Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Kitagawa Utamaro - Toji san bijin (Three Beauties of the Present Day)From Bijin-ga (Pictures of Beautiful Women), published by Tsutaya Juzaburo - Google Art Project.jpg

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Three Beauties of the Present Day[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 9 Jul 2014 at 11:31:45 (UTC)

Original – Date about 1793 Utamaro, considered by many to be the greatest of the Ukiyo-e artists, is famous for his clear, precise and elegant drawings. This copy shows: (citation) the courtesans Ohisa and Okita and the singer Toyohina in a pyramidal formation. This pyramidal formation was an innovation of Utamaro's which was frequently copied by later ukiyo-e artists. Utamaro brought to the genre of figure prints a new ideal of feminine beauty. His drawings has influencer both Monet and Van Gogh developing a new style. The composition is unusual, and it is correct, it is cut of like this.
Reason
Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 – 1806) was a Japanese woodblock print (ukiyo-e) artist. Utamaro is famous for his portraits of feminine beauties, his close-up portraits of beautiful women marked an epoch in the evolution of the Japanese print called bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women), that is depicting feminine beauty in the Japanese art history. Utamaro is one of the very best representant of this genre.
Articles
Utamaro, Ukiyo-e, Portrait painting and 45 other articles on different Wikis.
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Artwork/East Asian art
Creator
Kitagawa Utamaro


  • Comment - Needs categories on Commons (easily fixed). This might have EV in the article on Bijin-ga as well. Minor nitpicks, really. This is easily worth a support (blur is understandable, since the original object isn't even 40cm on its longest side yet this was scanned at 8k pixels). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:05, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Perhaps not Utamaro's most famous work, but illustrative of the genre. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Note there's already a featured Utamaro here, a beautifully restored version of this LoC print. Ukiyo-e prints don't age well and that pale chestnut-maroon of the robes probably started life as something quite different. They were used as packing paper in Van Gogh's time! He tried to set up a business in Paris selling them, but it wasn't successful. Degas and Mary Cassatt much influenced by them - more examples of Utamaro in one of my Cassatt sandboxes. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 19:02, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coat of Many Colours: That whole "packing material" meme is way exaggerated. Hokusai's Manga had been used as packing material by Félix Bracquemond's printer, and Monet may have found some prints in Holland that were used as wrapping paper. The pigments and apper are susceptible to degradation---compare an original to one of the Adachi reprints and see what a difference there is---you can see the clouds in the background of The Great Wave! Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 13:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I thought that was probably true of the packing paper story, still a good story. That's right about degrading. The quality of surviving copies of these prints varies enormously. Excellent user page of yours - worth checking out. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 14:17, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • AARGH! Don't read that! That was an early draft of the ukiyo-e page that's now up for FAC. I forgot to redirect it to the mainspace article. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 14:28, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - The other featured Utamaro is different, a single woman, but this print is using three women as a triangle , and it is a specific composition and a significant work of Utamaro. This composition was invented by Utamaro, and widely copied. And if you look at the category Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Artwork/East Asian art, there is no such picture there, actually Bijin-ga is rather poorly represented among our Featured Pictures of East Asian art, weird enough, considering that representing feminine beauty (Bijin-ga) how significant part is of the famous Ukiyo-e Japanese prints. As for the print, old prints lok like this. Hafspajen (talk) 10:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An East Asian art FP - Old prints look like this
  • One interjection: that's a 12th century print; there's quite a difference in appearance between 12th-century and a well-preserved 19th century print. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • It say dated about 1793, same year when Louis XVI of France was guillotined... It is probably like 221 year old? Hafspajen (talk) 15:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Added. There's a nice Christie's set of deplorable images by Utamaro here incidentally if anyone's offering. Christie's don't keep their Zoomify images up for ever, so I would grab them quick if genuinely interested. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 19:14, 29 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well done! I suspect Mary Cassatt probably didn't have this set in her collection (she had a few from Utamaro) but I'll keep it mind. I'll add to the Commons description when I have a moment. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 08:21, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Hafspajen: I presume this is a response to my comment further up, not to it being purplish? Because I'm not quite convinced that hand-made paper tends towards purple most of the time, and most Ukiyo-es I've seen tend to age yellow. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know Adam. It could be the paper is coloured, it fades downwards. These look like they have a colored background. Maybe to emphasize the witness of the skin. The Light skin in Japanese culture thing. Or... I don't know. It is possible to do many different prints from the same woodblock, and since they were handmade, they would look different, all of them, more or less. It is not like just having one painting and one possible faithful reproduction. They came out differen. Hafspajen (talk) 16:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
At thumb size the faces look whiter
  • Hmm. I'm not sure - the faces are normally very, very white in geisha prints, it seems odd they're slightly coloured. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:16, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
James Tissot - Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects (NOT NOMINATED)
  • The white face is paint. Everything on a Japanese woodcut print is put there. If the use plain paper and skip the white print plate, then it will be no white face. And if you put only a little, it will be hardly noticeable, like here probably. It is a special technic they use, the Nishiki-e. A nishiki-e print is created by carving a separate woodblock for every color, and using them in a stepwise fashion, made by hand. They put the paper on the plate and push, once for lines, once for colors, details, extra colors, and so on. It is not a painting, it is a print. It all depends on how the actual print was made. Hafspajen (talk) 02:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Have you tried to click on show details?, left upper corner ? IT reads like this, from The Toledo Museum of Art, USA,: (citation) Kitagawa Utamaro's interest in physiognomy, —the study of an individual's facial features as an indication of their character—helped lead to his skill at subtly altering the features of each face to create a sense of portraiture and individuality, such as the position and spacing of the eyes, the shape of the nose, and the placement of the ears. At the same time he retained a stylized, ideal beauty characterized by oblong faces and small eyes and mouths.Three Beauties demonstrates three new developments in Japanese printmaking that Utamaro helped make popular during the Edo period: the use of the so-called "big head" composition (okubi-e), which provides a close-up of each subject; the pyramidal formation of the figures; and the use of a sparkling mica-dust background (kirazuri) that sets off the soft matte tones of the faces. This print is one of at least three known states (versions with some variation of detail) of this design and includes a title cartouche in the upper right corner. Hafspajen (talk) 01:13, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • And Utamaro's prints look like this sometimes, se book cover Utamaro revealed here. Hafspajen (talk) 02:58, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I would agree with User:Adam Cuerden that the colour of this print is too mauve/pink all over. The grey here is a warm pinkish grey. It should be a cool grey (not blue grey either but slightly yellowed, if anything). The overall colour cast needs tweaking slightly. It just mean that by whatever process this was reproduced, the balance wasn't quite right. Otherwise, it is a well-composed print.
    Also, this triangular composition may have been innovative in Japanese art, but it had become a common compositional device in Italian art in the 1300s.
    I would like to make some adjustments to the caption,before it's used. Amandajm (talk) 05:52, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mind you, I'm a little scared of another Olympia situation. I don't suppose anyone can actually look at it? Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:56, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, and who did that Olympia-situation, if not Naughty-Coaty, before graciously joining the gang? Hafspajen (talk) 11:33, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ukiyo-e prints really don't keep well. Not only does the cheap newspaper quality paper tone a lot, the everyday printers' inks employed were also cheap and hopelessly fugitive. These prints were not destined for the fine art market but for popular consumption. That pale chestnut-marooon (ubiquitous in surviving examples of these prints) I mention above could have started life anywhere from red to green and in between. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest and finest collection of these prints, but as you can readily see they generally haven't aged well: Abalone Divers is typical. What should be at stake here is the authenticity. Has the file been digitally processed and if so is the result authentic (or if not, at least meritorious on aesthetic grounds). In this case it's the museum image image via Google Art Ptoject and so far it hasn't been tinkered with. So I don't think there any issues regarding authenticity to worry about here. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 09:51, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ukiyo-e was printed on a variety of paper qualities for different audiences and purposes, from the luxurious to the relatively inexpensive, but I don't think you could call any of it "cheap newspaper quality". They were generally hand-made mulberry paper, and the full-colour nishiki-e prints in particular (that are synonymous with "ukiyo-e" in the West) had to be of higher quality to withstand the multiple impressions of the different colour woodblocks (up to twenty in some cases). Utamaro had the same publisher as Sharaku—Tsutaya Jūzaburō—who was known to employ lavish printing techniques such as dusting the backgrounds with mica. Remember, the audience for these prints were not poor farmers, but the wealthy urban bourgeois who could afford to spend their time and money whoring in the pleasure districts—people who had larger incomes than those in the ruling samurai class. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 14:19, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I admit to talking out of the box "newspaper quality", but it was nevertheless art for mass consumption was it not? And it was precisely that aspect that attracted Westerners such as Degas and Cassatt. That Adachi facsimile is beautiful. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:00, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • They were mass-produced, but "mass" is a relative term—According to this page, in the 19th century they were printed in edtions of a few hundred at a time, and the superstars such as Hiroshige could sell perhaps as many as 5–10,000 copies of their most popular prints. I seem to remember reading elsewhere that many earlier prints were special commissions, for exclusive private clubs and whatnot, in editions of possibly as low as single digits. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looks like I started quite a debate with this poor picture. I really thougt that this one is going to be a singularly uncontroversial nomination, one of the most beautiful of Utamaro's production... and since we are so low on good pictures in the category Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Artwork/East Asian art... Hafspajen (talk) 14:37, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, I'm not the right guy to ask about that sort of thing... This shouldn't affect this nomination, but here's a modern Adachi reprint, to give an idea of how much the colours have degraded. Of course, that'll be true for any original. They weren't created with long-term preservation in mind. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 15:27, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, I suspected this, but didn't want to just guess---according to the Adachi page, the whole background is dusted with mica, which gives a glittery effect that I image would never show up in a scan---though there's usually a certain quality to the scans that tells you it's one of those mica-dusted prints. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 15:35, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not familiar enough with the guidelines; all I'll say is that several of the other ukiyo-e FPs are reprints---the other Utamaro's an Adachi. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 16:13, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do support the original. It meets all the criteria. I can't help thinking that there's a small galaxy of images out there that in fact meet the requirements, but so long as they come in and we keep up I don't see why we shouldn't support them. I would also support a knowledgeable restoration such as Durova did with Ase o fuku onna (Woman wiping sweat). As for the reprint, that would be brilliant except I suspect it's still in copyright. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:16, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Copyright issue interesting on reflection. These Adachi prints date from around 1950s it seems. Are they in copyright in US law. They can't be said to be 'faithful representations' can they? Or are they classed as mere derivative works? Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:21, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • They couldn't possibly be under copyright—there's no creative element to them, which is the basis under which you can obtain copyright. For those who don't know what Adachi is about: The company was founded in 1926 to reproduce ukiyo-e prints using the original techniques—this means they re-carved all the woodblocks by hand, and do all the printing by hand, too (the faded bokashi effects can't be reproduced by machine, such as in the fading blue skies). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 20:35, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • It may well be my Brit perspective getting in the way but I am dubious. I know nothing about US copyright law, but I do know Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc. because of another debate I took part in on Wikipedia. That case was about copying fonts and the Court upheld the plaintiff (on the distinctly curious grounds in my estimation) that the plaintiff displayed creativity in selecting control points for their Bezier splines (smoothing curves). Similarly surely it can be argued that Adachi displayed creativity in their selection, for example, of printing inks. The very act of printing, as I'm sure you know and will concede, is a creative one. Imagine a small museum in the US somewhere. They have a number of Japanese prints and generate useful income (or did until Wikipedia arrived) on selling poster reproductions. The museum Director has a wheeze: why not lift a few Adachi prints into a glossy little souvenir? Handy income and no royalties to pay. Somehow I can't see it, even in the US. Can you really? Coat of Many Colours (talk) 23:32, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see how the oranges of Adobe can be compared to the grapes (sorry) of these reprints. It's long been held that faithful reproductions of 2D works acquire no new copyright in the US; this includes attempts to best recreate how a work originally looked. As such, even Adam's claim to copyright for his fantastic restoration work might not be defendable in the United States, amazing as that seems. I recall I tried to nominate a restored version of A Trip to the Moon for deletion, but it was kept (discussion here). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:54, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that Adachi's selling point is that they reproduce these prints as exactly as possible—right down to how the individual hairs are carved and the mica dusting—I imagine they've foregone any claims of having crossed the threshold of originality. I'm definitely not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but this document suggests the threshold is higher than it is in the States, and we know the States has a higher threshold than the UK (no "sweat of the brow" stuff). On top of that, the Library of Congress has made available a pile of Adachi prints noted "Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication." Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 02:09, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I always make it clear that I'm not a lawyer, know nothing substantial about US copyright law and indeed copyright law in general, and I'm always prepared to defer to experts, whether real, television or for that matter wikipedian.
    The paradox about facsimiles is that they are indeed by their very nature faithful representations, but they are also restorations and, my point, involve many creative decisions. What's at stake here is not a museum trying to generate an income that they in reality have no right to, but a bona fide industry with many antecedents.
    However it's true that the Library of Congress does tag Adachi prints in the way you say - this is an example. They regard them as reprints of an original, which I think is wrong in fact. I shall email them for clarification and report back. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 10:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I'll lose whatever faith I have in copyright if you turn out to be right (the very idea seems to spit in the face of the spirit of American copyright laws), but keep in mind that Japanese copyright only extends for fifty years for corporate works, so any of these reproductions whose blocks were cut before 1964 are in the public domain in Japan any way one slices it (such as this, purchased in 1938). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 11:29, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's instinct, not really knowledgeable on American copyright law as I stress. Didn't know that about Japan copyright law, but at Commons it must be PD in both nation of origin and US. At the beginning of this year I uploaded to the English Wikipedia some Fair Use images of Charlotte Salomon's work, which had come into PD in Europe but not (generally) into the US because of URAA considerations. I was astonished to find that these Fair Use images could not be copied to the Netherlands, French of German, the countries most associated with her, wikis because (so it seems) they only allow uploads from Commons (later in the year I was able to upload some images of hers to Commons given the dispensation there about URAA). Here's a link to a facsimile of William Blake's The Book of Urizen published by the Trianon press for the William Blake Society. At this dealer it's offered for £975 and there are numeous other facsimile edition, some of them very expensive indeed and sought by coillectors, of Blake's other works. The point is that indeed there's an industry in these kinds of facsimiles. I really do doubt that the spirit of the "faithful representation" doctrine in the US can extend to these. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 15:38, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, of course there's a market for these things, but the fact that there's money to be made isn't a consideration in US copyright law (is it in the UK/Europe?). I would be shocked if those editions were considered eligible for copyright. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 20:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, you're right about money to be made. What I meant to suggest is that whereas no one really laments the fact that museums have been stiffed of their reproduction revenues (and American museums were amongst the most vociferous in protecting them) because we instinctively recognise that they don't really own those rights on work that have come into the public domain, it's a different matter when it comes to restorations ("facsimiles"), which is a niche industry in the art world and which undoubtedly would cease to exit if their copyright weren't granted. Of course a loss, to say nothing of the loss of livelihood of its employees. The US case law in question is Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. That concerned photography. It's quite a stretch to move to cutting woodblocks, selecting inks and printing impressions as merely "slavish copying". I shall email LoC for their views and if I get a reply let you know on your Talk page. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 21:52, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll be glad to read it. I have to say, though, that Bridgeman v. Corel only makes me more confident that Adachi prints are uncopyrightable, particularly here:

    But he ruled that the plaintiff, by its own admission, had performed "slavish copying", which did not qualify for copyright protection. "[I]ndeed", he elaborated, "the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity". He noted that "[i]t is uncontested that Bridgeman's images are substantially exact reproductions of public domain works, albeit in a different medium".

    With Adachi, there isn't even a "different medium" in play. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:22, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, but I'm saying the underlying work (the Adachi restoration) shouldn't be regarded as public domain in the first place. I haven't studied this judgment, but glancing at it (if I recall correctly) much was made about the evolution of the photographic process, that originally it was thought copyrightable whereas today that cannot be maintained.
    Presently, in the context of photographing 3-D objects, it's accepted that the photographer has rights. That she doesn't in 2-D strikes me as frankly perverse, but as I say it's not something I lose sleep about over museum images. Facsimile editions a different matter. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 23:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow, I can't grasp that "perversity" at all. It sounds to me more like an underhanded way to rob the Public Domain. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 02:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • What I really meant that is that it's perverse to say that photos of 3-D images are somehow more creative than photos of 2-D images. I would like to see that imaging of any PD work by any means doesn't attract fresh copyright, but that would be strictly *imaging* and not the recreation or restoration of the original work by for example cutting woodblocks, taking plaster casts of sculptures and so on. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 11:43, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coaty be the nice, brilliant, lovely guy we all appreciate. Hafspajen (talk) 18:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coat, do you do photography? Serious question. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:53, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well I do, serious answer. But only entry level gear and basically for family snaps. I do know that photographing 2-D objects involves creative choices, hence all the discussion on this forum about various versions. The idea that 3-D photographs are somehow more creative is fairly absurd in my view. Like name your top 10 favourite images of Michelangelo's Pieta ... right, answers on a postcard. The realistic, matter of fact approach to alll this is that imaging of PD work in the modern world should not attract fresh copyright. Give it anothee decade. I'll allow others the last word here. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 15:24, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I think it's better to promote this one, and if the colours prove wrong, we can fix it when we have the proof, not before. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:53, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just a question (I don't hang around here much and don't know the ropes): by "wrong" colours, do you mean not the original colours, or not the colours the print has now after two centuries of fading? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:04, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd be surprised if something faded lilac, but it could be something like fingers spreading the mica dust around over time. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:42, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Yann (talk) 07:43, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't mean to throw a monkeywrench into the nomination, but if we are insisting on the "original" printing, this isn't it—according to Hideo Matsui, who runs the Koishikawa Ukiyo-e Art Museum, there are only two known copies from the original printing, and they both have the names of the thre beuaties to the left of the title in the top right corner. One of the copies is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—you can see it here. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:12, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Looks like this discussion resulted in a new article... . Hafspajen (talk) 10:08, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The later print still has enough EV in that article. Thanks Curly. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Promoted File:Kitagawa Utamaro - Toji san bijin (Three Beauties of the Present Day)From Bijin-ga (Pictures of Beautiful Women), published by Tsutaya Juzaburo - Google Art Project.jpg --Armbrust The Homunculus 11:32, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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