Shoen Uemura: Beauty for Whom?
Do women depict their own sex differently than men? This is one of the questions to arise from the exhibition Shoen Uemura and Bijinga: Female Beauty in Japanese Paintings, the last show at the Yamatane Museum in its old home before reopening in new premises in October.
Featuring around 18 bijinga (paintings of beautiful women) by the female Nihonga artist Shoen Uemura (1875 - 1949) and around 30 works by other Nihonga painters, including Shinsui Ito, Kagaku Murakami, and Kiyokata Kaburaki, the exhibition allows comparisons to be made. While the bijinga of Ito and Kagaku often have a touch of sensuality and voyeurism, Uemura’s paintings have a prim delicacy and spirit of purity.
While women have often beautified themselves in order to ensnare men's affections, in the paintings of Uemura the beauty in the delicately painted lips, elaborate hairdos, and elegantly draped kimonos seems to exist solely for its own sake or possibly for the benefit of other women.
C.B.Liddell
Metropolis
26th June, 2009
Featuring around 18 bijinga (paintings of beautiful women) by the female Nihonga artist Shoen Uemura (1875 - 1949) and around 30 works by other Nihonga painters, including Shinsui Ito, Kagaku Murakami, and Kiyokata Kaburaki, the exhibition allows comparisons to be made. While the bijinga of Ito and Kagaku often have a touch of sensuality and voyeurism, Uemura’s paintings have a prim delicacy and spirit of purity.
While women have often beautified themselves in order to ensnare men's affections, in the paintings of Uemura the beauty in the delicately painted lips, elaborate hairdos, and elegantly draped kimonos seems to exist solely for its own sake or possibly for the benefit of other women.
C.B.Liddell
Metropolis
26th June, 2009
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