The ukiyo-e print contains several design elements contrasting to Western art of the same time period. The Western perspective usually does not exist. The Japanese print is usually a flat space on a flat paper meant to be unframed and without any illusion of Western style of depth. The Japanese mastery in flat space was brought in its art from Chinese classical painting. The Asian artist normally sits cross-legged above the paper and sees it as flat.
The last rule is that, shadows must not be made to convey 3 dimensional forms for they would distort the effect of flatness.
Cassatt spent much of her time like many of the original members of the Impressionist circle, in the countryside in the 1890s. She bought a chateau fifty miles northwest of Paris, and concentrated on the images of children the rest of her life. Her female image was a conservative reflection of her interest in early feminism and the women’s suffrage movement. She wanted to see women vote United States, but never France, where universal suffrage wasn’t adopted until after World War II. Cassatt today is considered by Historians today, together with Whistler and Sargent, to be among the most important 19th century American expatriate artists.
Susumu Endo blended photographic and non-photographic processes via computer, mixing natural landscape with abstraction to create a singular surrealistic image – a mingling of nature and a space continuum. Endo was born in 1933 and came to printmaking by means of graphic design. He uses the computer as to enhance and manipulate his exquisite photographs and drawings, which are then produced as lithographs.
Endo explains thatthe source of his creative thoughts was to form structural expressions in his mind space. He had layered several different timelines into one, or constructed a world where real and unreal coexisted and interacted
Though he works more on the computers nowadays, his attitude toward his creations has remained unchanged since non-digital age. He argued that the reason why he stuck with a non-digital way of thinking was because it could interact with his body and soul more smoothly and naturally.
He took advantage of the recent technology and the media for creation. He tried to explore a new relationship with up coming media. The exploration confirmed the origin of his artistic expression. His images displayed skills and beauty that challenges the sense of reality.
Margaret Kennard Johnson, a Princeton resident, was introduced to the art of Japanese printmaking while residing in Japan where she stayed for eight and a half years.
As a teacher in New York, in a Museum of Modern Art, Ms. Johnson taught lessons she had learned studying from Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. She described her stay in Japan as a re-awakening time, like she perceived things through a child’s eyes. Ms. Johnson got the Eastern aesthetic of simplicity, incorporating this knowledge into her works. The organic processes and the materials, which develop into a vibrant yet subtle dialogue between paper and ink, guide Ms. Johnson’s visual expressions.
Yoshikatsu Tamekane once said that he savored the past and also looked forward to the future as a time of hope and advancement for the human spirit.
Yoshikatsu Tamekane is renown for his technical prowess together with a unique mystical aesthetic and vision.
