Skip HillComment

The Feminine, The Fabulous, & The Floating World

Skip HillComment
The Feminine, The Fabulous, & The Floating World
LOVE GARDEN PARTY (Vite d'Acqua)’ Summer 2019 Mixed-mediums acrylics, inks, collage painting on large format digital paper stock 33”w 30”h.

LOVE GARDEN PARTY (Vite d'Acqua)’ Summer 2019 Mixed-mediums acrylics, inks, collage painting on large format digital paper stock 33”w 30”h.

In the age of the selfie, its amusing to consider the term > Bijin-ga (美人画, "beautiful person picture") which translates as pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art.

More specifically in the Ukiyo-e style of woodblock printing produced in Japan from the 17th century to the 19th century.

Besides women, popular subjects in Ukiyo-e included kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flowers and animals and erotica. The prints were very popular amongst the Japanese merchants and the middle class of the time.

Kitagawa Utamaro(c. 1753–1806) has long been my favorite of these artists. Utamaro made his name and fame in the 1790s with his unique Bijin-ga portraits, images that focused on the head and upper torso, a style others had previously been employed only in portraits of kabuki actors, the celebrities of the era. Utamaro experimented with line, color, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background.

Utamaro's work reached Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, where it was very popular, enjoying special acclaim in France with the Impressionists, particularly with his use of partial views and his emphasis on light and shade. The reference to the "Japanese influence" among these artists, most especially Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne often refers to the work of Utamaro.

In ‘LOVE GARDEN PARTY (Vite d'Acqua)’ a group of girlfriends gathered for cocktails on a manicured lawn is the point of interest and subject of this large format embellished digital print. My perspective suggests a view from across the table of a larger tableaux that re-contextualizes the sublime tradition and visual language of Utamaro’s Ukiyo woodcuts via the smartphone lens of Women in contemporary pop culture, the social media gaze, status and signifying, Fashion, multicultural aesthetics and urban style.