Seated Woman (Musing)

The reassertion of Japan’s aesthetic and visual traditions is a common theme of the post-World War II period. Avant-garde artistic movements such as expressionism and abstraction brought a new awareness to Japanese artists of similar elements in their own cultural past. This haunting work of a woman at ease—produced at a time when the Japanese economy was emerging as a preeminent force on the world stage—is a powerful revitalization of aesthetic elements found in traditional Japanese poetry and tea culture. The roughness of the carving and the tonal variety of the black ink evokes the notion of wabi and sabi. Wabi is a concept typically associated with the aesthetics of the tea ceremony. It embraces disappointment and elevates the imperfection and insufficiencies of materials. Thus, the artist’s use of unaltered wood grain in the six blocks used in this work and the roughly hewn surface of the cut design, which is indebted to German Expressionism, are intentional and celebrate the material imperfection of the wood matrix.

The quality of sabi is a poetic sentiment that basically expresses a tone of sadness and desolation. The monochromatic, yet richly textured tonality of ink and the piercing gaze of the unnamed woman—the embodiment of hope—conveys a mood of tranquility and loneliness often associated with sabi. The segregation of the painting into six blocks further quotes the traditional Japanese folding screen.