Augustus 1905 Possibly 1905 - 1910

Asai Chû made this colour woodblock print titled ‘Augustus 1905’ sometime around then, and wow, what a scene he’s created! I'm trying to imagine the artist figuring out how to carve these shapes, how to layer those colours. You can see that the frogs sit in a pond of swirling lines, maybe they feel a bit dizzy in there? There's this great sense of movement, that ripple effect, and then those frogs with their angular limbs, hanging out. It’s playful and a bit bonkers – a kind of cartoonish flatness combined with really thoughtful design. I'm really looking at the block of text at the top, it is integrated with the scene, like a kind of hieroglyph. Asai Chû, like many artists, probably looked back at earlier prints and paintings for ideas, and he was probably also looking around at what his contemporaries were up to. Artists are always chatting to each other, even across time!