Cormorant with fish 1900 - 1930

This is Ohara Koson’s Cormorant with Fish, a Japanese woodblock print. I really love the way Koson handled the black ink here. It’s so rich and velvety, but also broken up with these tiny little flecks of white that give the bird’s feathers a sense of texture. You can almost feel the wetness of the bird. It’s interesting to consider the material process, here. It’s not like painting with a brush, where you can build up layers and layers of pigment. With a woodblock print, you have to be really precise and deliberate in how you carve the block, and how you apply the ink. Look at how the body of the bird has been rendered: the details of the feathers have been created by the negative space, the areas where the wood has been carved away. Koson’s prints, and Japanese prints in general, remind me of the work of Félix Vallotton. They both have a similar graphic quality and a sensitivity to the relationship between positive and negative space. I am really drawn to art that embraces ambiguity and multiple interpretations.