Amazon.com Review
Edo: Art in Japan 1615-1868 is the lavish catalog of an exhibition organized on a scale never before attempted--even in Japan. There, the art of the Edo period is considered too vast a subject for a single show. Edo, the old name for Tokyo, has come to represent the two and a half centuries when the shogun's government intentionally isolated Japan from the rest of the world. Much of the huge wealth generated by this intensely hierarchical and inward-looking society was devoted to the creation of art and status items for the military rulers and rich merchants who supported them, with craftsmen producing works of extraordinary elegance and inventiveness. The show comprises nearly 300 objects, including 50 national treasures or important cultural properties, many of which have never before left Japan.
Besides scholarly descriptions of the objects, highly original essays by major art historians explore the six themes covered by the exhibition: ornament (or style); samurai; work; religion and festivals; travel, landscape, and nature; and entertainment. The vibrancy of a sophisticated urban population intent on pleasure suffuses the entire show, including, for example, a number of exquisite screens bright with gold that pulse with scenes of daily life in Edo. Among the most striking groups of objects are war helmets--functional, but given the most whimsical forms: a butterfly, a seashell, an upturned bowl. The superb quality of the objects and scholarship of the writing make this a landmark publication in Japanese art. --John Stevenson
From Library Journal
This lavishly produced catalog accompanies an exhibition of Edo-era art at the National Gallery in Washington. Edo, as Tokyo was known before 1868, was the cradle of a bold aesthetic that blurred the boundaries between traditional artistic disciplines and flourished in the centuries of national isolation enforced by the Tokugawa shogunate. Led by Robert T. Singer, curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a team of scholars has assembled an impressive array of painting, ceramics, lacquer, textiles, woodblock prints, armor, and sculpture; many pieces have never been seen outside Japan. Rather than displaying the works by medium, the curators have chosen to divide them thematically into six groups: Ornament; Samurai; Work; Religion and Festivals; Travel, Landscape, and Nature; and Entertainment. Each section is introduced with an essay and packed with color plates, more than 300 in all. Extensive, signed captions provide a wealth of information, both art historical and cultural. A wonderful glimpse of a lost world through the eyes of its artists and artisans; highly recommended.?Janice P. Nimura, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
