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Last year, Pink Tentacle did a really great post on Joge-e (上下絵), 19th Century Japanese two-way woodcuts. The PT post has more images and there’s additional info at nonsenselit including links to western examples.
If these images appeal to you, you may want to follow this link for a more mainstream example of upside-down printed matter. And there’s an art world-sanctioned version, too. Headline from the AP: “Old Japanese Maps In Google Earth Unveil Caste Secrets, Provoke Fear Of Abuse”
The feudal caste in question, the burakumin, lived in segregated areas because their jobs involved death: butchering animals, digging graves, etc. Descendants still face prejudice in modern Japan, “based almost entirely on where they live or their ancestors lived.” The maps are from the collection of David Rumsey, who has collaborated with Google Maps for several years on projects like this. Google, learn this lesson well: the merger of old and new information technologies will cause you nothing but heartache!
These great images from the 24:00, the urban research blog created by Allison O’Connor, an American student in Tokyo. She’s a good street photographer in the flaneur style. These images of street art are very interesting, rather than seeming especially ‘Japanese’, they speak more to the singular voice of street/youth culture. Paste it up, I say. From our Edible Prints Department: Sawa Tanaka’s “series of screenprints on rice paper using only food, i.e. cream, flour, fruit juice and food colouring.”
Thanks to KVH. Please feel free to submit your own edible prints to our Edible Prints Department.
What does your junk mail say about you? My apartment’s last tenant continues to receive a telling assortment of catalogues including this one from Art.com. I cringe when I pull them out of my mailbox but like a passerby who can’t take their eyes from an accident, I still end up flipping through them. I noticed this a few days ago…
I had no idea that Hokusai’s woodblock masterpiece The Great Wave at Kanagawa is now available on brushstroked canvas. And apparently, it’s on the clearance rack. Even Ukiyo-e masters are suffering in this economy! Raspera is a Japanese subscription site full of downloadable PDFs of animal models. The models are totally bizarre. They’re photo-based so when they’re printed, cut, and assembled, they have a strangely life-like appearance.
This form of three-dimensional realism through a digital filter reminded me of Kevin’s Printeresting post on Export to World. I found Raspera through Paperforest, a really great papercraft blog.
We’ve all cringed at confusing misuse of print terminology but this takes it to whole new level! Apparently a resourceful Japanese entrepreneur is selling a ”limited edition” of Pikachus. Translated from the Yahoo! Japan auction site… Great for those who are lacking in good conversations with family, who want solace if living alone, who need a new hobby, who love cute and trendy things, or who are looking for a present for a girlfriend or a child. Limited edition! Limited to only 20! First come first serve!
For fans of fake photography and image hoaxes, this is like a Cottingley Fairies for the Twenty-first Century. Well, with the main difference being that one hundred years ago people actually believed that photography=truth. Now Photography only equals Photoshop.
Tokyo is dead. At least it is in the lithographs of Hisaharu Motada. The apocalypse has come and gone and the viewer is left to observe the remains. Skeletons of buildings lay in ruin and monuments have crumpled, overgrown with brush and not a person in sight. What drives fascination with the end of the world? Is it because it seems so potentially close… earthquakes in China, cyclones in Myanmar, hurricanes in the US? Or the manmade threat of WMDs? It’s not a new interest; Durer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is arguably the most famous print from history. Motada’s work continues this melancholic tradition.
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