
Dramatic Impressions
Japanese Theatre Prints from the Gilbert Luber Collection
Dilys P. Winegrad(Editor)
University of Pennsylvania Press
Published on 17. April 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
64 pages
978-0-8122-1985-2 (ISBN)
Description
Gilbert Luber and his wife, Shirley, took their first trip to Japan in the early 1970s to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. While there, they fell in love with both antique and contemporary woodblock prints. Upon returning home, their interest quickly grew into an obsession, then a profession. Gilbert began an in-depth study of Japanese prints, and he and his wife returned to Japan the following year to purchase more. Annual trips to collect prints led to the opening in 1975 of the Luber Gallery in Philadelphia, the first gallery in the city to show the works of Japanese artists. Their annual purchasing trips continued for twenty years, and the Luber Gallery continued to flourish until Gilbert's death in 1999. This catalogue, produced in conjunction with an exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross Gallery, highlights masterworks from Luber's stellar collection of nineteenth-century actor prints and images by the Osaka artist Natori Shunsen (1886-1960), a master of the Shin Hanga, or "new print."
These prints were designed to appeal to the collector and, by using the most exquisite techniques in the medium, emphasized the dramatic expression achieved by kabuki's most celebrated practitioners. Dramatic Impressions is the first scholarly study that considers the ways these works were produced, appreciated, and collected, offering a new approach to the topic of actor prints. The three essays in the catalogue take up issues specific to the collection and relevant to the study of Japanese woodblock prints. They also make significant contributions to the fields of collecting, Osaka prints, Shin Hanga, and, as a group, they offer a new approach to the reception and history of the Japanese woodblock print. In reproducing in full color the works featured in the exhibition, Dramatic Impressions: Japanese Theatre Prints from the Gilbert Luber Collection offers the reader a handsome visual guide to the genre.
These prints were designed to appeal to the collector and, by using the most exquisite techniques in the medium, emphasized the dramatic expression achieved by kabuki's most celebrated practitioners. Dramatic Impressions is the first scholarly study that considers the ways these works were produced, appreciated, and collected, offering a new approach to the topic of actor prints. The three essays in the catalogue take up issues specific to the collection and relevant to the study of Japanese woodblock prints. They also make significant contributions to the fields of collecting, Osaka prints, Shin Hanga, and, as a group, they offer a new approach to the reception and history of the Japanese woodblock print. In reproducing in full color the works featured in the exhibition, Dramatic Impressions: Japanese Theatre Prints from the Gilbert Luber Collection offers the reader a handsome visual guide to the genre.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Pennsylvania
United States
Illustrations
55 color illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 280 mm
Width: 216 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8122-1985-2 (9780812219852)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
At the University of Pennsylvania Frank L. Chance is Associate Director of the Center for East Asian Studies, Julie Nelson Davis teaches in the Department of the History of Art, and Dilys Winegrad is Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery.
Content
Introduction Chapter One. Gilbert Luber: A Collector and His Times -Frank L. Chance and Julie Nelson Davis Chapter Two. Now Appearing in Print: Osaka Actors and Their Audience -Julie Nelson Davis Chapter Three. Natori Shunsen (1886-1960): The Last Great Kabuki Printmaker Plates Bibliography