Asakusa Kannon tempel 1945

Kiyoshi Saito made this woodblock print, "Asakusa Kannon Temple," and it's so much about process. You can almost see him carving away at the wood, figuring out how to turn a busy scene into a collection of shapes and colours. Look at the roof of the temple. The lines are thick, almost like he's playing with how much ink to use, or how hard to press. Then, the crowd: simplified into blocks of colour, but somehow still bustling, full of life. I love how he uses these strong shapes to create depth. The dark figures in the foreground really pop, right? The colour palette too is really limited – blues, browns, blacks – and that helps unify the whole image. It makes me think of other printmakers like Munch, who weren't afraid to let the grain and the texture of the wood speak for themselves. Ultimately, it's about seeing the world not as a fixed thing, but as something always in process, always becoming.