Lobster c. 1835 - 1839

Editor: So, this is "Lobster" by Utagawa Hiroshige, dating back to the late 1830s. It's a Japanese woodblock print – a rather striking one, actually! The sheer size of the lobster dominates the composition, doesn't it? What catches your eye when you look at it? Curator: It does loom, doesn’t it? What I see is Hiroshige playing with reality – tweaking it. It’s as if he's asking, "What IS a lobster anyway?" Is it this scary, imposing creature, or is it food, a symbol, a flash of color in a muted world? What do *you* think? Is this about pure observation? Editor: I hadn't really thought about it that way, about the symbol itself. It's carefully rendered, but the slight distortion throws you off. Do you think it’s also connected to the whole Japonisme movement? Curator: Absolutely! This print dances on that border, that blurry line where the West fell head-over-heels for Japanese art. To European eyes, this wasn’t just a crustacean; it was exotic, mysterious, intensely stylized. It became a shorthand for a whole culture. Plus, imagine seeing something so… unexpected! Lobsters weren't exactly a common subject in Western art at the time. How did you originally react to the artwork? Editor: Initially, I was focused on the technique of the print, all the detail. It's easy to forget the impact it might have had back then. Seeing something so “different." Now it is hard to detach the image from everything that followed. Curator: And isn’t that fascinating? How images evolve? They pick up baggage along the way, echoes and shadows. I love considering the layers of context and interpretation that time and culture add. Editor: Yeah, me too. I never considered the European perspective!