Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – förlag

Featuring over 100 rare Japanese woodblock prints and thoughtful commentary, The Printer's eye paints a vibrant and fascinating picture of Japan's Uikoyo-e or "floating world." Edwin Grabhorn (1889—1968), co-founder of the Grabhorn Press, Northern California's premier letterpress printer, was a pioneer American collector of Japanese prints. The Grabhorn prints in the collection of the Asian Art Museum comprise the upper echelons of the original collection. The collection includes a superb selection of early monochrome and hand-colored ukiyo-e prints by Sugimura Jihei, Torii Kiyonobu, Okumura Masanobu and others, from the seminal decades of the woodblock print production in the late 1600s and early 1700s.Japanese Prints from the Grabhorn Collection marks the first time these prints are being published in quantity for a wide audience. Leading scholars David Waterhouse and Julia Meech provide in-depth looks at the prints in their Japanese contexts and at Grabhorn's role as a print collector. Large full-color reproductions all 140 of the Grabhorn prints in the Asian Art Museum's collection are accompanied by entries by Laura Allen and Melissa Rinne.

Winner of the 2017 Silver Medal for Fine Art (National Level) from the Independent Publisher Book AwardsFeaturing dozens of stunning Japanese woodblock prints, textiles, serving vessels and thoughtful essays, Seduction paints a vibrant and provocative picture of Japan's Uikoyo-e or 'floating world.''The Floating World' was catch phrase that defined the pleasure quarters of Edo-period Japan's (1615—1868) and conveyed a fantasy realm where men were led to believe they could drift aimlessly in the pursuit of pleasure. Brothels were a prominent feature, but other entertainments, such as theater, music, and wrestling were also offered. Pursuit of such pleasures prompted a revolution in fashion, literature, and the visual arts, as the pleasure district was marketed not just through the offer of sex but rather through the elaboration of the seductive image of a sophisticated demimonde that beckoned visitors. Seduction show how images of courtesans were constructed as objects of desire, and it considers how the artistic version aligned with or departed from the reality of women's lives. It traces the ways that art was used to transport viewers to a constructed realm of sensory delights to stimulate desires and gratify fantasies of carefree pleasure. Editor Laura W. Allen offers an overview of the seductive spell cast by the floating world and provides helpful entries on each of the featured objects. Essays by Melinda Takeuchi, Eric C. Rath, and Julia Meech introduce the floating world, consider the role of food in the pleasure quarter, and explore the feminine gaze in the Japanese print. A translation of the texts on the Hishikawa Moronobu scroll is included. The result is a fascinating study of the way that visual objects were used to convey insider knowledge about the latest fashions in clothing, hairstyles, accessories, and even games. Armed with such knowledge, a visitor to the pleasure quarters would be prepared for the pursuit of love and other objects of desire.

Couture Korea highlights traditional ways of dressing and shows how contemporary haute couture is rooted in Korean tradition.Through garments including baeja (woman's vest), po (man's outerwear), and baegilbok (child's costume for the 100th-day celebration), this Korean fashion book explores how each gender dresses during different seasons, on special occasions, and according to social status. Interviews with contemporary fashion designers Jin Teok and Karl Lagerfeld and historians Minjee Kim and Cho Hyo Sook examine how historical and modern clothing design reinvigorates Korean cultural identity.

This important book examines the history, process and significance of official portrait making during Korea's Joseon dynasty (1392-1910)—the country's last and longest-ruling Confucian dynasty.By highlighting significant pieces in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's collection, including draft portraits of Bunmu meritorious officials and the portrait of Song Siyeol (1607-1689), it also discusses the complex philosophies and delicate techniques in the art of portrait making.With more than 95 photos and illustrations, Likeness and Legacy in Korean Portraiture is the ultimate guide to this specialized art form and its history. The inclusion of contemporary works that are related to or inspired by the portrait-making tradition will demonstrate to readers that this practice is still thriving in the modern art scene.

Dance is everywhere in the art and culture of the Indian cultural sphere, whether it is the sacred dance of a god bringing the world into being or the sensual performance of a courtly lady before a maharaja. More often than the divine beings of other cultures, the gods of Hinduism and Buddhism dance. They express their creative and destructive energies through fluid rhythmic movements, setting the pulse of the universe. In benign moods, they dance gracefully in sublime play. In stern moods, they dance with a force that, if fully unleashed, could destroy worlds. In daily life people have long danced for worship, for festivals, for the entertainment of kings and princes, and for their own enjoyment. All these sorts of dance, both sacred and secular, have been represented—or embodied—by artists over many centuries in superb sculptures and paintings, and in recent decades in film and new media. Lavishly illustrated with over 250 color illustrations and essays from renowned experts, this book tells the story of dance in the arts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan Region.

What does it mean to be gorgeous? This art book—as its cover, evocative of a popular fashion magazine, suggests—offers a provocative and entertaining approach to this question. It accompanies an exhibition of works from SFMOMA and the Asian Art Museum in stimulating new contexts. The goal is not a comparison of East and West but rather a collaborative venture into beauty at its extreme: the grotesque, the sad, the scary, the awe-inspiring, the comical. The artworks encourage readers to form their own responses to the question "What is gorgeous?" Highlights include works by Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Joan Miro', Meret Oppenheim, Ellsworth Kelly, and Pablo Picasso. Alongside are a 1000-year-old Indian sculpture of Durga victorious over the buffalo demon, a gilded and jeweled Burmese Buddhist alms bowl, 17th-century Japanese screens of Mt. Fuji and the beach at Miho by Kano Tan'yu, a decorated 16th-century Persian Koran, and many other exceptional works—startling and sometimes unsettling objects that cause us to reexamine our notions of the beautiful. Allison Harding and Forrest McGill of the Asian Art Museum curated the exhibition, in association with Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture, and Caitlin Haskell, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, at SFMOMA. This book includes contributions from each of them, along with lively original contributions from Lawrence Weschler, New Yorker contributor and author of, among others, Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, and Christy Wampole, New York Times contributor and assistant professor of French at Princeton University.