Woodblock prints are impressions on paper made from carved and inked woodblocks. Non-image areas are carved away from the wood, the remaining raised shapes and lines will create the print image.
Ukiyo-e is the genre of art most often associated with Japanese woodblock prints. This genre – which flourished throughout the 17th through 19th centuries in Japan – also encompasses painting. But it is the woodblock prints of this era that have been the most enduring over time. Especially memorable are the works by famous artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige.
Ukiyo-e (pronounced yoo-kee-oh-eh) means ‘Pictures of a Floating World’. The term refers to the fleeting, transient nature of all things. In a Buddhist context, ‘Floating World’ alludes to the state of being in which we are ‘living in the moment’.
With flat areas of color and stylized, exotic subjects – unlike anything seen in the West before – ukiyo-e particularly influenced 19th-century Impressionist artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Mary Cassatt. Even now, in the 21st century, ukiyo-e continues to inspire writers, poets, and other creatives alike. Including me!
I had an epiphany the first time I saw Hashiguchi Goyo’s print Ducks at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996. I thought it was one of the most beautiful objects I had ever seen. Woodblock prints don’t look like paintings, or photographs, or drawings. This process has its own aesthetic. The ‘look’ comes from the design and execution of the image. Also from the materials that are used – wood, translucent water-based pigments, and handmade paper.
Woodblock printmaking is a relief process, one of the oldest forms of transferring a design from a surface to paper – whether the surface be wood, linoleum, metal plates, or rubber, etc. The relief principle, where the design is created by carving away the non-image area, is consistent between Japanese and Western woodblock printmaking processes.
The biggest differences between the two methods, are the kinds of pigments (or inks) that are used, as well as how the pigments are applied to the blocks.
Japanese methods utilize water-based pigments applied to the blocks with a variety of specially designed brushes. The pigments I use most often are watercolor paint from a tube. The brush I like best is in the shape of a small ‘shoe-shine’ style brush called maru bake.
Watery pigments can be used in thin transparent layers. Overlapping colors – printed from separately carved blocks – allows additional colors to be produced. And depending on the style of paper, how much binder is used (called nori ), the choice of burnishing tool (called baren – fine, medium or coarse), and ink application techniques, a wide range of variabilities may be achieved.
Unlike Japanese techniques, Western methods utilize viscose, tacky inks (historically oil based) applied to blocks with rubber-like rollers, called brayers. The image from the carved block may be transferred to the paper by pressures as varied as rubbing the back of the paper with a wooden spoon to using a mechanical press.
Mostly referred to as ‘woodcut’, attention in the West is typically focused on the drawing-like cut lines in the wood – versus the flat, shadowless shapes of layered colors in the Japanese approach. In Europe, this medium was developed to an extraordinary degree during the Renaissance (notably, German artist Albrecht Dürer).
In sum, because water and oil based inks have such different looks (and behaviors), the contrast between Japanese and Western processes may be compared to the distinction between watercolor and oil painting. The two processes simply have different aesthetics. With watercolor, the colors become luminous through their transparency – the light of the paper shines through the colors. With oil, the pigments are much weightier. And most significant for artists, are the markedly different handling experiences between the two.
What’s important is how art makes you feel. Yet, words and historical context can give the viewer a richer understanding. So here are a few brief explanations of the different eras of Japanese woodblock prints, how the art has evolved from the 17th century to present day, and how this fertile history has influenced my own creative process and way of thinking.
Ukiyo-e – Known as the golden age of Japanese woodblock prints, the design, carving and printing were tasks performed by separate highly skilled artists/craftsmen. Ukiyo-e imagery includes women, actors, historical scenes, landscapes, flora and fauna, and erotica. By the turn of the 20th century, ukiyo-e started to become hugely popular outside of Japan, especially among the French Impressionists, even as its popularity inside Japan began to wane.
Shin Hanga – Shin hanga, or ‘new print’, is the next generation of ukiyo-e, created in part by growing demand from the West. Beginning in the early 20th century, shin hanga was created by a team of highly skilled artists and artisans, like ukiyo-e was. In conjunction with the development of photography and further access to Western art and influence at that time, shin hanga became less abstract, more precise, and in my opinion, more self-conscious, even as its sophisticated beauty is captivating. (Ducks, the print I saw in LA, is known as shin hanga.)
Sosaku Hanga – Sosaku hanga means ‘creative print’. With the rise of the arts and crafts movement in mid 20th century, artists in the Sosaku Hanga, movement were involved in every aspect of creating a print. Sosaku Hanga artist’s drew influence from expressionistic, avant-garde European art, and include artists such as Shikō Munakata and Kiyoshi Saitō. I am a huge fan of both of these artists, particularly Saitō’s snowy scenes!
Moku Hanga – Meaning ‘wood print’, moku hanga is the contemporary Japanese word used to describe the water-based method of Japanese woodblock printmaking made today. Like sosaku hanga artists, generally speaking, moku hanga artists (people like myself) design, carve and print their own works. There are still some professional carvers and printers thriving in Japan, however, whose mission is to keep historic methods alive through the recreation of early prints, and through public demonstrations of historic processes.
In the past few decades, Japanese woodblock printmaking, or moku hanga as it is now known, has reached all corners of the world via the dedication of talented teachers, programs initiated by the Japanese government (as in my experience with a BUNKA-CHO Fellowship) and others such as MI-LAB, and of course YouTube. Admittedly still a miniscule segment of the total art market, moku hanga has jumped off Japan’s archipelago and is growing, as contemporary artists are now expressing their unique visions using these historic techniques internationally.
I call my work ‘woodblock prints’ simply because it is in English. I call it moku hanga while in Japan, or when I’m around others familiar with the term.
Still, of all the names for this process through history, the word ukiyo-e – Pictures of a Floating World – stirs my imagination the most. First, it makes me think of water, our lifeblood, and the subject of much of my work. Second, it helps me to conjure the big picture and reminds me of how small we are on this watery planet, floating and spinning through space.
I made Garden in the spring of 2020, during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before getting out of bed in the morning during that time, I kept my head under the blankets a little longer than usual, worrying that the world might be coming to an end. I would peer out when my husband brought me coffee and ask, ‘is the world still floating?’
‘The world is still floating!’ he replied. I’d smile, grateful for his ability to ‘live in the moment’, and become joyful for the start of another day.
* Original Woodblock Prints * Guest Lecturer and Instructor * Documentary Film * Note Cards *
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