large part of the exhibit. Artists made prints of women from all different classes and professions. Geishas, who were entertainers and sometimes prostitutes, and courtesans, who were strictly prostitutes, both mostly appear adorned in traditional kimonos.
In addition to the 100 prints the organizers and museum curators selected as representational of the major themes explored by Japanese artists 200 to 300 years ago, is a
display called “Ukiyo-e Outside In: Western Impressions of the Floating World.” This display features artists from the West who also used color woodblock printing about a century later as a medium for Japanese portraits and scenes.
Sue Reed and her daughter, University alumna Emily Reed, came from Bandon to see the museum because it was closed while Emily attended the University.
“It’s beautiful,” Sue Reed said. “It’s neat to see so many (Japanese woodblock prints), and they’re all so old.”
The exhibit was organized by the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and curated by Allen Hockley, Dartmouth College.
Jordan Schnitzer Museum opens Japanese art exhibit
Daily Emerald
October 16, 2005
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