USD Collaborates on Unique Japanese Art Exhibit
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 9:00AM
The University of San Diego and the San Diego Museum of Art are currently collaborating on a unique exhibition of Japanese Woodblock prints (or Ukiyo-e) spanning over 250 years from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Featuring over 400 Ukiyo-e prints the collection is one of the museum’s most extensive, if least well-known, collections and is simply stunning.
The San Diego Museum of Art will be exhibiting the Ukiyo-e woodcuts both thematically, as well as using them to take visitors on a chronological tour of Japanese culture and history. Ukiyo-e translates literally as ‘floating world’ and the art form represents an attempt to capture on print a sense of the impermanent and timeless nature of beauty and an evanescent world. Common motifs in traditional Ukiyo-e woodcuts were tales from history, landscapes (depictions of Mount Fuji are among the most famous works), seascapes and scenes from both the theatre and the pleasure quarters. The arrangement of the prints is also complemented by a number of historically relevant artifacts, such as elegant coral Japanese hairpins, and by the simultaneous broadcast of a five act play relating the story of Yoshitsune, a famous samurai from the period.
Check out this Flickr stream to see several of the items on display.
The highlights of the exhibition are a number of key works by Japan’s most feted woodblock print artists, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige.


















