![]() In theory, the sōsaku hanga artists were reluctant to employ publishers, although it was unavoidable at times in view of their marketing needs. To a great degree, sōsaku hanga adherents advocated the participation of the artist in the entire creative process from design to production. The dialogue between Western and Japanese art and aesthetics spurred the second creative print or sōsaku hanga (creative print) movement. From the last decades of the 19th century on, artists started to look abroad for inspiration and discovered new ideas about art and artistic freedom. Designed expressly to capitalize on foreign demand, shin hanga represents the diversity of practice that has characterized the medium since Japan’s pursuit of westernization and modernization. Some critics might say it is not so much their subject matter as through their visual language that shin hanga prints set themselves apart from the traditional ukiyo-e. The prints of Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) emphasize the subtle play of light on water, with works depicting the moon shining through the clouds and casting a long scintillating trail on the sea, or lamplight from a farmhouse that illuminates a canal, accentuating an air of loneliness and emptiness. Rain and snow dominate, symbolizing Japanese artists’ preoccupation with the natural elements. In the numerous landscapes illustrated in this publication, the interaction between location and weather conditions is arresting. Neighborhood streets, snow scenes, the river, gardens, festivals and the weather: the Japanese printmakers adroitly made the world of everyday appear perpetual, unchanging and implausibly tranquil. Nevertheless, with not much demand in the domestic market, shin hanga prints targeted primarily at foreign markets and appealed to Western taste for romanticized, nostalgic views of Japan. Employing a range of tonal nuances to attain highly atmospheric effects, the modern landscapes are impressionistic rather than figurative. While the classically-depicted women were stylized and idealized, their more recent counterparts are based on real models, imbued with greater emotional depth and individuality. Fearing a decline in xylographic production due to competition from imported printing techniques like lithography, the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962) sought to revive Japanese printmaking by pushing for the development of a new language of style and form. The prints are a result of the traditional yet successful collaboration between the artist, block-cutter, publisher and printer. The shin hanga movement was a revival of its precursor, ukiyo-e art (images of the floating world) which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. As emblematic images of popular imagination, these woodblock prints, printed on high-quality paper using the finest pigments, can be ranked alongside Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. ![]() ![]() “The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa” (1832) by Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige’s “Sudden Shower over the Great Bridge at Atake” (1857), the countless beautiful women prints by Kitagawa Utamaro and the actor heads of Toshūsai Sharaku. Who doesn’t recognize the most iconic Japanese prints? as Chris Uhlenbeck questions. ![]() They haven’t been alone: since the 1990s, museums and private collectors have shown a growing interest in shin hanga. The shin hanga (“new prints”) movement reflects the syncretism of Western and traditional Japanese cultures as well as the influence of western codes on Japanese prints.Ĭompiled by Chris Uhlenbecc, Shin Hanga: The New Prints of Japan 1900-1960 brings together the work of two Dutch collectors Tobias Lintvelt and René Scholten who have been captivated by the new prints of Japan. Yet, the early 20th century was a period in which Japanese arts in general underwent profound transformations with a growing familiarity with modern European art movements and modernism was certainly felt in the realm of printmaking. Printmaking was an art form that Japanese artists had excelled in the 18th and 19th centuries but which eventually experienced a decline in the 20th century. ![]()
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