Yatsubashi Possibly 1909

Kamisaka Sekka made this print, Yatsubashi, sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century, using woodblock printmaking. What I see in this piece is a real love for the process. The way Sekka uses color is so flat, so considered, like building blocks. There's this amazing tension between the flatness of the blocks of color and the depth they create together. The solid green ground, the cool blue irises – they’re so present, so bold. It’s like he's saying, "Here’s a flower, but it's also just pigment, just a shape." The bridge is more ghostly. You can see the grain of the wood, the imperfections, and that almost makes it more real, more tangible. I see in Sekka, something of Hiroshige, but also anticipates a kind of modern sensibility – a flattening of space that you find in someone like Milton Avery. Art's always in conversation, isn't it? A back and forth, a play of ideas across time.