VARIATION AND AUTONOMY: THE PRINTS OF CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE PAINTERS

This exhibition is not made up of works by artists who are considered to have created unique or specific development in contemporary Japanese printmaking history, but rather on those by artists who tend to be seen as support players in this process. There are two reasons for this focus. First, the exhibition is designed to shed light on the fact that a new field was developed through contemporary Japanese prints. This field, prints made by painters, is notable both as a variation on painting and an autonomous form. Thus, the works helped establish the genre of contemporary Japanese prints while imbuing it with a suitable breadth. Second, the exhibition is intended to encourage viewers to reconsider the existing history of contemporary Japanese prints.

Sensing the diverse potential of the print medium, in the 1970s, young Japanese artists began making prints, and in so doing, expanded the expressive range of contemporary art as a whole. Though certain aspects of this development have certainly been acknowledged, it was mainly artists who specialized in or concentrated on prints that served as pivotal figures in post-World War II, contemporary Japanese print-making. Or at the very least, that is the way it looks from this vantage point. In Europe and America, artists who were responsible for trends in contemporary art made printmaking history.

Some Japanese painters, who had visited printmaking workshops in France, Italy, and Germany, produced copperplate prints and lithographs at technical training sessions or in the workshops of acquaintances, although the number of works was quite small. After World War II, in the 1950s, a growing number of painters worked in lithography and the emergence of the peintre-graveur (painter who is also a printmaker) in Japan was a noted phenomenon. Later, in the 1960s, printmaking rose to greater prominence and printing workshops were opened here and there, creating an environment in which it was normal for artists who were not printmaking specialists, from established painters and sculptors to emerging artists of the avant-garde, to work with printers on production of their own prints. From the 1970s onward, as the market value of prints rose, an even greater number of artists turned their hands to prints in a wide range of styles and media, strongly propelling the world of printmaking forward. This wide-open environment was correlated with a similarly broad range of printmaking expression among painters who were not specialists in printmaking.

Without a doubt, the prints of the artists featured in this exhibition constitute variations on the medium of painting, yet at the same time, they stand alone as works of art that could only be realized through printmaking. Viewing the works of these peintre-graveurs leads us to a genuine understanding of contemporary printmaking in Japan.

Exhibition organizers: Embassy of Japan in Lithuania, Japan Foundation

Illustration: Masanari Murai. Sun and Bird