Ukiyoe

[gothikmaus]

I went to see a Japanese art exhibition called Ukiyoe (Images of the floating world) yesterday and I was once more reminded of how much I love it. I discovered it during my last year of secondary school, my final project was about colonialism and post-colonialism and I did a section about Asiatic and African art. I instantly fell in love as soon as I saw Hokusai's animal sketches. When you look at Japanese traditional paintings and printings it's so clear where today's manga style comes from: the flowing lines, the way clothes and folds are drawn, the exaggerated expressions, it's all there. In one of the paintings there was a little octopus that might have been a character from a manga, it was wearing a bandanna wrapped around its forehead and was clearly pissed off. A girl who was looking at it said, "Hey, it looks like Ryouga from Ranma 1/2! It's P-chan!" And it was absolutely true. ^_^

Speaking of tentacles, there was a shunga (erotic) painting by Hokusai that may interest a few of you (isiscolo and wikdsushi are the first ones I thought of): a woman and an octopus doing unspeakable things (NOT WORKSAFE AT ALL).

lunulet may like the ticket, which has a cute little owl on it.

And I'll never get tired of looking at Beneath the wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, which I had already seen in a Hokusai exhibition a few years ago. I could stare at it for hours.