Sobre o poder político de pinturas-de-figuras-bonitas de Kitagawa Utamaro

Abstract

Kitagawa Utamaro is famous for his beauties prints, bijinga, specially in facial portraits，ôkubi-e (“big neck paintings”)，depicted individually or in group. At first sight，this kind of representation do not present any political content and today they are reproduced for ornamental purposes，such as in public spaces (restaurants, embassies) or in everyday objects (wallets，scarves，memos and diaries) that aim to represent Japanese singularities. The present communication aims to question this posthumous reception as，following 1790 and 1796 shogunal edits，the publication of one-page prints which contained the represented women names 一 if they were not yüjo - was prohibited. Utamaro series of beauties are analysed from the point-of-view of his time reception and the visual resources the painter recurred in order to run away from shogunal prohibitions.