Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presents A Royal Renaissance: School of Fontainebleau Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection an exhibition on view through August 4, 2013.
How are the boundaries between social classes and identities challenged and transcended? This exhibition explores that question by considering art production in China and Japan during the last three hundred years. After recent research and reevaluation, two sets of 18th century Chinese paintings from the collection have been rescued from obscurity and are now on view here for the first time. These works demonstrate how artisans outside palace walls reproduced the subjects and styles of imperial paintings in order to satisfy the demands of a rising social class. In addition, the exhibition features Japanese woodblock prints of civil life, urban scenes and coveted fashions of the “floating world”—images that existed despite the ruling shogunate’s regimentation. Forty-fhree works on display. http://museum.stanford.edu