Vincent van Gogh adored and collected them. They inspired Claude Monet, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec borrowed their distinctive style when he created his famous posters. Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, with their exotic scenes of geishas, kabuki actors, and weathered landscapes, were a big hit in 19^th-century Europe.

The prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867) have brilliant colors, distinctive designs, and flattened space, which influenced most of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. If you go see the new exhibition “Dreams and Diversions: 250 Years of Japanese Woodblock Prints from the San Diego Museum of Art,” you may become enchanted with them, too.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). “Okabe:

Utsu Mountain” (Okabe, Utsu no yama),

from the series The Fifty-three Stations of

the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsugi

no uchi) also known as the Hoeido Tokaido.

Woodblock print, ca. 1833. Published by

Tsuruya Kiemon. 9 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. The San

Diego Museum of Art; Bequest of Mrs. Cora

Timken Burnett, 1957:233.

^{Image courtesy of SDMA.}

The exhibit features an impressive roster of rarely seen, excellent quality prints drawn from the San Diego Museum of Art’s own permanent collection. On display through June, Dreams and Diversions is a large show ofmore than200 prints that are simultaneously on display at two locations: the museum in Balboa Park and at the Robert and Karen Hoehn Family Print Galleries at the University of San Diego. Because the San Diego Museum of Art’s collection is so large, only 40 percent will go on view. Currently only 20 percentof the collection is on view, but halfway through the run, a second rotation of different prints will be installed at both venues.

The word Ukiyo translates as “floating world.” Similar to popular posters today, the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints celebrated breathtaking vistas, entertainment stars and fashionable women. The prints also featured scenes of daily life and common interests from the Edo period Japan—leisurely pleasures, popular tales, and common experiences. Also like today’s posters, the print editions were published as affordable decorative pictures to be purchased by people with limited disposable incomes.

Luminary artisans in the genre include Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai. Hiroshige’s print series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road features notable views along the old main 500-mile road of Japan stretching from the imperial capital of Kyoto to the home of the de facto ruler, the shogun who lived in the city of Edo (present day Tokyo). Currently included in the exhibition is a prime example from Hiroshige’s series.

His “Okabe: Utsu Mountain” (1832-33) is a view set in a verdant forest near the small village of Okabe. On the Tokaido Road near a stream are travelers bearing loads of wood. The elegant design of the print features two gnarled trees set against the unbending trunks of stately pines standing on curving mountainsides. The artwork is a perfect blend of balance, rhythm, and complementary shapes.

Katsushika Hokusai is famous for a print series that he created toward the end of his life, the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Several of the views are on exhibit. One view, especially striking because of its strong graphic quality, is “Rainstorm Beneath the Summit” (1831-34). The snowcapped landmark stands high above blue and white rainclouds. Toward the brown base of the famous mountain, four jagged orange lines represent flashes of lightning. Simplicity is the woodblock print’s essential strength.

The Ukiyo-e woodblock artists carved their intricate images into boards of fine-grained cherry wood. Companies employed a bevy of artisans to carve separate wooden blocks to print each color. They also used a marketing strategy of publishing many Ukiyo-e prints in installments, and the circulating prints became important by influencing travel plans, clothing designs and hairstyles during the Edo period.

An example is a print featuring a courtesan. Like the famous 1976 Farrah Fawcett poster, a particular hairstyle depicted in Isoda Koryusai’s woodblock print “The Courtesan Komurasaki of the Kadotamaya Brothel with her attendants Namiji and Chidori” (ca. 1775–80) became popular. After publication of the print, the toroban (lantern hairstyle) became fashionable across Japan. Additionally, travelers began planning their journeys around views depicted in the prints. Other prints featured multiple partial views and notorious way stations from particular routes. Seasoned travelers familiar with the obscure scenic details and infamous “landmarks” collected these.

Another intriguing print from the series One Hundred Views of Edo by Hiroshige, currently on view in Balboa Park, is “Sudden Shower over ShinhashiBridge and Ataka” (1857). Van Gogh thought so highly of the subject that he painted his own version, “The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige),” 1887.

On display at the University of San Diego’s Hoehn Family Print Galleries is the entire suite of prints from Hiroshige’s renowned series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces (1853–56). Viewing the entire series of 69 prints depicting scenes from all over Japan allows the gallery visitor to appreciate the Ukiyo-e master’s consummate artistry. From the series, and worth traveling to see by itself, is “Awa Province, Naruto Whirlpools.” In the distance, a speck of a boat carrying two passengers steers clear of the foreground’s sublime boat swallowing whirlpool and menacing boulder studded shallows.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).

“Rainstorm Beneath the Summit”

(Sanka hakuu), from the series

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

(Fugaku sanjurokkei). Woodblock

print, ca. 1831–34. Published by

Nishimuraya Yohachi. 10 x 14 9/16 in.

The San Diego Museum of Art; Bequest

of Mrs. Cora Timken Burnett, 1957:175.

^{Image courtesy of SDMA.}

Another fine print in the Hoehn galleries from the Famous Places series is “Suraga Province, Miho Pine Grove.” It features a stunning view of Mount Fuji from across a sailboat-filled bay. Admission to the Hoehn galleries is free; and during this exhibition, the open hours of the Hoehn Family Galleries mimic those of the San Diego Museum of Art (except on Sundays—call ahead for those hours).

A novel approach assisted with the preservation of the museum’s Ukiyo-e print collection. The museum successfully encouraged individual patrons to “adopt” individual prints to share the conservation costs. The excellent and well designed exhibition is curated by Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, Curator of Asian Art at the San Diego Museum of Art, with Howard A. Link, Senior Curator Emeritus of Asian Art and Keeper ofthe James A. Michener Collection at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and Hiroko Johnson, Professor of Asian Art History at San Diego State University. A new, handsome catalog accompanies the exhibition, which includes essays describing the many print styles, the personal histories of the Ukiyo-e print artists, and the history of cross-cultural influences between Japan and the West.

Dreams and Diversions is a sumptuous exhibition and a fine treat. Unless you are wearing wooden getas, run to see this exquisite exhibition.