cover image JAPANESE KITE PRINTS: Selections from the Skinner Collection

JAPANESE KITE PRINTS: Selections from the Skinner Collection

John Stevenson, . . Univ. of Washington, $50 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-295-98454-4

In order to enter the Drachen Foundation's Skinner Collection, a Japanese woodblock print must contain a depiction of a kite, whether airborne or earthbound. These 96 selections from the Seattle-based collection by Stevenson, former acting curator at the Seattle Art Museum, stretch almost 1,300 years, from A.D. 713 to the present, and are absolutely buoyant and arresting. Beautifully printed on glossy stock, one to a page with facing page text, the reproductions are sharp, allowing one to take in the expressive curves of calligraphy as well as the vivid yellows and reds and deep blacks and blues of the ink. Kites fly at New Year's festivals, appear with Kabuki actors on ad-like posters, sail between a watchtower and Mt. Fuji, trail behind geisha and servant, carry men to "pleasure quarters" and (in a recent print) extol the virtues of condoms. Stevenson's text is spare and informative—even someone with no knowledge of ukiyo-e , or "images of the floating world," as Japanese woodblock prints are called, will be soon be aloft. (Jan.)