• projects
  • publications
  • workshops
  • buy
  • About
  • News
  • fbook
  • INSTA
Menu

Black Square

  • projects
  • publications
  • workshops
  • buy
  • About
  • News
  • fbook
  • INSTA
Kubo Shunman (1757-1820),  Saddle, Horse-Dipper and Other Harness  (1800 circa).

Kubo Shunman (1757-1820), Saddle, Horse-Dipper and Other Harness (1800 circa).

Still life

November 26, 2015

Kubo Shunman was active during the Edo period and left behind a significant corpus of drawings and prints. He excelled at woodblock printing; during his lifetime, coloured woodcuts of the kind we show here were called surimono and had a wide audience between educated and wealthy Japanese classes. Having been educated during the 1780s, his style would be marked by the muted palettes encouraged by Tenmei-era regulations. During this period, the shogunate tried to force artists to use only a limited number of colours, so much so that an actual genre was born out of these laws, called beni-girai-e (literally, red-hating pictures). As you can see here, Shunman did use red, but in most of his work he is always careful to omit at least one fundamental hue, giving the canvas a washed out, flattened, very graphic effect. It is hard to say if in these depictions of everyday objects the prevailing feeling is a dry irony, or a certain affection and fascination for the details of everyday life.

Kubo Shunman,  Outfit for Travel  (1800 circa).

Kubo Shunman, Outfit for Travel (1800 circa).

Kubo Shunman,  Picnic Outfit  (1800 circa).

Kubo Shunman, Picnic Outfit (1800 circa).

Tags art, drawing, japan
← Grid / FacadeA House for Doing Nothing →

Latest news &more

Featured
Apr 21, 2016
High Hopes
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 13, 2016
Form & Barbarism
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 8, 2016
Burning Ground
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 6, 2016
The Cross
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 4, 2016
The Open
Apr 4, 2016
Apr 4, 2016
Feb 23, 2016
Savage Events
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 21, 2016
A Timepiece in the form of a Tower
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 14, 2016
Architecture Elsewhere
Feb 14, 2016
Feb 14, 2016
Jan 26, 2016
Building (almost) without Interior
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 24, 2016
Rome 1600: Capitolium, with a little Mystery
Jan 24, 2016
Jan 24, 2016

...not a blog

Just a place to share our news and thoughts.

  • archetypes
  • architecture
  • art
  • black squares
  • books
  • buildings
  • Dip14
  • drawing
  • events
  • exhibitions
  • facade
  • gift
  • housing
  • Italy
  • japan
  • landscape
  • plan
  • printmaking
  • roman
  • words