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If sensuality had a name, it would be without doubt Utamaro. Delicately underlining the Garden of Pleasures that once constituted Edo, Utamaro, by the richness of his fabrics, the swanlike necks of the women and the mysterious looks, evokes in a few lines the sensual pleasure of the Orient. If some scenes discreetly betray lovers' games, a great number of his shungas recall that love in Japan is first and foremost erotic.
Beyond the joys of the city, he explores the sobriety of nature with an equal simplicity, evoking evening snows and the evanescence of the moon. With unparalleled finesse his brush reveals in just a few strokes all the refinement of the Kan¿ school.
Edmond de Goncourt, by bringing the beauty of the Japanese master's art into light, invites the reader to discover the world within these artworks whose codes and nuances appear at first glance elusive. Through its selection of magnificent prints, this introductory work summons us into the reposeful garden of Aphrodite while discovering, or rediscovering, Japanese art.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Friend of Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert and Alphonse Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt was a French writer belonging to the naturalist movement. Eyewitness to the events of the worldly and artistic life of the second half of the nineteenth century, his major work remains the Journal written with his brother, Jules. Beginning in 1850, they collaborated on history books, most notably treating painting, such as Eighteenth Century Art. Impassioned by the delicate beauty of the Japanese woodblock prints, Edmond de Goncourt became, through his monographs on Utamaro and Hokusai, one of the first to reveal the magnificence of this art to the Western world.
