WOODBLOCK PRINTS FROM POSTWAR JAPAN

In the first decades of the twentieth century, young Japanese artists discovered in the woodblock print a medium of expression equal to painting. Historically, Japanese printing relied on the division of labor between craftsmen working under the direction of a commercial publisher. Seeking control over the artistic process, this new generation began carving and printing their own designs, cultivating a spontaneous, rough aesthetic. Produced in small editions, these so-called “creative prints” (sōsaku hanga) were circulated mostly among artists and in coterie magazines, and exhibited in art society shows. After the Second World War, the creative print movement gained international recognition, especially in the United States. Woodblock Prints from Postwar Japan is the first exhibition to showcase this rich area of The Ringling’s collection.

The central figure of creative prints was Onchi Kōshirō, a pioneer of modernism credited with creating Japan’s first purely abstract work of art in 1915. A teacher, mentor, and benefactor to younger artists, Onchi ran a monthly meeting, the First Thursday Society (Ichimokukai), for printmakers to share and critique each other’s work. Within a year of the publication of the group’s first folio of prints, Japan had lost the war, and Tokyo teemed with half a million American soldiers.

Amid the ruins of war and bitterness of defeat, Onchi and his comrades began to rebuild their artistic community. Somewhat opportunistically, they released a folio of prints targeted at foreigners. The First Thursday Society continued to meet in Onchi’s home, and his daughter Mihoko, a translator for the G.H.Q., began introducing Americans interested in art to her father. These guests supported the Japanese artists by organizing exhibitions, writing about their work, and buying prints for themselves and collectors back home. Creative prints thus became a channel of diplomacy and friendship between occupied and occupier.

Included in this exhibition will be two prints from Onchi’s Poem series, a loose collection of lyrical abstracts from the early 1950s inspired by the small forms of the natural world. Printed from wooden blocks, as well as leaves, string, and even the fins of a fish, these artworks are conceived with an experimental spirit and sensitive eye for composition. Onchi's Poems are among a group of over eighty objects given to The Ringling between 1961 and 1972 by local statesman Karl Bickel—the first Japanese prints to enter the Museum’s collection.

Western collectors were drawn to Japanese artists’ masterful technique, which celebrated the material qualities of wood, paper, and printing colors. Many artists depicted subjects that evoke an old Japan, untouched by modernization, often simplifying and abstracting compositional elements in a way that appealed to contemporary tastes. Stepping Stones in the Afternoon by Hiratsuka Un’ichi, one of several Japanese artists who would travel to the United States, depicting old mill stones arranged rhythmically across a garden pond in stark black and white, appeals at once for its bold graphic power as well as its evocation of the past. This print is one of almost five hundred donated to The Ringling by Charles and Robyn Citrin—a gift that has established the Museum as an important repository of modern Japanese prints.

Although Japanese artists today have an ever increasing variety of media at their disposal, the visual and material characteristics of the woodblock print hold an enduring appeal. The luscious color and texture in Yoshida Hodaka’s monumental Red Wall was achieved through a combination of photography, etching, and woodblock printed elements. Hodaka is the son of Yoshida Hiroshi, a key figure of the commercial “new prints” (shin hanga) movement that sought to revive ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) which flourished between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Hiroshi’s picturesque landscape images were coveted by Japanese and Western collectors. Rejecting his father’s nostalgic style, Hodaka instead pursued abstraction. Red Wall is one of the newest additions to The Ringling’s growing Japanese print collection, donated to the Museum this year by Gordon Brodfuehrer. Thematically and visually wide-ranging, the works featured in this exhibition speak of the interplay of art, geopolitics, and friendship over the latter half of the twentieth century.