Japan’s Most Beautiful Women
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Where are the most beautiful women in all of Japan hanging out these days? It turns out to be Dartmouth College, where the Hood Museum of Art has mounted a magnificent show called “The Women of Shin Hanga.”
Shin Hanga, which means new print, is the genre of wood block printing that used traditional processes to create colorful images of Japanese culture rapidly modernizing under Western influences in the decades before World War II.
After centuries of isolation, Japan had begun trading with Europe and America in the mid-19th century. The shin hanga images on display at the Hood focus on bejinga, or depictions of female beauty, and illuminate artistic attempts to harmonize venerable traditions with recent exposure to Western lifestyles.
When trade between Japan and the West first opened, Japanese prints famously inspired the Impressionists, including Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. In the shin hanga works here we see that by the 20th Century the trend is reversed, with depictions of female nudes influenced by Western art academies that taught life model training.
Images of geishas in classic kimonos, nudes in poses influenced by Western art, and moga, modern Japanese women liberated from family-focused roles, free to cut their hair short, wear the latest fashions, drink and smoke, evince a culture in flux. The artists’ use of traditional woodblock techniques, too, reveals a desire to preserve Japanese cultural heritage and, simultaneously, participate in a new modern age.
Modern Fashions, No. 1 Tipsy, from 1930, depicts a woman in lipstick and a sleeveless, polka dot dress, hair in bob, enjoying a cigarette with her cocktail, a striking contrast with other prints depicting women in traditional dress in domestic settings.
The ninety woodblock prints in the exhibit are part of a promised gift to the museum from Judith and Joseph Barker.
The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Japanese Prints is on view through July 28, 2013, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 6 East Wheelock Street, Hanover, NH, 603-646-2808, hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu
More information about Xico Greenwald’s work can be found at xicogreenwald.com
