Ehon
The Artist and the Book in Japan
2006
The Artist and the Book in Japan
2006
Ehon
The Artist and the Book in Japan
Roger S. Keyes
Ehon - or "picture books"- are part of an incomparable 1,200-year-old
Japanese tradition. Created by artists and craftsmen, most ehon also
feature essays, poems, or other texts written in beautiful, distinctive
calligraphy. They are by nature collaborations: visual artists,
calligraphers, writers, and designers join forces with papermakers,
binders, block cutters, and printers. The books they create are
strikingly beautiful, highly charged microcosms of deep feeling, sharp
intensity, and extraordinary intelligence. In the elegant, richly illustrated
Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, renowned scholar Roger S.
Keyes traces the history and evolution of these remarkable books
through seventy key works, including many great rarities and unique
masterpieces, from the Spencer Collection of the New York Public
Library, one of the foremost collections of Japanese illustrated books
in the West.
The earliest ehon were made as religious offerings or talismans, but
their great flowering began in the early modern period (1600-1868)
and has continued, with new media and new styles and subjects, to
the present. Shiohi no tsuto (Gifts of the Ebb Tide, 1789; often called
The Shell Book) by Kitagawa Utamaro, one of the supreme
achievements of the ehon tradition, is reproduced in full. Michimori (ca.
1604), a luxuriously produced libretto for a No play is also featured, as
are Saito- Shu-ho's cheerful Kishi empu (Mr. Ginger's Book of Love,
1803), Kamisaka Sekka's brilliant Momoyogusa (Flowers of a Hundred
Worlds, 1910), and many more.
Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan ends with ehon by some of the
most innovative practitioners of the twentieth century. Among these are
Chizu (The Map, 1965), Kawada Kikuji's profound photographic
requiem for Hiroshima; Yoko Tawada's and Stephan Kohler's affecting
Ein Gedicht fŸr ein Buch (A Poem for a Book, 1996); and Vija
Celmins's and Eliot Weinberger's Hoshi (The Stars, 2005).
The magnificent ehon tradition originated in Japan and developed
there under very specific conditions, but it has long since burst its
bounds, like any living tradition. Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan
suggests that when artists meet readers in these contrived, protected,
focused, sacred book "worlds," the possibilities for pleasure, insight,
and inspiration are limitless.
Cloth, Dust Jacket $ 50.00
The Artist and the Book in Japan
Roger S. Keyes
Ehon - or "picture books"- are part of an incomparable 1,200-year-old
Japanese tradition. Created by artists and craftsmen, most ehon also
feature essays, poems, or other texts written in beautiful, distinctive
calligraphy. They are by nature collaborations: visual artists,
calligraphers, writers, and designers join forces with papermakers,
binders, block cutters, and printers. The books they create are
strikingly beautiful, highly charged microcosms of deep feeling, sharp
intensity, and extraordinary intelligence. In the elegant, richly illustrated
Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, renowned scholar Roger S.
Keyes traces the history and evolution of these remarkable books
through seventy key works, including many great rarities and unique
masterpieces, from the Spencer Collection of the New York Public
Library, one of the foremost collections of Japanese illustrated books
in the West.
The earliest ehon were made as religious offerings or talismans, but
their great flowering began in the early modern period (1600-1868)
and has continued, with new media and new styles and subjects, to
the present. Shiohi no tsuto (Gifts of the Ebb Tide, 1789; often called
The Shell Book) by Kitagawa Utamaro, one of the supreme
achievements of the ehon tradition, is reproduced in full. Michimori (ca.
1604), a luxuriously produced libretto for a No play is also featured, as
are Saito- Shu-ho's cheerful Kishi empu (Mr. Ginger's Book of Love,
1803), Kamisaka Sekka's brilliant Momoyogusa (Flowers of a Hundred
Worlds, 1910), and many more.
Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan ends with ehon by some of the
most innovative practitioners of the twentieth century. Among these are
Chizu (The Map, 1965), Kawada Kikuji's profound photographic
requiem for Hiroshima; Yoko Tawada's and Stephan Kohler's affecting
Ein Gedicht fŸr ein Buch (A Poem for a Book, 1996); and Vija
Celmins's and Eliot Weinberger's Hoshi (The Stars, 2005).
The magnificent ehon tradition originated in Japan and developed
there under very specific conditions, but it has long since burst its
bounds, like any living tradition. Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan
suggests that when artists meet readers in these contrived, protected,
focused, sacred book "worlds," the possibilities for pleasure, insight,
and inspiration are limitless.
Cloth, Dust Jacket $ 50.00
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