Images of Familial Intimacy in Eastern and Western Art

Book excerpt: Images of Familial Intimacy in Eastern and Western Art offers a comparative art and socio-historical analysis of selected images of familial intimacy in Asia and Europe from the pre-modern era to the present day based on an examination of the value systems and expectations existing at the time in the regions in which the works were created. A wide variety of images are discussed ranging from family portraits and depictions of the home in seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings, ukiyoe prints and fusuma sliding wall panels of the Edo period, to familial images made after the Korean War of 1950-53, providing the reader with a rare insight into the evolution East and West of the cultural norms and customs impacting on the family and personal space.