Customer Reviews

Art Of The Japanese Postcard

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The collaborative project of Anne Nishimura Morse, J. Thomas Rimer, and Kendall H. Brown, Art Of The Japanese Postcard is a gorgeous, full-color gallery of Japanese postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Far more than casual items to mail, most of these cards were designed by prominent artists and feature striking use of color and imagery. A few companion essays delineate the history of this unique art form as well as the immortalization of heart-stirring pictures meant to be sent and shared. Art Of The Japanese Postcard is an impressive and seminal work which is particularly recommended to students of Japanese Popular Culture.

What do you like in art? Art Nouveau? Art Deco? Japanese art? You'll find it all in here as you see how, in the first decades of the 20th century, the lowly post card could become a work of fine art in Japan.
This beautifully designed and printed book, really a catalogue of the Boston MFA's exhibition, has more than 300 color illustrations as well as related essays by well-known scholars. The history of the post card, the kinds that were produced, subjects covered...all discussed. And, illustrative of a difference between these and contemporary Western pc's, a section of bio's of artists involved in the designs.
Particularly interesting are the examples showing the impact of the Russo-Japanese War, of Western Art Deco, ... and even of baseball ( in the form of pc's made for New Year's Day 1932 ).
There is serious history in here as well as strikingly interesting art...need an idea for a great Xmas present?

Score another home run for Boston's Museum of Fine Arts for recognizing the importance of the Lauder collection of Japanese postcards and then producing a significant book to commemorate the 2004 exhbition of these miniature masterpieces. The MFA has again assembled a cast of formidable experts to provide both historical and artistic perspective for the late 19th- and early 20th-century postcards produced by many of Japan's leading artists. It is thus the case that the text chapters that open "Art of the Japanese Postcard: Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" help guide the reader through the changes in graphic art and design that followed Japan's opening to the West and the death of the classic "ukiyoe"-style woodblock art.

The postcards themselves are stunning, meriting repeated voyages through this beautifully designed and printed volume. And there are numerous other reasons to savor the images. For example, the cards that appear as numbers 9 through 60 in the catalogue/book all reflect Japan's contemporaneous take on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. Then there are chapters that demonstrate the impact of the West's Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements on Japanese art sensibilities. Three other cards, my favorites, illustrate famous "haiku" poems, with the artist, Saito Shoshu, using the themes of the cards to stylize the calligraphy with which the poems are rendered. Delight here in a snail's slime trail blended into calligraphic brushwork, an underwater scene in which the calligraphy takes on a very fluid style, and a poem broken up to refelct the hopping of a frog.

Saw this book at a display by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at a photo expo. Swooooooned! Found next day and ordered on Amazon. It is a beauty. Dealer was terrific, prompt. Will use this process again and again. Sooooo happy. A gift for MYSELF. Very inspiring.