6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Japanese pop artists and rule breakers whose work blurred boundaries
Part of the appeal of the 19th-century woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e ('floating world pictures') is that their subject matter is so distinctively Japanese. But that couldn't last. The same historical developments that dispersed ukiyo-e worldwide propelled Western influences and techniques into Japan.
Less than a century after their isolated homeland opened to the world in the 1850s, Japan's artists began making the sort of eclectic works surveyed in 'Cut + Paste: Experimental Japanese Prints and Photographs.' The National Museum of Asian Art exhibition, drawn entirely from its own holdings, is a riot of cross-cultural juxtapositions. Most of the pieces in the 17-artist exhibition are from the second half of the 20th century and are being exhibited at the museum for the first time.
