“A Girl Thing I” Framed Poster

Description

“A Girl Thing”

Decorate your home with “A Girl Thing”. You will appreciate the great craftsmanship and artistic value of Japanese woodblock prints called Ukiyo-e. They will bring an atmosphere of tranquil existence – a floating world, as you will-, together with a touch of sensuality from the era of the Edo shogunate. We made a selection of seven prints from the artist Kitagawa Utamaro. We can offer as framed or unframed posters in 3 different sizes. Of each of those prints, we also made a detail print featuring the subservient party that every print contains under the name “A Girl’s Detail”. So you can make a composition on your wall, if that is what your interior decorative need is. As a stand alone any of our prints will be an asset to your home too.

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art during the “Edo-era”; a period from 1603 til 1868 when the Tokugawa shogunate was in power and had its seat in Edo – nowadays Tokyo. The art contains mostly woodblock prints and paintings and became very popular in the European artworld at the end of the nineteenth century. Western artists were intrigued by the original use of color, outline, realistic rendering and innovative asymmetrical compositions. “Japonism” had influence on impressionism and Jugendstil. Van Gogh had a huge collection of Ukiyo-e pictures.

Edo’s rapid economic growth gave the lower merchant class the option to indulge in the entertainments of kabuki theater, geisha, and courtesans of the sole licensed red-light district, the “Yoshiwara”. Originally Ukiyo is a combination of uki – which means sadness- and yo – means life. It reflects the Buddhist concept of life, involving a cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. However, during the early Edo period, another ideograph similarly pronounced as uki came into usage, which means “to float”. So, while one still can see the Ukiyo philosophy as “going with the flow in a floating world”, for many it evoked through the years an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance, which the connotations of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Ukiyo-e (the “e” stands for “picture”) depicted female beauties (bijin), kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, but also scenes from history, folk tales, travel scenes, landscapes, flora, fauna, and erotica (shunga).

Kitagawa Utamaro(1753-1806)
In our Ukiyo-e products we use work from Kitagawa Utamaro, who became especially famous because of his portraits of beautiful women. It is not uncommon for Kitagawa Utamaro to use ordinary women as models in addition to courtesans. He usually depicted women in their daily life: they brush their hair, make themselves beautiful, think, etc. Another important theme in the prints is love. Portraits we used are:

1. “Midnight: Mother and sleepy child” from the collection “Fuzoku Bijin Tokai” (women’s daily customs).
2. “Courtesan, Shinohara and Kamuro of Tsuruya.”
3. “Washing Day”
4. “Seru No Koku”. Google translation: “Letting”
5. “Three Courtesans”
6. “Fishing”
7. “Three Beauties of the Kwansei Period”

• Ayous wood .75″ (1.9 cm) thick frame
• Paper thickness: 10.3 mil (0.26 mm)
• Paper weight: 189 g/m²
• Lightweight
• Acrylite front protector
• Hanging hardware included