Nakamura Utaemon 

Alexandre Jacovleff made this drawing of Nakamura Utaemon, a Japanese Kabuki actor, using sanguine crayon, a medium prized for its warm, skin-like tones. Jacovleff was a Russian artist who gained fame in Paris, so it’s interesting to consider what it meant for a European artist to depict a Japanese performer during a period of intense cultural exchange and, let's be honest, also cultural appropriation. Kabuki itself was a highly stylized, codified art form, developed over centuries within a rigid social hierarchy. This drawing then raises several questions. Was Jacovleff drawn to the exotic otherness of Kabuki? Or was he engaging with a tradition that, like European opera or ballet, upheld certain social values? These are questions we can only answer through deep research into the artist's biography, the history of Kabuki, and the broader context of cultural exchange in the early 20th century.