Augustus 1911 Possibly 1910 - 1918

Nakamura Fusetsu made this print called Augustus in 1911, and you can see how the forms emerge gradually. The artist lays down flat planes of colour, one after another, as the image gradually comes into being. I’m thinking about Fusetsu making this artwork; they are using these incredible graphic shapes, in black and blue on a faded ochre ground. There’s something so lovely about the contrast between this solid, grounded colour, and the ephemeral feeling of the central figure, a blue imp with white outlines. This imp peers out at us, mischievously. Is it holding a paintbrush? What is it painting, I wonder? And does it relate to Fusetsu’s other works? We can never know for sure what Fusetsu intended. But that's painting: a conversation, a back-and-forth across time, with artists inspiring each other. It's an embrace of not knowing, of multiple meanings, rather than one fixed idea.