NIPPON-GA & MODERN, TOO

As popular printmakers, the Japanese have long been tops. In the 18th and 19th Centuries the genre was dominated by four masters: Kiyonga, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro. Their color prints made from wood blocks sold for a few cents each, were sometimes used to wrap tea for export. They greatly influenced such modern European painters as Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. Now the wind blows the other way, and many Japanese prints show the influence of European art. Two of the postwar examples on the opposite page could only have been created through a meeting of East and West.

Kiyoshi Saito's Cat was designed, engraved and printed by the artist, with an eye to self-expression rather than sales value. No great shakes technically, Saito uses the grain of the wood for texture, as did Norway's Edvard Munch. The picture's bold black outlining and rich background color are strictly school-of-Paris. Only its suave, half-humorous air is Oriental.

Hasui Kawase's temple yard has something of Old Master Hiroshige's subtle patterning and cool sweetness. But its firmly rectangular composition and deep perspective have Italian

Renaissance roots. At 60, lantern-jawed Hasui has 500-odd prints to his credit--mostly quiet landscapes. He wanders about Japan making minutely detailed sketches and color notes. His publisher then decides which ones should be worked up for printing, makes suggestions to increase their sales appeal. "I might feel that a brilliant red would give the appropriate feeling," Hasui sighs, "but if he prefers a dull orange, a dull orange it is." An engraver makes as many as 20 color blocks (separations) of Hasui's finished picture, and an expert printer runs it off in editions of 200. This is precisely the procedure which his great forerunners followed.

Shinsui Ito is even more of a traditionalist, for he has steadily resisted Western influences and made his reputation as a purely Nippon-Ga (Japanese-style) artist. As a portrayer of beautiful women, Shinsui is inevitably compared with Utamaro, the classic pin-up master. Although Shinsui admits that Japanese standards of feminine charm have changed ("it seems that the bust and figure predominate nowadays"), he has never wavered in his devotion to pure Oriental prettiness.

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