The Woodblock Print
The art of carving into a block and pulling an impression away shares
something with children’s games like rubber stamps, frottage or potato-stamp
carving. In fact, one of the first applications for woodblocks was a
children’s toy - playing cards.1
The simple process involved in the creation of the woodblock print has led
many observers to believe that it is one of the original art forms. For
instance the 18th century French author Jean-Michel Papillon wrote:
“It was the first of the arts to appear in the world, for if it is true
that the children of Seth engraved on stone and bricks, it may be
conjectured that they had previously made engravings on wood since it is a
softer material.”2
Papillon’s mention of primitive materials like stone and brick highlights a universal misconception: that the woodblock print is unsophisticated. However, a brief survey of the history of the woodblock print shows that nothing could be further from the truth.
The first prints emerged from Asia (in China) in the 8th or 9th centuries3
and were images of the Buddha accompanied by illuminated text. European
prints (from Germany and Italy), also combinations of images and explanatory
text, developed not long thereafter in the 13th century.4
Religion created the greatest demand for multiples, which were conveniently
made with the woodblock.
By the late 15th century, artists had begun to fully exploit the
two-dimensional space of their prints. Albrecht Dürer invented an “elastic”5
system of cross-hatching as a way to represent chiaroscuro –the gradation of
light and dark tones - and to infuse his woodcuts with the life and vitality
he witnessed in Italian painting.6
This energy is particularly apparent in the prints of his “large book”
The Apocalypse of 1496-98, which was the first book designed and
published by any single artist.7
Although woodcuts were always made with the intention of being colored,
Dürer’s cross-hatching allowed his prints to stand alone as black and white
images.8
In 16th century Italy, Titian was working on some of the largest woodblock
prints ever made such as The Submersion of the Pharaoh’s Army in the Red
Sea of 1514-15.9
Titian basically recreated his drawing style on the face of the woodblock,
endowing his prints with a free-handed, sketch-like quality that had not yet
been seen in woodcuts.
As in the West, in Japan woodblock prints enjoyed much of the same commercial and critical successes, reaching their pinnacle during the Edo period (17th-19th centuries). The woodcut was passed to Japan by way of China early on and thereafter absorbed into Japanese artistic practice. But unlike European artists who had adopted the woodcut as an adjunct to painting (or other art form), Japanese artists devoted themselves exclusively to making prints, becoming masters of one or more facets of the printmaking process: drafting, carving, printing or coloring.10
The tradition of printmaking dropped off considerably in the late-19th/early-20th centuries as the skills were no longer passed down through generations and new technologies such as photography developed.11
Programs such as the one Crown Point Press instituted in the 1980s matched up Western artists with Japanese printmakers in a spirit of keeping the tradition alive. Artists including Wayne Thiebaud,12
Chuck Close and April Gornik worked in Kyoto made prints with the help of Japanese masters whose families had been practicing for generations.
The difference between the Western practice of using the woodblock as an additional media and the eastern tradition of master printmaking is apparent in Microsoft’s collection. Here, prints by Western artists known primarily as painters (Gregory Amenoff, Richard Bosman,
Richmond Burton) or sculptors (John Buck and Willie Cole) are shown
alongside prints made by Japanese masters.13
This combination of Western and Eastern traditions demonstrates the enormous
variety available to those working in the medium. The final results
ultimately depend upon each artist’s energy and vision.
Among the works in this exhibition, Michael Spafford’s 12 Labors of Hercules holds an important place in the Microsoft art collection. The paintings these prints are based upon were a hotly-debated controversy in the House of Representatives in Olympia because of their subject matter and style. They were also the first purchase made by the Microsoft art committee at its inception in 1987. The mythological subject has fascinated Spafford and it is something he has dealt with throughout his career.
12 Labors’ black and white motif reflects the historical influence of European masters such as Dürer whose linear inventiveness allowed his prints to exist solely as black and white designs. Not surprisingly, the exclusive use of black and white has been explored by several artists in this exhibition. As in most of his work, in 45 – April Georg Baselitz drew upon his German heritage and German history, in this case from the concentration camps of WWII.14
Baselitz included his standard inverted representation with the addition of barbed wire. While in appearance sharing little with Dürer, Baselitz’ choice of the black and white woodblock print as his medium makes reference to Germany’s extensive printmaking tradition.
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The long tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking is represented by three 19th century artists: Hokuei, Yoshitoshi and Hiroshige,15
as well as one contemporary artist: Tsuruya Kokei. Ukiyo-e (or “pictures of the floating world”)16
woodblock prints came into fashion during a period in Japan’s history when a middle class was developing. That middle class created a market for affordable art and a demand for an art that reflected the world around them.17
For this reason, Ukiyo-e prints were largely devoted to popular Edo-period subjects: Kabuki theater, Japanese literature, and the landscape.18
A good example of typically dramatic ukiyo-e style is Hokuei’s early 19th century print
Arashi Zuiken, the Kabuki actor. Tsuruya Kokei’s print of Onoe Baiko VII, a contemporary Kabuki actor (1990), is a playful and modern version of this genre. Kokei combines an unflattering close-up of the actor with simple, clean lines and geometry which contrasts with the traditional style seen in Hokuei’s print.
 Also modern in approach is Yoshitoshi’s incredible series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. These prints, produced between 1885 and 189219
were conceived to illustrate both literary legend and historical events Yoshitoshi thought important for his country to remember at the end of the Edo period (the opening of Japan to the West).20
Just as famous is Ando Hiroshige and his print Fireworks at Ryogoku.21
This work, it can be argued, has been one of the most influential Japanese woodblock prints. The impact of
Fireworks at Ryogoku appeared in works as diverse as Whistler’s Nocturnes, van Gogh’s prints based on
Fireworks, and in several French Impressionist paintings.
The woodcut enjoyed a renewed popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as artists began to react against the increasing technology within the printmaking field. For Post-Impressionists Paul Gauguin and Edvard
Munch and all the German Expressionists, the woodblock print became a way to
“seek spiritual renewal through assimilation of non-industrial, non-European
cultures.”22
The Expressionists’ work inspired other 20th century groups like the
Fauvists, Cubists, and Surrealists to create some of the first abstract
woodblock prints (or at least bordering on the abstract).
 23
Today contemporary artists such as Alex Katz, Lockwood Dennis and Terry
Winters24
manipulate the woodcut to their own standards and imagination. Katz’s print
3 p.m. (1988) stays true to the artist’s representational style capturing
what few contemporary artists can in the black and white woodcut: a feeling
of movement and grace. The scene of a couple gazing intently at each other
need not be in color to convey emotion. Lockwood Dennis also works with
representation, but adds color to his compositions. Dennis focuses on
landmarks in the Seattle area such as the Pike Place Market in his color
woodcut Public Market (1989). Terry Winters, on the other hand,
explores the abstract in his series Graphic Primitives. Graphic
Primitives (1998) is remarkable for a couple of reasons – Winters’
reversal of the black-on-white formula and the morphing of a biological form
into an abstraction.
Whether abstract or representational, the woodblock print in its many transformations has secured an important place in the history of art. Though on the surface the woodblock may appear uncomplicated, its complexity goes beyond its technology. Microsoft’s collection of woodblock prints demonstrates this history and its diversity, reflecting the collection’s contemporary focus by engaging with the past.
Michael Klein,
Curator
Melinda Moshuk, Art Researcher
1 Ibid.
2 David Platzker and Elizabeth Wycoff, Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process (New York: Hudson Hills Press) p. 14.
3 Kathan Brown, ink, paper metal, wood: Painters and Sculptors at Crown Point Press (San Francisco: Chronicle Books) p. 190.
4 Platzker and Wycoff, p. 18.
5 Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (New Jersey: Princeton University Press) p. 47.
6 Platzker and Wycoff, p. 21.
7 Panofsky, p. 50.
8 Platzker and Wycoff, p. 21.
9 Platzker and Wycoff, p. 18.
10 Brown, p. 176.
11 Brown, p. 179.
12 See http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection/ for an example of Thiebaud’s work in the Microsoft art collection.
13 Also included in the exhibition are artists who work for the most part with woodblock prints i.e. Dennis Cunningham and Georg Baselitz.
14 Susan Tallman The Contemporary Print from Pre-Pop to Postmodern (New York: Thames and Hudson) p. 178.
15 See an example of Hiroshige’s prints on
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection/
16 Richard Illing The Art of Japanese Prints (London: Octopus Books Ltd.) p. 19.
17 The desire for art depicting Edo-period daily life may also have been due to the fact that there was an order of no-contact imposed by the Japanese government, so the world around them was all many people had seen.
18 Illing.
19 John Stevenson and Min Yee Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Redmond, WA: San Francisco Graphic Society).
20 Ibid.
21 See an example of Hiroshige’s prints on
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection/
22 Linda C. Hults The Print in the Western World: An Introductor Hsitory (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin) p. 576.
23 Hults, p. 641.
24 Please see examples of prints by Katz, Dennis and Winters on
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artcollection/ .
Woodblock Prints
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