2024年04月19日（金） - 2024年07月01日（月）
In early summer 2024, the Saga Arashiyama in Kyoto will be filled with the bloom of beauties. Co-organized with the nearby Fukuda Art Museum, visitors will enjoy approximately 190 paintings of beautiful women from the Fukuda Collection.
Female beauty has been a perennial subject of art from the earliest times. Japanese artists evolved a distinctive way of exploring the inner and outward beauty of women in a genre known as bijin-ga, literally beautiful-woman painting. Some artists used celebrated beauties as their models. Others depicted figures from legend, stories, and drama, and some left lingering evidence of past encounters with beauty they could not forget. The artists’ diverse ideas, and ways of expressing them, exert a lasting fascination. Each work seems to be fired by the desire of the artist to say to the subject, “You're beautiful.”
Works on show in the first venue, Saga Arashiyama Museum of Art and Culture, trace the roots of bijin-ga in ukiyo-e portrayals of women. Here you can see paintings by Utagawa Hiroshige and Hokusai and other noted ukiyo-e artists. To these are added paintings of beauties by artists who were active in Kyoto in the early modern period. Each incidentally documents the hairstyles, textiles, and mode of dress that were current at the time of painting. Arranged to show how bijin-ga evolved from ukiyo-e, the exhibition includes masterful works from the 19th and 20th centuries that illustrate the changing ways artists viewed women.
Accordingly, the show's second venue, the Fukuda Art Museum, presents modern-period masterpieces from the Fukuda Collection. Representing the endless tug-of-war between Tokyo and Kyoto, works showing the friendly rivalry of "Kiyokata of the East and Shōen of the West" form the core of the exhibition. Kaburaki Kiyokata and Uemura Shōen, each with their own conception of female beauty and contrasting techniques, were two of the major bijin-ga artists of the 20th century. Their paintings are supplemented by the different notions and techniques of Itō Shōha, Itō Shinsui, and other masters, as well as expressions of beguiling beauty by artists such as Kainoshō Tadaoto and Okamoto Shinsō. Before each work, you may hear an inner voice murmuring "You're beautiful." Which one will make you say it out loud?
| Title | You’re beautiful ～ Bijin-ga from Fukuda Collection |
|---|---|
| Dates | April 19 (Fri.) 2024 to July 1 (Mon.), 2024 1st Period: April 19 (Fri.) to May 27 (Mon.) 2024 2nd Period: May 29 (Wed.) to July 1 (Mon.) 2024 |
| Opening hours | 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (last entry 4:30 pm) |
| Closed | May 28 (Tue.) June 18 (Tue.) |
| Entry Fee | General / University student: ¥1000 (¥900) High school student: ¥600 (¥500) Elementary / Junior high school student: ¥400 (¥350) Disabled person and up to one helper: ¥600 (¥500) * Prices in parentheses are for groups of 20 or more * Free for preschool children - Combo ticket with the Fukuda Art Museum - General / University student: ¥2,300 High school student: ¥1,300 Elementary / Junior high school student: ¥750 Disabled person and up to one helper: ¥1,300 |
| Organizers | Saga Arashiyama Museum of Arts & Culture |
| Supported by | Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto City, Kyoto City Board of Education, Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
| Related documents | List of works Leaflet |
Major Painters that are exhibited
Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Teisai Hokuba, Yamaguchi Soken, Gion Seitoku, Miyagawa Choshun, Katsushika Shunsho, Utagawa Kuninaga, Nishikawa Sukenobu, Taniguchi Kokyo, Kaburaki Kiyokata, Ikeda Shoen, Ito Shinsui, Terashima Shimei, Kitano Tsumetomi, Tanikado Hisaharu, Uemura Shoen, Iwasa Koko, Shima Seien, etc.
Katsushika Hokusai
"Beautiful Woman with Kinuta"
Fukuda Art Museum
Miyagawa Chōshun
"Tied Chaff Pillow and Beautiful Woman"
Fukuda Art Museum
Utagawa Kuninaga
"Standing Figure of a Girl about Town"
Fukuda Art Museum
Gion Seitoku
"Standing Beauty"
Fukuda Art Museum
Iwasa Kokō
"Scene from Jōruri 'Asagao Nikki'"
Fukuda Art Museum
Oda Tomiya
"Autumn Evening"
Fukuda Art Museum
Yamakawa Shūhō
"Wooden Horse"
Uemura Shoen
"Shizuka Gozen"
Fukuda Art Museum
Ikeda Shōen
"Spring Day"
