Renegade Edo and Paris: A Tale of Two Cities

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 12 2023

Renegade Edo and Paris: A Tale of Two Cities

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This was the question Xiaojin Wu, SAM’s former Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, wanted to explore when she began developing Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, her final show for SAM that can only be seen at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. She found intriguing parallels between Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings and the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). The result is this vibrant exhibition about a shared renegade spirit that flourished in both cities’ urban and artistic cultures.

Both Edo and Paris were facing a multitude of challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes. In Edo, townspeople pursued hedonistic lifestyles as a way of defying the state-sanctioned social hierarchy that positioned them at the bottom. That mentality contributed to a booming urban culture, which facilitated the massive production and distribution of ukiyo-e (often translated as “pictures of the floating world”). Many of these pictures arrived in France in the 1860s, a time when the French art world and its society at large were undergoing substantial changes. Fin-de-siècle Paris, like Edo before it, saw the rise of anti-establishment attitudes and a Bohemian subculture. Entertainment venues such as the iconic Moulin Rouge emerged in the Montmartre district. Meanwhile, Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries searched for fresh and more expressive art forms, and they found much needed novelty in Japanese prints. 

Toulouse-Lautrec was indebted to Japanese prints, in particular to those by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806); he was often referred to as “Montmartre’s Utamaro.” While many are familiar with the story of Lautrec and his peers drawing inspiration from Japanese prints, this exhibition uncovers the shared subversive hedonism that underlies both Japanese and French prints. Through around ninety choice works drawn from the Seattle Art Museum’s Japanese prints collection as well as loans of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work, this exhibition offers a critical look at the renegade spirit inhabiting the graphic arts in both Edo and Paris, highlighting the social impulses—pleasure-seeking and a rising celebrity culture—behind a burgeoning art production. It is the first time the Seattle Asian Art Museum offers a double take on Japanese and French art in one exhibition—be ready to take it all in!

This article first appeared in the June through September 2023 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Object of the Week: South Wind, Clear Dawn (Gaifu kaisei)

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Dec 16 2016

Object of the Week: South Wind, Clear Dawn (Gaifu kaisei)

Refined compositions and striking color combinations characterize one of the most recognizable Japanese art forms: the ukiyo-e print. Ukiyo-e are woodblock prints produced during the late Edo period (1615-1868) in Japan. In Tabaimo: Utsutsushi Utsushi, Japanese artist Tabaimo (b. 1975) honors two acknowledged masters of ukiyo-e: Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858).

Speaking to their impact on her contemporary work in digital media, Tabaimo explains, “I often copy colors and designs from Japanese woodblock prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others. By adding them to my line drawings, I incorporate ‘distinctive Japanese colors’ and ‘distinctive Japanese designs’ into my work. The strong impression and unique power of the prints becomes part of my work, and allows me to complete my original work. Many of my works use this method of art making.”

Because Tabaimo is looking back to the artists of her culture’s history, borrowing color patterns and design elements, her work feels like the continuation of a conversation. By including some of the same formal elements associated with a traditional Japanese art, Tabaimo picks up that thread of history, honoring it, but also carrying it forward. As her existing and new works are displayed in the Asian Art Museum, interspersed with some of the treasures of SAM’s Asian art collection, we can appreciate even better how art history has informed Tabaimo’s work, the work of contemporary Japanese artists, the work of contemporary digital media artists, et cetera.

Here, we are highlighting one memorable ukiyo-e from Katsushika Hokusai that you’ll find in Tabaimo: Utsutsushi Utsushi. Titled South Wind, Clear Dawn (Gaifu kaisei), the print has been commonly referred to as Red Fuji—which, I have to say, turns my mind to produce, and not landscapes. Nonetheless, we can see why the color of the print has been singled out as the identifying characteristic. The mountain peak is a rich, chocolatey brown, and the snowcap leaks down the mountain into textured trails, like an icing stingily applied. Where the snow trails end, brown fades in a gentle gradient to the soft red for which the print is known. Lower down, an army of conical, gray-blue trees (faded from green) carpets the base of the mountain. With the trees’ diminutive size against imposing Fuji, and the way different arms of the forest reach across the mountain’s base and up its side, they are like an invading arboreal-ant army. The line of the mountain divides the print cleanly into foreground and background, where a deep blue sky fends off rolling clouds.

Part of the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei), the Red Fuji would stand out from the rest because it was so rare that the mountain would appear with this hue. It only occurred under special conditions, in late summer or early fall, and when the winds were blowing from the south. SAM’s version is from the second printing, notable because the mountain reveals marbled woodgrain, a poetic remnant of the wooden block from which this scene was printed.

As they have for Tabaimo, may the distinctive colors and designs of your histories also lead you forward.

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

Image: South Wind, Clear Dawn (Gaifu kaisei), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei), ca. 1830-32, Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760-1849), woodblock print, sheet: 9 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Mary and Allan Kollar, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2010.15.
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