8 chazen museum of art exhibitions
Waisman Center Collection
May 11 – June 10, 2018
Pleasant T. Rowland Galleries
Watanabe: Japanese Print Envoy
May 25 – August 19, 2018
Leslie and Johanna Garfield Galleries
The Friends of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin – Madison sponsor the Harvey A. Stevens International Collection of Art by People with Developmental Disabilities. With more than 220 works by artists from 15 countries, the collection is intended to, among other goals, encourage people with disabilities to express themselves and expand their world through art. To celebrate the launch of Drawn to Art, a book about the collection, the Chazen will host an exhibition featuring a selection of works from the holdings at the Waisman Center.
RIGHT: George Wilson, USA, Dogs, n. d., crayon, 26 x 34 in.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Shozaburo Watanabe started his publishing business, hiring a new generation of artists and craftsmen to create Japanese prints in the time-honored tradition of Hokusai and Hiroshige. To identify his prints, Watanabe coined the term“ shin hanga” or“ new prints.” Like the prints of the previous century, the prints would be colorful images of Japan’ s people and natural beauty. However, rather than planning for an all-Japanese audience, Watanabe actively courted the international market, touring his prints in the United States, and making the prints more appealing to foreign buyers by, for instance including the artist’ s name and title in roman letters.
Watanabe’ s designers were mostly Japanese but he also created prints designed by American and European artists. The business model started with an artist to create a design, next Watanabe’ s block-cutters and printers made the prints, and finally Watanabe sold them. However, another generation of printmakers were making their own prints from start to finish and showing them at exhibitions. These independent printmakers were at the forefront of the Japanese art market, and Watanabe’ s publications appealed mostly to the American audience. Combining Japanese aesthetics with western sensibilities, they established their own aesthetic in the print market.
Ide Gakusui( Japanese, 1899 – 1982), Egrets in Snow, ca. 1930-1940, color woodcut, 364 x 231 mm, bequest of Abigail Van Vleck, 1984.231