Intertwining modern style with ancient tradition, LACMA’s ‘New Prints in Modern Japan’ presents an a

Intertwining modern style with ancient tradition, LACMA’s ‘New
Prints in Modern Japan’ presents an art form of pure and unique
beauty

By Rodney Tanaka

Daily Bruin Staff

A block of wood: unyielding, solid. Yet early 20th-century
artists in Japan were able to evoke works of art from this medium
using a technique called shin-hanga.

The evolution of this style of printmaking is explored by the
new exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art titled
"Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan."

At the moment Hollis Goodall-Cristante, curator of the exhibit,
experiments with her own type of printing, from a computer. There
are telephone calls to be answered and important documents need to
be printed, yet she finds the time to tour the exhibit and discuss
the history and style of shin-hanga.

"You have to simplify a little bit for printmaking, the simpler
aesthetic gets the point across better," Goodall-Cristante says. "A
few lines are incredibly expressive and uses very subtle shades of
color to add a sense of humanity – from a board."

The exhibit features three main subjects: actors, birds and
flowers, and women. The first section describes the collaborative
process of printmaking. An artist begins with a sketch and then the
carver inscribes the design onto a woodblock. The image is printed
onto paper with colors decided by the artists.

The emerging shin-hanga technique moved away from the
traditional ukiyo-e tradition of printing. "In the Edo period,
portraits would have a great deal of concentration on the costuming
on the dramatic effect in the theater, on the formulaic aspect of
the drama," Goodall-Cristante says. "Ukiyo-e artists did not look
at the actors themselves as people."

Early shin-hanga attest to its roots in ukiyo-e, but as the
techniques and skills blossom their work takes on a greater degree
of realism. "You see them using life drawing techniques and a
subtler palette with much less formulization," Goodall-Cristante
says, referring to a portrait of an aging kabuki actor. "Not only
does the character that he’s portraying show, but the actor himself
comes through in the frailty of age and subtlety of color."

The section devoted to the portraits of women speak of the
social debate in Japan at the time. Many of the pictures depict
demure, traditional females, a departure from the ukiyo-e practice
of featuring geisha, women who were entertainers and models.

"(Shin-hanga artists) are doing the figure as an aesthetic form
as opposed to a fashion plate, a statement of what is fashionable,"
Goodall-Cristante says. "They represent women of a certain type in
Japan, because these artists were members of a certain group that
were looking to traditional culture to find their identity."

"There was so much western influence and there were different
artistic groups and critics saying ‘We have to get rid of the old
Japanese stuff,’" she adds. "Other artists were saying ‘There are
aspects of our culture that are worth preserving.’"

Shin-hanga artists learned the importance of not preserving
their woodcarvings in order to raise their value in the eyes of the
club of collectors. "They took an impression of the scraped

]

keyblock to show you that no other prints could ever be made
anymore," Goodall-Cristante says. "It gave the club members an idea
of having something special and unique."

Watanabe Shozaburo, shin-hanga’s primary advocate, was searching
for uniqueness when he began developing the printing technique. He
worked in a print dealership recreating classic works for sale to
tourists.

"While he was doing this he was dreaming of using these fabulous
print techniques with modern designs," Goodall-Cristante says. "He
wanted to get together with artists who worked in a graphic manner,
who were really modern in their aesthetic."

Watanabe first collaborated with Hashiguchi Goyo for a print
created in 1915, the first step toward the shin-hanga style. Other
artists joined the movement toward a combination of old technique
with new subjects and styles.

"A lot of these artists liked the graphic quality that you could
get in prints that you really don’t get in drawings,"
Goodall-Cristante says. "You get a completely different sense of
the crispness of line, the importance of the contour and the
fineness of texture."

Motioning towards Hashiguchi Goyo’s "Woman Dressing," the
curator says, "Look at the shine that he gets in the hair. He
really had a sense of texture and he really was able to put it
across in wood. To me that’s a miracle."

ART: "Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan," at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, open through March 31. TIX: $6
adults, $4 students. For more info, call (213) 857-6522

Ito Shinsui’s "Passing Rain"

Ohara Shoson’s "Cockatoo and Pomegranate"Comments to
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