Ichikawa Sadanji as Narukami 1926

Natori Shunsen made this print of Ichikawa Sadanji as Narukami, with no date noted. It’s a portrait that stops you in your tracks, right? The colour palette is super limited - red, white, black and a little blue - but the energy is anything but. Look at the heavy black lines defining the Kabuki makeup, how they shape and almost caricature the actor's face. Then there’s that patterned kimono, like some kind of crazy maze. It’s all about the surface. It's flat but not static. My eye keeps going to the lips, this tiny, downturned slash of red. It’s like a punctuation mark, this intense, almost childlike frustration. The whole piece feels performative, dramatic, but also so carefully constructed. It makes me think a little of some of Alex Katz's portraits, actually, especially in the way the face is flattened and simplified. This print reminds me that art is a conversation across time.