BY SYLVIE PEDERSON
First-Class Asian Prints
From White Lotus collection
I
t is unusual and a special delight to find in a
town of Eugene’s size a venue that offers a
window into some of the best art beyond our
borders. The White Lotus Gallery, conveniently
located near the Hult Center, is unique in Oregon
for its representation of internationally-renowned
Asian artists and its remarkable collection of
first-rate Asian prints. The current exhibition,
through July 31, encapsulates the modern history
of Asian printmaking..
Woodblock-printing started in China, the ear-
liest-known dated example from AD 868.
Japanese artists and craftsmen developed their
own distinctive styles and techniques, and, when
Japan opened up to the West in mid-19th century,
the ukiyo-e prints that dominated the Edo (1615-
1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods greatly
influenced European avant-garde artists from Van
Gogh to Klimt. In return, in the 1870s, encounters
with Western art significantly altered the look of
Japanese prints with inclusions of internal shad-
ing, cast shadows and aerial perspective.
Ukiyo-e prints resulted from the collaboration
of publisher, artist-designer, master-carver and
master-printer, and were viewed in Japan as com-
mercial art. See Toyohara Chikanobu ’s Beauty
of the Kanei Era for a good example of a tradi-
tional ukiyo-e print. In late Meiji, the ukiyo-e tra-
dition became moribund, and craftsmen some-
times resorted to old paintings for their designs as
with Kano Gennobu ’s Bird on a Branch, which
also evidences the extraordinary woodblock-
printing skills reached at the time. Gradation of
tints, delicacy of line and color, downy texture of
feathers, watermark — all might have been
achieved with the finest brush.
Two movements in the 1910s renewed wood-
cuts. Shin hanga (“new prints”) artists followed
much of the ukiyo-e tradition (see Kawase
Hasui ’s prints), but Sosaku hanga (“creative
prints”) artists, while keeping traditional tools
and materials, broke with it. Usually trained in
Western-style art, sosaku hanga artist-printmak-
ers considered carving and printing part of the
creative process, and aimed to create fine art, not
illustrations.
Among the sosaku hanga woodcuts shown,
The Stone Garden is for Hide Kawanishi an
unusually sober composition that beautifully
expresses the character of the Zen garden. In
Red Statue, Shuzo Ikeda explores sacred stone-
images in a bold, red-over-black scheme.
Chizuko Yoshida , a member of the famous
Yoshida family of printmakers, creates in Dawn
delicate rainbow tints, one of her hallmarks. Her
shading is reminiscent of ukiyo-e.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese printmak-
ers started exploring a variety of media, tech-
niques and subject-matters. Woodblock no
longer dominated. In 1954, Yoshitoshi Mori , a
designer of kimono patterns, transferred the sten-
cil-printing technique (kappazuri) from textile to
paper. His thatched-roofed Farm House, with its
earthy pigments and bold lines, reflects his
involvement in the revival of folk-art traditions.
Some artists developed idiosyncratic meth-
ods. Haku Maki , a master of abstract composi-
tion, developed a complex method combining
woodblock and cement work. Work 74-47, which
can be read as an abstract landscape, juxtaposes
embossed white (cement) and smooth black
(woodblock) below a cloud-like spatter of black
on white. With stark elegance, Poem 70-29, fea-
tures altered kanji characters (Chinese ideograms)
embossed on a pure black ground with two
acrylic-painted accents, one blue, one yellow —
all characteristic of Maki’s work.
Hiroyuki Tajima ’s elaborate technique
involves an additive process as he first augments
his woodblock with paper, shellac and lacquer —
or any other materials as in a collagraph — to build
up a relief image. He also combines oil-based and
water-based inks to create the distinctive crater-like
texture of the butterfly in Memories A. The deep,
rich, luminous colors of his complex, abstract sur-
faces with their Zen-influenced sense of space,
result from his use of a resist-process together with
conventional printing techniques.
In Tabi 15, Kunio Kaneko combines a trans-
ferred photograph of a group of standing mili-
tary officers and their wives seated in front, and
white-on-white woodblock-embossed tabi (tra-
ditional socks) with gold leaf highlights to create
a spare composition starkly evocative of a not-
so-distant but forever-gone past. Tetsuya Noda
developed a method involving photographic
are rendered ambiguously without eyes or noses,
in keeping with Zen concepts of simplicity and
suggestion, but with prominent, woodblock-print-
ed red lips. Western garments sport bright motifs
and patterns as kimonos might.
In Disguise II, an androgynous figure is
shown exiting a frame within the picture, hold-
ing a mustache in one hand. As usual, the design
is bold, based in part on contrasting three differ-
ent areas: single-color, patterns of color and
areas textured by hatching and cross-hatching.
Hiratsuka’s intaglios are reduction etchings. The
artist burnishes and re-etches a single copper
plate for his four-color prints. Only one edition
is thus possible. (The same method in linocuts is
known as “suicide prints.”)
Toko Shinoda , one of Japan’s foremost cal-
ligraphers, is celebrated worldwide for her
abstract paintings and lithographs. Her spare
abstract compositions embody the principles
Zen aesthetics. They are based on a few power-
ful calligraphic strokes — long and thin like
blades, broad angled wedges, overlapping
translucent layers. Their subject-matter is also
calligraphically inscribed in hiragana — this
Tabi 15, Mixed-media print
by Kunio Kaneko
images, silkscreen and woodblock-printing for
his visual “diaries,” such as Diary: September
16, 1989, which all record moments in the
artist’s life.
Some Japanese printmakers were drawn to
Western printmaking techniques, eschewing
woodcuts altogether. Ryohei Tanaka is justly
renowned for his serene, meticulously accurate
etchings of rural western Japan, its thatched
farmhouses, fields, delicately-branching trees.
He is a master of texture: straw, grass, twigs,
wood, tile, stone, slatted-windows, latticed-
screens. All are etched with exquisite subtlety.
Texture is often the basis for his compositions,
which then acquire an almost abstract quality.
Yuji Hiratsuka , who teaches at OSU, is
well-known in this country, where he’s lived since
1985. His etchings bring together aspects of East
and West, the traditional and the contemporary.
They inherit their colorfulness, humor and a cari-
cature element from the ukiyo-e tradition. Faces
cursive syllabary, which she alters slightly with-
out compromising its readability – becomes in
turn an integral part of the design. Negative
space is another composition element taken into
consideration. Perfect asymmetric balance is
achieved, and an impression of atemporality cre-
ated. Snow, Flower, Moon shows how Shinoda is
able to exquisitely control differences in subtle
grey tones so hard to obtain in printmaking,
allowing light to show through them.
The tradition of popular Chinese prints can
be traced back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907
AD) and thrived until 1911, with subjects includ-
ing religion, landscapes, events, Chinese opera
and literature. As with Japanese ukiyo-e, Chinese
prints were the product of teamwork involving
artist, carver and printer. In the 1930s, the
Creative Print Movement founded by the writer
Lu Xun produced woodcut-prints as cheap, effi-
cient tools to spread ideology, using European
mass-production printmaking techniques. (Lu
Xun also introduced the work of social-activist
printmakers Käthe Kollwitz and Frans Masereel
to Chinese artists.) Later woodcuts became
Mao’s favorite propaganda tool, and, sadly, the
old prints and woodblocks were destroyed during
the Cultural Revolution. The popular Chinese
print was revived in the 1980s, though. Some
artists and artisans studied printmaking in Japan,
and several Chinese artisan centers emerged.
Printmaking as a means for individual artistic
expression also took off in the 1980s.
Li Yi-Tai , who has shown worldwide, pro-
duces exquisite landscapes for which he uses a
300-years-old Chinese water-based technique
that demands great skill and results in a water-
color effect. Water prints require thin paper – Li
uses mulberry – moistened at a precise level of
humidity before printing. Li River exemplifies
Li’s masterful use of wood-grain texture.
Western perspective provides a discrete new
slant to the traditional subject of mountains
reflected in water.
Zhu Wei-Ming focuses on “water-towns” on
China’s eastern coast, showing these villages
unchanged by modern life. His are gouache
woodblocks (fenyin muke), a technique that
involves printing “thick layers of rich opaque col-
ors against a dark or colored background using
several woodblock plates, allowing him to control
the texture’s density.” In Snow is Coming, snow
falls at night on a traditional dwelling and a
moored boat. The overall impression of peace and
coziness is reinforced, paradoxically, by the com-
plex texture and strong lines.
Li Yan-Peng ’s technique of reduction
woodblock printing was first developed in
China in the 1980s. The process entails re-carv-
ing the block after each color is printed, making
further editions impossible. The skills involved
are all the more noteworthy when one looks at
Big Goats, a large-format, realistic rendering of
a herd of goats next to a rocky outcrop, all in
earth-tones. Also remarkable is the artist’s abili-
ty to modulate the weight and direction of his
dynamic hatched cuts.
Su Xin-Ping achieved international stature
with his lithographs. Both Horse and Shadow and
Wall exhibit a subtle, playful, yet somewhat dis-
quieting, element of surrealism. The first provides
a realistically-rendered horse with a stylized, car-
toon-like shadow; the other, an elongated ghost-
silhouette of a horse against a curving wall. The
delicate hatching and craftsmanship are superb.
Two of Su’s highly sought-after oil paintings
are also displayed, both depicting scenes from
his native Mongolia. In Outlook, a young
woman wearing a traditional dress gazes behind
her, her figure lit with a warm glow against a tall
night sky, her pensive expression arresting.
Horizon juxtaposes two worlds: a girl in tradi-
tional dress running, her arms extended as
wings, while low in the sky a modern passenger-
jet flies by. The eerie atmosphere of the paint-
ings expresses well the feeling of strangeness of
those who straddle two worlds.
Two local artists are also represented. Jamie
Newton ’s abstract acrylic, Direction, relies on
bold calligraphic strokes, strength of composi-
tion and a sober palette. Nancy Pobanz ’s
Resistance involves, as always with this artist, a
complex array of organic materials, notably pig-
ments from Oregon desert and mountains. The
result is an elegant, abstract composition in
earth-tones.
These treasures at the White Lotus Gallery
should not be missed. They provide a tantalizing
idea of the rest of the works available at the
gallery. Knowledgeable amateurs will rejoice in
the quality of the art, while the exhibit also
serves as a beautiful introduction for those new
to the world of Asian art.
ew
JULY 1, 2004 23