NICE NEW RATTLE

In 2005, I had the chance to visit a great exhibition on Ando Hiroshige at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Up until then, I hadn’t seen much of his work. As many Westerners, I was more familiar with his more tempestuous contemporary, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).

I remember having two almost contrasting first impressions of that exhibition. On the one hand, Hiroshige’s work looked very modern to me (modern meaning very 20th centuryish); on the other hand, I thought that his idealized depiction of nature and its powers—which he certainly shared with Hokusai—was rather 19th centuryish (19th centuryish meaning, the idea of paintings of the 19th century that Euro-centered minds have when they think about Western art. You know, Friedrich, Gericault, Turner, Constable, and the whole romantic gang). In the end, my folk conclusion was that, although Hiroshige was in a sense modern, it looked more modern to me, because of the influence his work and Hokusai’s had on the western art of the 20th century—mainly on the Impressionists. And also, probably, because of the fascination for the Japanese culture so in vogue these days. Otherwise, his work was representative of its time.

Now, four years later—a couple of days ago, that is—I visited the Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts. Although I do not think that his art is as good as that of Hokusai and Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi’s work is incredibly modern. Many people have emphasised this, pointing out how close Kuniyoshi’s work is to Manga and other comics. However, it seems to me that it is not only that his works look like comics or have had a major influence on them. Kuniyoshi’s work—or at least part of it—is Popular or Mass Art: arguably the most 20th Centuryish art category. Colour prints were a very popular communication medium in 19th Century Japan. And as Timothy Clark—the exhibition’s curator—mentions, Kuniyoshi’s “most popular prints sold up to eight thousand impressions each, at a price per sheet that almost all could afford—slightly more than a double helping of soba noodles”. The style and subject matter of Kuniyoshi’s prints were drawn from the popular imagination and were consumed and appreciated massively by the folk.

In a way, this can also be said of Hokusai and Hiroshige, since they, as well as Kuniyoshi, worked in the medium of woodblock printing. Also, they were all part of the school of the “pictures of the Floating World”, that is, they all painted the wandering life of actors, courtesans, bohemians and other dwellers of the brothel and theater district of Edo (today’s Tokyo). However, to the western eye, I think, Hiroshige and Hokusai embody the romantic idea of art in a way that Kuniyoshi doesn’t. Kuniyoshi’s work is pure19th Century’s ~~pop~~ Mass Art.

Writing Desk » 19th CENTURY MASS ART

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