Challenging Past And Present
Author | : Ellen P. Conant |
Publisher | : University of Hawaii Press |
Total Pages | : 346 |
Release | : 2006-01-01 |
ISBN-10 | : 0824829379 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780824829377 |
Rating | : 4/5 (79 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: The complex and coherent development of Japanese art during thecourse of the nineteenth century was inadvertently disrupted by apolitical event: the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Scholars of both thepreceding Edo (1615-1868) and the succeeding Meiji (1868-1912) erashave shunned the decades bordering this arbitrary divide, thus creatingan art-historical void that the former view as a period of waningtechnical and creative inventiveness and the latter as one threatenedby Meiji reforms and indiscriminate westernization and modernization.Challenging Past and Present, to the contrary, demonstrates that theperiod 1840-1890, as seen progressively rather than retrospectively, experienced a dramatic transformation in the visual arts, which in turnmade possible the creative achievements of the twentieth century