[AC] Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; [HC] Hampshire College Art Gallery;
[HD] Historic Deerfield; [MH] Mount Holyoke College Art Museum; [MH SK] The Joseph Allen Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College; [SC] Smith College Museum of Art; [UM] University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMASS Amherst

Label Text:
As artworks designed for low-brow popular appeal, ukiyo-e were often filled with ribald and humorous puns, which could often be quite lascivious. In this dynamic design, Yamaguchi employs both text and rebus-like understandings of the original figures to similar effect. For example, in the original Japanese title, Yamaguchi has inverted two of the characters, changing the meaning from “eternities” (literally, “1000 autumns”) to “swing,” a reference to the acrobatic display. Similarly, the phrase “trick riding” has sexual connotations, indicating that the actor who portrays a cowherd in the lowest panel and the weaver at top are waiting — or “holding on for eternities” — until their sexual liaison. Perhaps confounded by the challenge of linking these two disparate designs, Yamaguchi has signed his name using a homophone for “complaint” and “giving up.”

Tags:
weaving; flowers; fans; women; men; balances; humor

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2017.25

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