Kitaoka Fumio: visual poet looking for the beauty of the land.

Perfect beauty can be found even in the appearance of pebbles on the roadside and in the pattern of the veins of nameless weeds. It enriches my soul. Nature, including all human beings, is god to me.

Looking for Meaning

When viewing Kitaoka Fumio's work, it might be helpful to focus on the technical features of printmaking as a medium for visual expression and the challenge the carving process presents for the artist. Considering sensory and formal elements, such as the powerful energy of the line quality and the bold contrast of the black and white shapes, may lead to thoughts about the power of nature. Understanding this series of prints also requires considering the cross-cultural connections between Japan and the West revealed in the work.

The Artist Influenced by East

and West

Born in Tokyo in 1918, Kitaoka Fumio studied painting and woodblock printing at Tokyo University. As a young man, he taught art at his former middle school. While on a trip to China and Manchuria, Kitaoka Fumio was invited to teach at the East Asia Cultural Development Society, an agency designed to promote Japanese art in Manchuria. At the end of World War II and the Japanese surrender in August, 1945, Kitaoka Fumio and his wife and child found themselves stranded in a hostile Chinese communist environment. The long, arduous journey back to Japan took over a year. This period profoundly influenced Kitaoka Fumio's work resulting in a set of seventeen woodblocks called Sokoku e no tabi, or Journey to Native Country (1947).

In 1955, Kitaoka Fumio visited Europe and studied at L'Ecole National des Beaux Arts Francaise. He was not interested in formal theories of art, but he sought to understand the work of Western painters such as van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso.

After returning to Japan, Kitaoka Fumio began combining elements of European abstraction with the strong traditions imbued in the Japanese art of woodcuts. His mixed style is built on his early, formal training in composition, his Chinese experiences, and influences from the modern art forms of the West. The result is a very Japanese form of visual poetry, combining the visual cultures of Japan and the West.

Natural Forms Rendered by

Human Hands

The stark beauty of natural forms used to suggest their abstract potential is the power behind this series of six prints. Kitaoka Fumio takes the solid forms of rock, ice and wood and combines them with a multitude of open spaces to create starkly simple positive/negative relationships. The boldly carved blocks reveal the textural integrity of the wood. He plays the richly detailed patterns of grasses, leaves and moving water against the larger forms. These works take their inspiration and titles from nature: After the Ebb, Rock and Grass, Wave, Ice and Snow, Driftwood, and Stream. Each of these prints, done in black and white, takes nature into the realm of abstract design. This six part work is a visual poem and perhaps Kitaoka Fumio's masterpiece.

Creativity in the Context

of Tradition

During the Tokugawa Period (1600-1868), Japanese printmaking was a commercial enterprise. The master craftsman designed a work that was then carved into a wood block by a Young apprentice artisan By the turn of the century, some young Japanese artists/printmakers became interested in Western painting. The visual images of Japan and the West were combined with the past and the present from both cultures creating a new vision for these printmakers. Kitaoka Fumio was among these young Japanese printmakers whose work, in the postwar climate of an international art world, resulted in the elevation of printmaking to an art form as personalized as a fine painting or piece of sculpture.

For Comparison

Pablo Picasso's Minotauromachia (1935), reveals similarities between Kitaoka Fumio's work and that of some Western artists. Both Picasso and Kitaoka Fumio develop a strong relationship between positive and negative forms and spaces in their work. Both rely on sharp contrasts between darks and lights, and both use texture to capture details. Kitaoka Fumio's six woodcuts are visual poems focused on the forces of nature. Picasso's etching is a more epochal, visual poem portraying glimpses of the real world and transporting the viewer into a world of imagery and symbolism. It is partly based on the historical legend of the Greek Minotaur, contains some carefully concealed political messages, and is concerned with social relationship.

Key Concepts

1. Similarities, as well as important differences, exist between the art of the West and the Far East (Japan). 2. A work of art reveals something about the artist, the culture and the experiences impacting on that artist. 3. Art is a visual language. Traditional Japanese imagery has been combined with modern treatment of forms to create pictorial poetry in this series of prints.

Questions for the Viewer

1. How are the six prints the same and how does each differ? 2. Look at lines, shapes and patterns in each print. How has the artist treated these lines and shapes differently to represent rocks, grass, ice, snow, wood or various forms of water? 3. Does each of the prints show texture? How was this texture created? 4. What do each of these prints suggest about the process of woodcut? 5. What appeals to you about these prints? Do you think they should be shown together in a series, as one work of art or as distinctly separate artworks? Why do you think this? 6. Using your observations of the six prints and the background information, what does Kitaoka Fumio tell us about Japan in these prints? What does he tell us about himself as an artist?

Suggested Activities

Elementary

* Collect dried grasses, leaves and stems. Make a simple arrangement on a flat surface. Cover with a sheet of newsprint paper and do a series of crayon rubbings. * Study the series of rubbings and select a small area or detail to enlarge. Draw that detail on a Styrofoam tray. Incise the lines of the drawing with round-tip wooden sticks of different thicknesses. Be careful not to go through the Styrofoam. Cover the flat surface on the tray with tempera paint and make a print.

Middle/Junior High

* Compare books on Japanese painting/printmaking with books on Western printmakers, such as Durer or Escher, looking for similarities and differences between Japanese and Western paintings and prints. * Consider combining images appropriated from the research with observations of natural objects and the local environment. Produce a linoleum block print mixing images and notions about the nature from past and preset cultures and environments.

Senior High

* Select a specific Japanese painter or printmaker and compare and contrast that artist's work with Kitaoka Fumio's six prints. * Make a series of woodblock prints, using soft wood and carving tools. Spend some time observing natural forms and details in the environment. Produce a scene that reflects something about our relationship to nature and the environment.

Resources

Asian Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: A Lyric Impulse in Modern Japanese Prints and Poetry. Washington, DC: Oxford University Press, 1989. Vol. 11. No. 1. Merritt, Helen. Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. Statler, Oliver. Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. Rutland, VA: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1956.

Allan N. Chasse is an associate professor in the Department of Art Education and Crafts at Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pennsylvania.