An art-name (Chinese/Japanese: 号; Pinyin: hào; Japanese: gō) is a pseudonym, or penname, used by an East Asian artist, which they sometimes change. The word was originated from China, then became popular in East Asian countries (esp. China, Japan, Korea).
In some cases, artists adopted different art-names at different stages of their career, usually to mark significant changes in their life. One typical example could be Tang Yin of Ming Dynasty China who had more than ten art-names. One extreme example in Japan of this is Hokusai, who in the period 1798 to 1806 alone used no fewer than six.
Art-names and schools
The form was first used by Li Bai, a famous poet during Tang Dynasty.
A woodblock print artist's first gō is usually given to them by the head of the school (a group of artists and apprentices, with a senior as master of the school) in which they initially studied; this gō usually includes one of the syllables of the master's gō.
One can often track the relationship among artists with this, especially in later years, when it seems to have been fairly (although not uniformly) systematic (particularly in the Utagawa school) that the first syllable of the pupil's gō was the last syllable of the master's gō.
Thus, an artist named Toyoharu had a student named Toyohiro, who, in turn, had as a pupil the famous landscape artist Hiroshige.
Another person who studied under Toyoharu was the principal head of the Utagawa school, Toyokuni. Toyokuni had pupils named Kunisada and Kuniyoshi. Kuniyoshi, in turn, had as a student Yoshitoshi, whose pupils included Toshikata.021-7548
Inherited and reused art-names
In some schools, in particular the main Utagawa school,[citation needed] the gō of the most senior member was adopted when the master died and the chief pupil assumed his position. Perhaps as a sign of respect, artists might take the gō of a previous artist. This makes attribution difficult. The censors' seal helps determine a particular print's date. Style also is significant. For example, Kunisada, once he changed his gō to Toyokuni, initiated the practice of signed prints with a signature in an elongated oval toshidama ('New Year's Jewel') seal of the Utagawa school, an unusual cartouche with the zig-zag in the upper right-hand corner. His successors continued this practice.
In modern writing, a roman numeral identifies an artist in the sequence of artists using a gō. Thus, Kunisada I is also known as Toyokuni III, since he was the third artist to sign with that gō.
References
- Frederic, Louis (2002). "Gō." Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Lane, Richard (1978). Images of the Floating World. Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky.
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