The Occupation of Liaoyang 1904

Kobayashi Kiyochika made this print, The Occupation of Liaoyang, with woodblock, in a time before photographs were common. The whole image feels so immediate, like he’s just trying to get it all down. Look at the surface, how Kiyochika builds depth using blocks of color and line. The explosions are rendered as big puffs of white, edged with pink, while the invading forces are a dense block of angled lines, all climbing over each other, all trying to get somewhere, maybe nowhere. He's really playing with positive and negative space. The army of soldiers are one mass moving upward, and the spaces between them, those little gaps, are just as important to understanding their movement. It feels kind of like looking at a Hiroshige print, but through an expressionist lens. Both artists use printmaking as a way of capturing fleeting moments. With Kiyochika though, there is an urgency, almost a desperation to reflect the changing times. It’s a bit rough, kind of unresolved, but maybe that's the point.