Floating images of the world in 2025? Dreaming of a revival of this technique in the tradition of the great Ukiyo-e creations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reappropriating the codes but without repetition? Blocks of mountain cherry wood, washi paper, pigments and water: the centuries-old, inimitable technique of these prints is now being reinterpreted by artists from Japan and around the world. The exhibition presented by the National Museum of Art in Tokyo, which has brought together 85 artists, illustrates the unchanging power of poetry in the art of printmaking. Here are just a few examples.
In the landscape by French artist Claire Tabouret, the emptiness of the plate is nibbled away by colour – vegetation, wild grasses on the ground, leaves on shrubs and trees, blue skies speckled with cloud formations.
Claire Tabouret, Paysages d’intérieurs (rose), 2025
Emptiness again, and colour, the very bright red that is Chiharu Shiota’s trademark. This triptych of woodcuts transposes the installation work of the Japanese artist, who works and weaves very large-scale pieces with these threads of colour, into two dimensions with great accuracy and vitality. The inextricable swirls of thread and their organic presence are captured here in their very essence, their symbolic significance and the link to the human being, to that simple silhouette that cuts itself out, solitary on the paper.
Chiharu Shiota, Connected to the Universe – Red Waves, Red Lines, Red Circles, 2023
In the series of prints by the British sculptor Anthony Gormley, Rapt (2025), (https://www.xavierhufkens.com/news/antony-gormley-in-ukiyo-e-in-play), there are no colours, just a nuanced grey that creates a halo of chiaroscuro around a solitary human figure standing in front of a door. A threshold, a rectangle of light, which gains in strength as the prints progress. A hypnotic battle of light and shadow.
Yuko Shiraishi, Starry night, 2024
The painter and performer Yuko Shiraishi draws inspiration from many sources, including Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Munch’s paintings, Hiroshige’s landscapes and NASA satellite images.
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