Siamese Buddha 1962

Kiyoshi Saito made this print of a Siamese Buddha with what looks like wood blocks. Look closely at how Saito uses vertical blocks of light and dark to define the plane of the face, and the shapes around it. It’s all about the texture, right? The graininess gives it this immediate, tactile feel, like you could reach out and feel the surface. The varying tones of grey pull you in and out, and that bold stroke of charcoal bisecting the face makes you think of Rothko, but the face and the hands bring it back to earth. I love how the solid, dark mass of the left hand contrasts with the soft, smudged line of the right, it makes you wonder what tool Saito was using, or what he might have been thinking. Saito's process reminds me of Morandi; both artists repeated simple motifs as a way to study form and mark-making. They show us how art can be a kind of meditation, an openness to change, or just a conversation.