The Legacy of Japanese Printmaking

Linda Nicholson was a Toronto freelance writer.

The Legacy of Japanese Printmaking is the catalogue of an exhibition of Japanese prints mounted by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1986. The exhibition ranges from examples of eighteenth-century woodblock prints to modern woodblocks, etchings, and intaglios.

The bilingual text provides a capsule history of the art of printmaking in Japan with particular emphasis on the great masters of the Ukiyo-e. There is a brief account of the work of each major artist and of his position within the development of Japanese printmaking.

Till provides a short description of the traditional method of production of the Japanese woodblock print and of the impact of foreign techniques and materials — notably the lithographer’s stone photography and analine dyes — which were introduced from the West in the late nineteenth century. Even more important, he refers to the European influence in the development of the sosaku hanga or “creative print” movement: that is, the print conceived and executed by a single artist rather than the traditional multiple stage production involving an artist, blockcutter, printer, etc.

The author discusses the debt of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists — especially Manet, Gaugin and Van Gogh — to the Japanese print, as well as that of the twentieth-century Japanese printmakers to Western artistic movements such as Cubism, and, more recently, Pop Art from the United States.

The catalogue illustrates each print (nine in color) in the exhibition with the name of the artist. A historical chart of the development of the print in Japan is provided and there is an extensive bibliography.

On the whole the catalogue serves as a good, general, albeit brief, introduction to the world of Japanese prints, providing the reader with adequate historical information, examples of the work of the masters of a delightful art form and the bibliographical tools needed to study the subject in greater depth. The text errs only in the omission of any real discussion of style which would have added to the reader’s appreciation of the works shown in this exhibition.