The Artist's Touch, The Craftsman's Hand: Three Centuries of Japanese Prints from the Portland Art Museum
Utagawa Toyohiro (Japanese, 1773-1828), Act VI: Kanpei's suicide, from the series Parlor Puppets, ca. 1803, koban nishiki-e (color woodblock print), The Mary Andrews Ladd Collection, no known copyright restrictions, 32.359
2011
The Portland Art Museum is home to nearly 2,500 Japanese prints and printed books. The collection was inaugurated in 1932 with a gift of 750 traditional woodblock prints from the family of Mary Andrews Ladd, including several extremely rare 18th works. More recently, the collection was brought up to date with over 600 prints from Vivian and Gordon Gilkey, mostly from the 20th century. Today, the Museum's holdings span from the late 17th century to the present day, spanning the entire history of printmaking as a popular art form in Japan.
The Artist's Touch, The Craftsman's Hand will bring 250 of the most important of these treasures to the attention of the public and the scholarly world for the first time. The exhibition will reflect the three-century range of the Museum's collection, vividly illuminating both continuities and profound changes in the medium. Designed to appeal to the casual visitor as well as the specialist, The Artist's Touch, The Craftsman's Hand will emphasize narratives unique to the strengths of the collection, with thematic sections on such topics as "kabuki in print" (images of kabuki actors on and off stage, as well as kabuki fans); "Harunobu reconsidered" (a close analysis of one of the leading print artists of the mid-18th century); "still life in surimono" (an exploration of literary symbolism in deluxe, privately published prints); "two views of Tokyo" (featuring two series of prints, one illustrating the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the other, reminiscences of lost Tokyo in 1945); and "art for art's sake: contemporary Japanese prints."
Curated by Maribeth Graybill
- Exhibition Title
The Artist's Touch, The Craftsman's Hand: Three Centuries of Japanese Prints from the Portland Art Museum
- Date
2011
- Curated by
Maribeth Graybill
- Begin Date
2011-10-01
- End Date
2012-01-22