A Sense of Place: Modern Japanese Prints in Context at University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery |
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March 24, 2015, Volume 61, No. 27 |
The Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania presents A Sense of Place: Modern Japanese Prints in Context, an exhibition that brings together Japanese prints addressing the idea of place and landscape in the modern era. It will be on view to the public from April 10 through June 21.
This exhibition explores the tradition of Japanese artists who select famous sites and landscapes for their work. They actively reinterpreted the concept of “famous places” (meisho), one of the most influential concepts of landscape imagery in traditional Japan.
In a century that bore witness to two world wars, globalization and a succession of modern art movements, the concept of “place” was anything but simple for generations of 20th-century Japanese print artists working at home and abroad. While some artists reflected upon the changes of the 20th century in their work, some promoted sites of national importance, and still others sought to reimagine what constituted “famous places” in the new landscapes of modern Japan as well as in the world beyond. This exhibition brings together prints and books on this theme, with works selected from the holdings of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Library and private collections.
Related Programming:
• Thursday, April 9, 5-7:30 p.m., opening reception and gallery tour
• Saturday, April 18, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., a symposium complementing the exhibition will be held at the Kislak Center in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. This interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars from around the country to put modern Japanese prints into the broader historical, social and artistic contexts of the 20th century and investigates how modern print artists referenced the tradition of famous places (meisho) established in earlier prints when they selected famous sites and landscapes for their own work. A special roundtable session with collectors and dealers will consider the important place of collecting in the history of modern Japanese prints and continued interest today in 20th-century printmaking. A companion exhibition, Representing Modern Japan: The Luber Collection of Art Books, is on display in the Goldstein Family Gallery (see here).
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Morning at Mt. Tsurugi, color woodcut. Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
Volcano, hand-colored woodcut. Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
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Spring Night-Ginza, color woodcut. Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
El Capitan, Yosemite, color woodcut. Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
Related: Representing Modern Japan: The Luber Collection of Art Books at the Goldstein Family Gallery |