Art  

This study of the art of William Hodges opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early paintings produced in the South Pacific. Following Pacific Island historians of the 1960s, it argues that it is possible to read the texts and visual material produced from early South Seas encounters against the grain, as moments of cross-cultural exchange that challenge postcolonial complacencies.

Tuhituhi is presented in sections that follow the geographical and chronological progression of Cook’s voyage on the Resolution, for which William Hodges was hired as official artist, Cook’s ‘landskip painter’. Painters like Hodges found themselves staring again and again in disbelief at landscapes and seascapes that stretched 18th-century conventions of painting, such as the ‘picturesque’, the ‘sublime’ and the ‘beautiful’. Each chapter of Tuhituhi focuses on the close reading of a significant painting of a South Pacific location by Hodges. The last chapter considers the important influence of Hodges’ work on a series of paintings by the major twentieth-century New Zealand painter Colin McCahon.

This catalogue accompanies a survey exhibition of woodblock prints by Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro (c.1753–1806) from the collection of the British Museum.

Born in the mid-1750s in Edo, Utamaro was taught by Toriyama Sekien, a painter of the academic Kano school, and subsequently formed a professional partnership with master publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. This collaboration was key to the rise of Utamaro’s reputation as a chronicler of the Yoshiwara district and, more generally, as a leading exponent of ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’).

Images of bijinga (beautiful people), Kabuki actors, landscapes and city life were typical of ukiyo-e, espousing a life lived only for the moment. They informed, amused and distracted their audience by depicting available pleasures. Utamaro’s images of the women of Yoshiwara, often conceived in series, functioned as sophisticated advertisements or guides to a sensuous world, untroubled by overt references to the difficulties of work and politics.

Gestures, demeanour, clothing, accessories and the décor of the womens’ accommodation, rather than their personal features, are scrutinised and described in accompanying calligraphy. The exhibition includes a number of Utamaro’s explicitly erotic works, called ‘spring pictures’ or shunga. Issued as albums of sheet prints and as illustrated books, they are unambiguous in their intention to titillate.

Presents a collection of 26 original essays from top scholars in the field that explore and critically examine various aspects of Asian art and architectural history.

* Brings together top international scholars of Asian art and architecture
* Represents the current state of the field while highlighting the wide range of scholarly approaches to Asian Art
* Features work on Korea and Southeast Asia, two regions often overlooked in a field that is often defined as India-China-Japan
* Explores the influences on Asian art of global and colonial interactions and of the diasporic communities in the US and UK
* Showcases a wide range of topics including imperial commissions, ancient tombs, gardens, monastic spaces, performances, and pilgrimages.