After visiting the "Dawn of the floating world" exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, I decided to explore the theme of Japanese art. .
Japanese art is often reflected in the use of tattoos and tattoos are an indigenous art form and date back along way in the use of Japanese art. .
Tattoo art played a big role in my piece of coursework with the title "dark & light"; one of the tattoo artists who influenced me was the Japanese Tattooist Akio Oki. .
Akio's work is based around the designs called Ukiyo-e, which is Japanese for "pictures of the floating world". Ukiyo- e was one of the most important types of art during the Tokougawa period, (1603 - 1867) in Japan. The style is a mixture of the realistic narrative of the emaki ("picture scrolls") produced in the Kamakura period and the purely decorative style of the Momoyama and Tokugawa periods. .
Screen paintings were the first works to be done in the Ukiyo-e style. These depicted aspects of life in the red light district of Edo (modern Tokyo) and other urban centres. .
A common scene of Ukiyo-e images was portraits of famous people, erotica and other well known scenes and people of the time. .
More importantly though than the screen paintings were that of the wood block printing images. I incorporated this into my project by producing a lino print as away of taking a traditional Japanese art form and incorporating into a new style of modern art by using lino and incorporating a new art form, in the way of graffiti. Ukiyo-e artists were the first to explore the style of wood block printing, the inspiration for traditional, original Japanese tattoo designs can be traced back to the origins of Ukiyo-e wood block printing. .
Ukiyo-e was the new-skool art of its time, such as graffiti today it was not so socially acceptable and many did not see it as art as it did not follow the traditional product methods. It was at first not considered a legitimate art form.