Namaste: Realistic Radhika
The three Japanese artists Unkei, Taiga, and Yoshitoshi were all unique artists during their respective time periods. Taiga was from the Edo period. He used literati style, which was cultivated with a Chinese interest in ideals. Taiga made portraits on different formats such as fans, folding screens, and hanging scrolls. All his portraits seemed to involve an individual being in a natural landscape. Yoshitoshi was from the Meiji period. He was known for his woodblock printing. Most of his paintings involved cartoon-like warriors and actors. His work first starts off with a sketch and he then gradually uses woodblock carvings to make the final image. Some of his works are bloody, while some are based on beauty. Unkei was from the Kamakura period. He was known for producing work with more realistic, vigorous expressions. Unkei made three-dimensional wooden sculptures using the yosegi technique or piece block method where pieces of wood were glued together and incorporated dynamic expression that had a sense of power. He was a Buddhist monk who was devoted to Buddhism. As a result, most of his portraits contained Buddhist ideals within them. During the Kamakura period, the rise of the Samurai occurred, which influenced the portraits to be more dynamic or powerful looking. Unkei was known to show knowledge of human anatomy by making the figures human-like. Sometimes, he would exaggerate features such as muscles to show power and strength.
When I was young, I would stand in front of my parent’s bed quietly. My dad would wake up and just see my eyes staring at him in the dark. This reminded me of the artist Unkei with his gyokugan eyes, which are crystal eyes that are seen even with a candle; thus, he imm...
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...l images. With that said, Unkei would be the best artist out of the three artists to make my portrait because I would like to have a three-dimensional sculpture with realistic qualities and some aspects of my culture which is related to Buddhism.
Bibliography
Kinoshita, Kyoko. Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran Japanese Masters of the Brush. By Felice Fischer. New Have and London: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2007. 129+. Web.
Mason, Penelope E., and Donald Dinwiddie. History of Japanese Art. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. Print.
Morse, Samuel C. "Impressions: Revealing the Unseen: The Master Sculptor Unkei and the Meaning of Dedicatory Objects in Kamakura-Period Sculpture." The Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America 31 (2010): 24-41. Web. 12 May 2014.
Stevenson, John. Yoshitoshi's Strange Tales. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005. 84+. Web.
Douglas M. Kenrick, Jomon Of Japan: The World’s Oldest Pottery (London, UK: Taylor & Francis, Inc. 1995).
I learned about many significant artwork and artist in this class. This class provided me with a better understanding of the history of the world Art, but also helped me understand the development of art style. However, among all of these precious pieces of artwork, there are two special ones that caught my attention: The Chinese Qin Terracotta Warriors and The Haniwa. Each of them represents the artist’s stylistic characteristics and cultural context. Although they represented different art of rulers, historical values, and scenes, there were visible similarities.
Gatten, Aileen. "Review: Criticism and the Genji." The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 22.1 (1988): 84. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Ogawa, D. (1993) The Japanese of Los Angeles. Journal of Asian and African Studies, v19, pp.142-3.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s portrait representations of Henry VII and his wives are photographs of wax figures and are part of his series “Portraits”. Although he wasn’t photographing real models, he managed...
Greene, Carol. Enchantment of the World Japan, p. 97. 28 Pitts, Forrest R., Japan. p. 78. -. 29. Davidson, Judith.
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Stokstad, M., Michael, W. and Asher, M. F. (2010). Art History, Volume 1. California: Prentice
The Man'yōshū is the earliest collection of Japanese waka known to the world containing more than 2,500 waka. Man'yōshū introduced its own form of writing, Man'yōgana, which was the stepping stone for the Japanese writing system to progress into the use of kana. Until that time, Chinese kanji were only used for their meaning, but Man'yōgana allowed for kanji to be used phonetically as well as semantically. This drastic change in the writing system helped move Japan forward in its creative texts away from Chinese influence.
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This breaks all of our tradition in sculpture. On the one hand the simplification and distortion of body and limb seem extremely daring departures from the tradition which few do; on the other hand, this is reminiscent of the earliest sculpture ever produced, which is far from a perfect balance. Thus he has created a new form; that of pure laziness.
Trans. By Donald Richie. Yale University Press, 1972. Kincaid, Mrs. Paul, Japanese Garden and Floral Art. New York: Hearthside Press, Inc., 1966.
Yukio Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion, set in postwar Japan, gives way to a reflection of the postwar experience both the representation of military aggression and in use of symbolism of beauty, loss, and destruction. A story about Mizoguchi, a young, stuttering acolyte’s obsession with beauty lends itself to the conflagration of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, based loosely on a true story about the Kinkaku-ji.
This research paper speaks of the poem “The Tattooer” that talks about Japanese culture where men are superior and women are seen beneath the men of society. The poem "The Tattooer" shines the light on many of Tanizaki's standard society themes. And in this the tattooer desires the pleasure of his art; the tattooer takes much pride in the tattoos that he creates on the flesh of humans and also endures pleasure from putting pain on the empty canvases with his needle. In “The Tattooer” by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro the tattooer desires the pain inflicted on his canvas but then the perfect body is seen and he realizes that he must now tattoo for the beauty of the tattoo and is soon controlled by women.