Tag: woodcut print

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Daily Art Moment: Private Lives

Image descriptions: 1. Pierre Bonnard, Child with Lamp. Lithograph on cream paper of a young child playing with toys on a small red table with a lamp. The background consists of of a rose pink color with dark brownish green hatched lines. The light-skinned child with rose pink hair is wearing a white shirt with blue dots. The child grasps the edge of the table with their left hand and rests their right arm on top of the table. The child’s head is tilted to the right and faint, loose brown lines make up the child’s facial features. The child holds red and blue toy stagecoaches. The lamp in front of the child has a dark green cylindrical base and a large dark blue shade that has a cream strip on top with a repeated pattern of dark blue x’s. A round dark green fixture holds the shade at the top and a white pole extends up out of the shade. Red and blue organic lines radiate from the white pole layered over the rose background.
Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947), Child with Lamp, ca. 1897. Color lithograph on China paper; image: 33 x 44.9 cm. Museum Purchase: Ella M. Hirsch Fund, 41.11.6

After resetting the clocks and settling in for a dark winter, I am reminded of the many scenes of lamplight in the exhibition Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, 1889–1900. Families gathered around oil lamps, candles, or the hearth in tenebrous Parisian apartments. Each artist in the exhibition brought a…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: M.C. Escher

Day & Night. M.C. Escher. 1938. Woodcut in black and gray, printed from two blocks. 15 7/16 in x 26 5/8 in. 1. Aerial view of farm land between two cities and rivers with a flock of birds flying above. The left side of the print is light colored with dark outlines while the right is dark with light outlines. The middle of the print uses an optical illusion where, from one perspective, white birds are flying to the right with a view of dark fields between them and, from another perspective, black birds are flying to the left with a view of light fields between them. The fields below the birds make a checkerboard pattern, but the lines are more organic, forming a variety of shapes. In the bottom left corner is a town with a church in the middle and connected buildings around it in the shape of a trapezoid. Waterways with boats line the edges of the city and a windmill sits across from it. A few farm houses sit at the edges of fields. On the opposite side of the city, a flat narrow draw bridge stretches across the curving river. A line of five ships sail just to the right of the bridge. Across the river a few farmhouses stand in fields and trees line the water passageways between the fields. The right side has the same city, but with dark tones, and is a mirror of the left side. A simple black border surrounds the print.

As we move into spring from winter, I am reminded of M.C. Escher’s woodcut Day & Night, which captures another transition. In this engaging yet perplexing image, white and black birds appear above the checkered fields below, marking the switch from the nocturnal to the diurnal. Escher plays with negative and positive space, light and…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Félix Vallotton

La Guitare, Felix Vallotton, 8 13/16 x 7 1/16 inches, woodcut on wove paper. A vertical rectangular print rendered in black on cream paper showing a man playing a guitar in the shadows of a room with ferns and a large window. Most of this print is black with the details of the man, plants, a low table and the window in cream. The man sits at left with the guitar held high on his chest. His forehead, lowered eyes, hands, the face of the guitar are in cream. The rest of his figure is the black that continues to make up the surrounding room. To the right of the man there is a bank of ferns set in front of a large paned window. The windowpanes are cream with black mullions. The cream paper shows highlights of the fern fronds amid a mostly black mass of plants. Below the bank of ferns is a low table with a herringbone pattern picked out in black. The bottom quarter of the print is purely black with the exception of the black letters “FV” in a cream box at lower left and “La Guitare” at lower right, also seen with black letters on cream.

In 1896–97, Félix Vallotton captured the private joy and solace of music played only for oneself. In Musical Instruments,” a suite of six woodblock prints, he used the sparest means to depict solitary musicians in comfortable, domestic settings. The Portland Art Museum recently acquired two prints from this series: one depicting a cellist in his…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Zhao Zongzao

Penglai Hermit, from the series Yellow Mountain, Zhao Zongzao, 18 5/8 x 15 ¾ inches, woodblock print on paper. A vertical rectangular print depicting a stylized mountain scene. Thin, elongated shapes in shades of taupe and gray jut upwards on cream ground and seem to float in the space. Each have different wood grain texture with darker irregular shapes decorating the tops, simulating vegetation. The edges around the shapes are soft and blurred where the ink has bled into the surrounding paper. The effect is a soft hazy view of steep mountains in the mist. Along the bottom edge is a handwritten line of text that includes the edition, the series title, the date and artist's signature, all in Roman numerals and Chinese.

Zhao Zongzao’s mist-shrouded mountain landscape has reminded me of the foggy scenes of Oregon these last weeks. Zhao’s subject is the natural scenic area around Mount Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), south of the Yangtze River. One dramatic site is named for the celestial Mount Penglai, legendary island of the immortals. Here, the artist evokes the soaring…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Matsubara Naoko

A lone weeping willow tree and its reflection; decaying tree stump against a black background; tree blowing to the left against a gold background; white flowers and an open book on a green table and two chairs; portrait of a bearded man with only his head and large, folded hands visible; red twisted hands raised up to pick blue beans.

“Artist Matsubara Naoko created this portfolio of woodcuts while visiting Walden Pond over the course of a year. Her title comes from Henry David’s Thoreau’s essay ‘Solitude’ (1854), written during his two-year period of self-isolation. In these expressive images, she captures the fleeting moments of daily life spent alone. She also seems to understand both…  Read more