As we draw nearer to the close of this investigation of 'The Mystique of the Japanese Print' (there will be one more print after this one), I find that there is still so much that I have yet to show you! Well, it was of course hopeless to try and cover everything in such a limited series, but hopefully we have managed to touch on many of the most important aspects of the work. Today's print investigates one such important point - the Japanese woodblock print as 'innovation'.

If you were to show this print to people with a good general knowledge of art (but no specific knowledge of Asian work), and ask them to estimate its time of creation, I suspect that most of the answers would fall within the span of the twentieth century. It is clearly 'modern' in appearance, even somewhat abstract in the way that the elements are depicted. Yet it actually dates from sometime in the late 1700s! (The designer - Ito Jakuchu - died in 1800.) To make that figure a bit more real - for our American friends, this print is almost as old as your country; for Japanese viewers, it was the time of Utamaro and Tsutaya Juzaburo.

Just how is it that such 'old' work can look so 'new'? Well, you probably already know the answer to that, as the story of the huge influence of Japanese prints on the artists of the west has been told many times. The basic design elements of this print - wide areas of flat colour, plenty of empty space, perfect balance of the parts of the design - were all standard practice for Japanese artists, but were 'hidden' from the rest of the world for many years. It was only after the opening of Japan that they suddenly became part of the vocabulary of artists everywhere, sparking a revolution in world art.

It is difficult to imagine that any such thing can ever happen again, not in today's inter-connected world. It was the particular combination of circumstances - a group of hugely creative people being isolated from contact with the rest of the world for well over a century - that made it possible.

But the results will live forever in world culture!

David

November 2011