print
- Museum number
- 2015,3048.21
- Title
-
Object: After Tsukudajima
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Series: Digital Art Chapter Six: Animism
- Description
-
Photographic inkjet print. Epson archival ink (Ultra Chrome K3 ink) on Epson Premium Luster paper. Interpretation of Utagawa Kuniyoshi's "Tsukudajima", from the series "Toto meisho", with human presence erased. From a set of 26 prints in an edition of 10.
- Production date
-
2011-2013 (digital image)
-
2015 (print)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 43.20 centimetres
-
Width: 55.90 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- The present series of 26 works, Digital Art Chapter Six: Animism, completed in 2012, is Koya Abe’s response to the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of 11 March 2011. Abe has taken images of famous ukiyo-e landscape and figure prints by the nineteenth-century artists Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi and digitally altered them so as to remove almost every trace of human presence, as though humanity and its creations have been swept from the scene after a deluge. More shockingly, even Mt Fuji, supposedly the largest and most immovable geological feature in Japan – and the country’s cultural symbol – has been completely excised. For those who know and love ukiyo-e landscape prints -- as do an increasingly large number of people around the world – the effect is devastating. Abe has so skillfully manipulated his images that we are unaware which parts are ‘original’ and which parts are his ‘additions’. The result is an overwhelming sense of loss. This must rank as one of the most poignant artistic responses to the disaster of Japan’s 3/11 earthquake. Accompanying the series is a thoughtful artist's statement reflecting on contrasting views of ‘nature, human beings and God’ in Japanese and Western art and culture. Japanese prints have been perpetually rediscovered and redeployed by artists working in many countries and periods, a process that shows no sign of slackening in contemporary times.
(T. Clark, 10/2015)
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated events
- Associated Event: Great Tohoku Earthquake 11 March 2011
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Toto meisho (Famous Places of the Eastern Capital)
- Acquisition date
- 2015
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 2015,3048.21
