"AWASH in COLOR" Exhibit at Smart Museum of Art

Smart Museum of Art is on the campus of The University of Chicago. It is a small but diverse art museum that covers many areas of art from Korean Foliate Wine cup with stand from 1200, Italian Oil painting from 1500 to art using plastic bottles from Chicago present.

Now until Jan 20,2013 it is featuring French and Japanese wood block prints in the Gray Gallery. The exhibit is titled "Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints". The museum's brochure says "It explores the roles, functions, and technology of color in prints from these two countries. It features more than 130 prints from the 18th to 20th centuries" ( sadly I was not allowed to take any photographs in this exhibit)

I mainly went to see the Ukiyo-e (floating world) prints to see how the text was used in the prints. I am working on a photographic project where I am combining text with photographs and wanted to see how the Japanese masters incorporated the text (poem in their cases) into the art but I only saw one Ukiyo-e with it. Maybe I was mistaken that Hiroshige and Utamaro used poems in their prints.

Another exhibit "Renewals and Revision: Japanese Prints of the 1950s and 60s" is a much smaller exhibit that featured Japanese prints from the first 20 yrs after WW II. The prints felt warmer and more approachable than the traditional wood block prints. Maybe it was due to the different techniques and subjects that artists had used.