Zen and the Art of Contemporary Printmaking
By Rebecca Park, Contributor
 Currently on display at the Japan Information and Culture Center, “The Allure of Contemporary Japanese Prints” explores trends in a very specific field from a very specific country. Yet the four artists exhibited—Yumeka Fujita, Yozo Hamaguchi, Tomomi Ono, and Gen Yamanaka—span generations and creative processes, ensuring that the viewer is never bored.
Planned as a centennial celebration for Hamaguchi (1909-2000), this “Master of Mezzotint” takes center stage. A revolutionary printmaker, he re-invented the centuries-old craft of mezzotint with a new emphasis on coloration. The simplicity of presentation—smooth and straight lines, minimal elaboration of figures, small scale—add a calming, Zen-like quality to his works, giving the modern mezzotint an age-old feeling of serenity while tying it to ancient Japanese printing traditions. A piece like Twenty-Two Cherries captures the eye first with the striking, modern contrast between deep red and jet black. But then the strictly ordered vertical composition creates a soothing rhythm, see-sawing the viewer between stark abstraction and calming naturalism.
Yozo Hamaguchi, Twenty-Two Cherries, 1988, mezzotint
(courtesy of Japan Information & Culture Center)
The younger printmakers featured may not be taking up exactly where Hamaguchi left off—each explores different print processes, none of them working with mezzotint—but they all work a similar balance between ancient tradition and contemporary trends. Yamanaka, using the oldest print medium out there (woodcut), recycles techniques and tropes seen in classical Japanese art for a new millennium. Cloud harkens back to the age when elaborate silk screens recounted the passage of time with silvery mists; now that narrative feature has been frozen in space, taken out of context, and redone in light, airy colors. Also reminiscent of an updated art from the age of samurais, Ono’s lithograph series evoke concrete narratives about the progression of time through abstract geometric figures, particularly peacefully round circles and ovals. The youngest artist of the quartet, Fujita works in a more postmodern playing field, where her silkscreen monoprints explore the process of reproduction and originality. Her more figurative works, like There Were, There Are, are the most politically and socially engaged pieces in the exhibit, illustrating disconnected urban landscapes and all the tensions they entail.
No worries if knowledge of printmaking techniques and Japanese art history is limited; the works on display are all about the here and now. The quiet galleries offer a Zen-like atmosphere to contemplate the contemporary moment and its fleeting nature that these ephemeral prints, rooted in tradition but looking towards the future, capture.
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