<p>The domination of the Tokugawa government, centered in Edo, now Tokyo, was responsible for the isolation of Japan from the rest of the world and for the relative peace that distinguished the Edo period (1603-1868). These factors contributed to the rise of a wealthy merchant class whose aspirations and desires were expressed in a lively, carefree urban culture revolving around the entertainment areas of the nouveaux riches--the brothel district and the kabuki theater. Obsessed with women, or, more importantly, the ideal of feminine beauty, these townsmen made a goddess of the courtesan, whose beauty was extolled in literature, art, and theater. This beautifully illustrated collection features woodblock prints, paintings, and kimonos dating from the Edo period to the beginning of the twentieth century. Gary Hickey's essay touches on several themes, including the aesthetic of the wealthy merchant class, brothels, kabuki theater, pictures of beautiful women, erotic pictures, and prints of female impersonators.</p>

Beauty & Desire in Edo Period Japan

Arts & Photography

Hickey, Gary

History & Criticism

Thames&Hudson

<p>Monet never traveled to Japan, but he surrounded himself with a large collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Like a number of other Parisians, he first collected Japanese prints in the 1860s. He shared the European view of Japanese culture as supremely artistic, shaped by the refined aesthetic tastes of its people, in harmony with its legendary beauty. As early as the 1870s, critics were writing about the influence of Japanese art on Monet's Impression. Monet and Japan shows how Japanese prints and paintings helped to shape Monet's art during six decades, influencing not only his style and subject matter, but the very way he saw the world around him. It includes Japanese prints and paintings that we know Monet saw, or could have seen, or works very like them. The book also contains Monet's paintings of his pays, that part of France which he knew best, where he was born and brought up--the Seine Valley from Le Havre on the Norman coast to Paris. It is in his paintings of the landscapes that he knew intimately that one can best observe how Monet used Japanese art to shape his vision of his world.</p>

Monet and Japan: An Exhibition Organised by the National Gallery of Australia

Monet, Claude

Spate, Virginia

Natl Gallery of Australia

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