August 1918

Igawa Sengai created this woodblock print titled 'August,' sometime between 1876 and 1961. You can really sense the layered process of block printing here. Look at the woman’s blue kimono. See how the lines create patterns that sit right on the surface? They're almost like a code, a language of form. And then there’s the moon, a perfect silvery disc presiding over the scene. You can almost feel the coolness of the night. I'm drawn to the way the artist balances detail with simplicity. It’s like life, isn’t it? Sometimes you zoom in, sometimes you zoom out. The lines of her profile against the night sky remind me of Utamaro, but with an even more distilled palette. What's so cool is the conversation across generations of artists, each riffing on what came before, searching for new forms.