Carnegie Museum Explores Japanese Printmaking

The exhibition of more than 230 master prints from the collection of Carnegie Museum of Art and four Pittsburgh collectors examines the decline of the ukiyo-e tradition in the late 19th century and the subsequent rise of shin-hanga ("new prints") and sōsaku-hanga ("creative prints") as competing movements in the 20th century.

"These beautiful and sometimes strikingly unusual prints reveal the complexity and diversity possible in woodblock printmaking," says Amanda Zehnder, the museum's assistant curator of fine arts and organizer of Modern Japanese Prints. "The exhibition also illustrates the dramatic evolution of the medium from the late 19th century through the late 20th century."

From the early 1600s until 1868, the Tokugawa Shogunate, a feudal form of government, ruled Japan. Woodblock prints created during this period depicted famous courtesans and actors, as well as landscapes. They were called ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the Floating World," and were marketed to the wealthy merchant class. The highly specialized woodblock printing method employed to produce these prints involved the collaboration of an artist, block cutter, printer, and publisher, and both subject matter and technique changed very little for 250 years.

During this period, Japan was purposefully closed to the rest of the world. When U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with a fleet of ships in 1853 and refused to leave until Japan open its doors to international trade, the Japanese government conceded and communication with the West resumed.
The Tokugawa Shogunate collapsed in 1868; imperial rule was reinstated; and the Meiji era, which marked the advent of Modernism in Japanese art and culture, began. Meiji-era prints reflected a society in upheaval; one that was responding to radically new social structures, including the official promotion of westernization. Prints from this period reflect the turmoil of the period and the decline of ukiyo-e.

In the 20th century, shin-hanga (new prints) and sōsaku-hanga (creative prints), two parallel but ideologically opposed printmaking trends, emerged. Shin-hanga prints revived the ukiyo-e printmaking tradition that depicted actors, beauties, and landscapes as subject matter. Purportedly founded by publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō in 1915 two years after the death of the Meiji Emperor the shin-hanga movement perpetuated the centuries-old, collaborative printmaking system in which a publisher commissioned images from artists, then hired artisan carvers and printers to produce the prints. "Shin-hanga may be interpreted as a rebellion against the official trend toward westernization that had been so important in the Meiji era, combined with a nostalgia for a traditional and specifically Japanese identity," says Zehnder.

Sōsaku-hangaprints, on the other hand, reflect an interest in the western conventions that emphasized artistic autonomy. This long-lived movement (spanning the 20th century) was founded by artists Yamamoto Kanae and Ishii Hakutei in 1904. Sōsaku-hanga artists embraced the idea of artistic freedom-carving and printing their own blocks and experimenting with images and carving techniques.

These artists often incorporated the gouging marks made by their chisels into the design of the finished print as an indication of their hand in the work. The sōsaku-hanga movement embraced avant-garde aesthetics, and the most radical prints in this exhibition are pure abstractions. Sōsaku-hanga artists dramatically broke with the Japanese tradition of producing prints through a multi-tiered collaborative system. Further, their interest in international Modernism and their embrace of a Western notions of the artist as an autonomous, creative force were made possible by the Meiji government's official policies and international exchanges.

The most striking similarity between shin-hanga and sōsaku-hanga is the consistent and persistent loyalty to wood as the medium for producing prints. Wood has deep, centuries-old cultural and religious significance in Japan. -- www.cmoa.org