By Audrey Wang
The bustling metropolis of 18th-century Edo (now Tokyo) is rendered in vibrant colours in the AGGV’s extensive collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. A veritable insight into life in the big city, the prints allow the viewer to live vicariously among the gentry or as the commoner, while celebrating the prosperity and the effervescence of Edo.
On March 9, the AGGV celebrates two separate, but related, exhibitions that memorialize Mount Fuji and its manifestations in the Japanese and non-Japanese aesthetic.
The art of woodblock printing became widespread in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868) and is best known in the genre of ukiyo-e prints of the period. Prior to this, woodblock printing in Japan was used almost exclusively for reproducing Buddhist texts.