Sweetpeas and Butterflies 1926

Shotei Takahashi’s ‘Sweetpeas and Butterflies’—a woodblock print with its inky black backdrop and blush-pink flowers. You can almost feel the artist carefully carving away at the wood, making way for this little scene to come into being. Imagine Takahashi, perhaps working late into the night, the only light in his studio casting long shadows as he delicately etches each petal and wing. I wonder if he was thinking about the ephemerality of beauty? The fleeting nature of life? Those sweetpeas will wilt, and the butterflies will flutter away. But there’s also a sense of stillness in this work, a moment captured and frozen in time. The black ground makes the pink of the sweetpea pop! The buttery yellow of the butterfly is so cheerful! The artist is saying something about seeing the joy in the everyday. These artists are always in conversation, always building on what came before. They leave us clues about how to see and feel in the world.