Hymn to Beauty: The Art of Utamaro

First published on 14 Jan 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

Perusing these flawless, serene woodblock prints from the late 18th century, it's hard to believe they're anything but art of the highest order. But actually, you're looking at Edo-period equivalents of Who Weekly, Grazia and Vogue. As a famous maker of ukiyo-e (prints), Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806) enjoyed a reputation similar to that of today's great fashion and celebrity photographers. His job was to supply the Japanese public with affordable images of attractive, famous women in fancy kimonos.

"People bought them in the way that nowadays people buy posters of film stars or singers," explains Khanh Trinh, curator of Japanese art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. "They were very cheap; from one woodblock you could make 900 prints. The images focused on actors or courtesans and worked as advertisements for the fashion industry. And after a year the prints grew obsolete and would just be thrown away."

The exhibition of more than 80 prints by Utamaro and his followers comes to the AGNSW this month from the Asian Art Museum of the National Museums in Berlin. Ukiyo-e were widely collected in 19th century Europe and a major influence on movements such as post-impressionism.

Utamaro worked with an influential publisher called Tsutaya Jûzaburô, producing books of insects, poetry and erotica before moving onto bijinga (images of feminine beauty). His approach was revolutionary for the time. "Utamaro uses a composition which focuses on the face and upper half of the body," Trinh says. "He focuses on facial expression and suggests psychological depth."

Many of Utamaro's prints depict well-known sex workers of the Yoshiwara, the pleasure district of Edo (now Tokyo). But he also portrayed housewives completing their chores or doting on their sons, lending them the same glamour as he did the courtesans. "Up to around 1782, single portraits of women were usually deities, poetesses or Empresses. But Utamaro put the focus on women from all walks of life - courtesans, waitresses, shopgirls."

Images of lovers from literature and the theatre, meanwhile, suggest physical intimacy in subtle ways, offering a covert form of voyeurism in a censorious time. "In the early 1790s there were lots of governmental reforms curbing decadence among the lower classes. Utamaro was able to escape censorship because he was never explicit. The works were sexy, but in a way that was not obvious."

‘Hanaôgi in Act 4', for example, is one of a series of prints retelling a popular kabuki story about some brave samurai who avenged the death of their lord. "One of the samurai brings flowers to one of the lord's wives as a condolence. Utamaro depicts her admiring the flowers." All very innocent - except that the parts are played by a famous courtesan, her attendant, and a male prostitute dressed as a girl. It's essentially an ad spot for a brothel.

‘The White Surcoat' is a typical bijinga close-up of an attractive woman advertising the pattern of brocade she's wearing. Trinh notes the technical brilliance of the image, which does not use black outlines, instead printing different colours next to each other without any overlapping. "This print testifies how Utamaro was always searching for new printing techniques," she says. Fascinatingly, Utamaro has added some text decrying his many imitators: the difference between his own work and a cheap artist's, he writes, is the same as the difference between a high-level courtesan and a streetwalker. The beauty of the woman in the picture punctuates his argument.

"The prints have many layers of meaning," says Trinh. "They are visually very appealing, but the more you know about Japanese culture the more interesting they become." Nick Dent