Woodcut Methods

1734, Torii Kiyonobu II: Two Actors, Ichikawa Danjuro II in the role of Fuwa no Banzaemon and Segawa Kikujiro I in the role of Burei no Ikkaku, hand coloured woodcut



1893-4, Paul Gauguin: Te Alua (God)



Asger Jorn: Sommerreise




This installment of Various Works of Art is a bit different from our earlier shows, which all dealt in particular with the work of a single artist. Today, the focus is instead on the medium of wood block printing and the techniques that can be involved with the process. This spans over a very large amount of time, though the particular works I will be bringing up are only from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Woodcut prints have been made in East Asia since as early as the ninth century of the common era, even well before the famous invention by Gutenberg of the movable type printing press in Germany, in which each letter is a separate stamp, so each page can be taken apart and reassembled as needed. Metal movable type developed in Korea by the early fifteenth century, independently of European technologies, though wood block printing remained in common use. It was not that one technology was really better or more advanced than the other; both had their advantages and disadvantages. Wood block printing was an altogether more economical process; it did not take a very high economic status to be able to begin work. One simply had to obtain carving tools, wood, and calligraphic texts to work from, and ink and paper, and begin producing and selling books. One did not even need to be able to read the texts that one was printing. This was made easier still by the ease of working with the papers and inks in use in China at the time, which could transfer ink so easily that only a brush was needed, not even a printing press.

Over history in East Asian societies wood block printing has been in use both for functional or practical use, and for more purely artistic images. Texts also would often be illustrated. In Europe wood block printing was used similarly, though movable type printing methods took over for the printing of text. For some time movable type and woodcuts were used along side one another, with wood blocks used to illustrate texts printed on movable type. In modern times, woodcut printing has taken on more of a purely artistic function. The medium was rather popular with the German expressionists of the early twentieth century. To this day, woodcut remains one of the simpler, or more directly intuitive printmaking processes.

The basic procedure starts with a flat, smooth block of wood. An image can be drawn on to the surface of the board. Areas that one does not want to be printed must be removed with carving tools, forming a low relief. So, if you are printing a black image on a white sheet of paper, the spaces that will be black are left alone, and the spaces on the block that will be white are carved away. To make prints with multiple colors, usually more than one block of wood must be used. Once the wood is carved, its surface is coated with ink, and the inked block is set face down on to a sheet of paper. The paper and block are flipped over, so that the paper is set face down, above the block, which is face up. To transfer the ink from the wood to the paper, pressure must be applied. This can be done manually with a tool like a spoon, or with printing presses, which essentially just apply consistent pressure down at whatever is being printed. For the most part, though, in modern working settings, it is best not to apply pressure to the print manually, because wood blocks, which often have curved or otherwise inconsistent shapes, might crack or break under the consistent pressure of the printing presses.



The first woodcut print here has rather a long title, referred to now as Two Actors, Ichikawa Danjuro II in the role of Fuwa no Banzaemon and Segawa Kikujiro I in the role of Burei no Ikkaku. This serves, simply enough, as a description of who and what is shown. The print was made by Torii Kiyonobu II, and it is dated as from 1734. There are two figures acting, as the title suggests. The one to the left is standing, and looking down to a seated, irritated figure at the right. The standing figure seems to have been walking away, turning back only briefly, interrupted by the seated man, turning back nonchalantly, or with a bit of annoyance.

This print uses a technique that had been in use for centuries earlier than the early eighteenth, when this was produced, across cultures. In this print, color is achieved by adding it in by hand. One block of wood is carved, and this becomes the base for the black outline of the image. It is made knowing that color will be added by hand afterwards, and an uncoloured print would be considered incomplete. This same sort of technique was used not only in Japanese prints like this one, but also rather commonly in medieval Europe. Religious images would often be produced in that era, mostly for travelers on pilgrimages, for keeping or display later. The woodcut method allows the pictures to be produced more quickly and in greater quantity than it would be possible if each sheet were hand drawn entirely, and additionally, the printers do not need to carve more than one block, or worry about aligning them properly. In Japan prints such as the one shown here were made from the eighteenth to the early 20th century, mostly for the merchant class, who would desire art, while being unable to afford quite the kinds of paintings that would have been made for the courtly class.

In this print, you can see four colors of ink, excluding the black, which was printed from a wood block. Red, yellow, and a pale orange are used throughout the print, and a blue-gray appears in the standing actor's robes. In order to get another four colors in a purely printed manner, another four blocks of wood would have to be carved, and the blocks would have to align perfectly, when actually printing them, and when making the drawings and the carvings. This technique did not yet exist in 1734 when this print was made; it was invented later in the century by Suzuki Harunobu, who was producing multi-block prints by the 1760's. In this print, instead, there are thin layers of color added in a thin paint, perhaps either a watercolor, or a thin kind of oil paint. Indeed, these colors do appear to have been added quite quickly. In prints of the European middle ages that used this same kind of technique, the kinds of colors used are still similar to the ones here, in that the inks seem transparent, as they would need to be if one were to paint at all over the first black lines. But in the Two Actors print, spaces of colour do not really stay inside the lines; each block seems to escape its boundary or fail to fill its own space in at least one place. The regions of color blend freely, correlating to the wood image only on a basic level. In the background, maple leaves in the woodcut all appear to have a set of five thin lobes. In the ink that goes over the woodcut, there is a single red dot where each leaf goes. This makes rather a charming effect, in which the woodcut and its colors seem almost to be in disagreement with one another. In a way, they really are in disagreement, yet at the same time are not. There are two techniques, both of which are used to keep the rate of production a quick one. The appearance of the two techniques are quite different. The colors consist of big, which strokes that make generalised blocks of colour where they are necessary. They are messy, basic, and rapidly executed. In the woodcut, the image is kept simple as well, but simply as a matter of how the image is produced, this results in clean lines and boundaries between light and dark areas. This was probably produced rather more carefully than the coloring; the quickness of the process results more from the ability to repeat the same image multiple times once it is produced once, than a quicker execution on each image, as is done for the painted section. Though the goal of each part of the process is a similar one, towards greater quickness of process, the results are quite different for one another. It is an especially prominent disagreement in this print in particular. One could even say that on a thematic level, the discord between the two methods in the techniques echoes the annoyed conflict between the characters that are depicted, though it is quite unlikely that this was something that was made consciously when the print series was first produced.

Japanese prints like these became quite popular in Europe by the late nineteenth century. Trade between Europe and Japan became possible around the 1860's; after that Japanese prints could be imported into Europe. By that time the prints made did not often contain hand colouring; they were typically coloured by using multiple blocks. The prints that were imported to Europe tended to be contemporary products; eighteenth century prints such as the one shown were less common, owned more by particular connoisseurs. By the 1890's, Japanese prints had become quite popular among artists. In Paris, a brief trend among post-impressionist artists developed, known as Japonisme. There are prints by the various artists, as well as paintings, that directly borrow from Japanese techniques and visual conventions, as well as more subtle kinds of influence, in which styles and techniques are borrowed and incorporated into the artist's work.

Paul Gauguin's Te Alua, or God is a print of this period, made from 1893 to 1894. However, it does not fit very nicely into the category of Japonist prints. Gauguin was quite an independent and unique artist. He is most remembered today for his depictions of Tahiti and the people of the islands, and his travels there. He was born in France, and was involved with the impressionists in the 1870's. He first traveled briefly to Panama in 1887, then permanently to Tahiti in 1891, painting images of their village life. After 1897 he lived at the Marquesas islands, often taking the side of the islanders in their conflicts with the Catholic church. Over the entirety of his time at these tropical islands he returned to Paris only on one instance. The print, Te Alua, was made well into his time in Tahiti. Gauguin was influential in his use of woodcut, in popularizing the use of the print technique again.

Te Alua shows four figures in Gauguin's characteristic Tahitian style. The figures are depicted in simplified, flat forms, with rounded edges and exaggerated proportions. The image itself draws upon various religious kinds of images. At the top of the image “Te Alua” is written, a word for God. As a whole, the print is divided into a triptych form. Usually, this refers to a painting that consists of three separate panels or canvases. It originates in the west from medieval altar paintings, which would have one main central panel, and at each side, a door, which, when open, would show another, separate image. When the paintings were not being displayed for a mass or other kind of ceremony in the church, it could be closed. In Te Alua the division between the spaces is not quite as discrete as if there were actually separate panels, but there is a clear division. The entire image is continuous, but each one third of space is independent. At the left two figures in profile, one kneeling and the other sitting, are situated very closely together in conversation. They share a large halo. At the right there is a darker standing figure surrounded by shadow, facing directly forward. In the middle is a figure sitting cross-legged, also with a halo around her head. It is most interesting that her representation seems to borrow some of the iconography used in the depictions of Buddha. There is a small protrusion at the top of her head, which resembles Buddha's cranial bump, an extension of his brain that visually represents increased wisdom and enlightenment. There is a trace of a third eye also visible, an icon which also relates to wisdom, visible as a small dot in the center of the forehead. More immediately, the cross-legged sitting position and the large halo remind the viewer of Buddha. However, there are many other particular icons of Buddha that are absent, such as his monastic robes, extended earlobes, and any particular hand gesture. The figure seems more of a feminine character, and is depicted nude, with her arms at rest. The use of Christian and Buddhist iconography seems used to create more of a generalized primitive spirituality, than to depict a specific religious idea.

The print is made from two wood blocks, a lower one in orange, and an upper layer in black. The orange block fills most of the background. There are only a few places carved away in this layer: the halos of the left and central figures, and a low shrub between them. The white space of the paper in this sense is being used actively, as a particular form, rather than as a flat background or negative space. This is a technique that was used in Japanese wood block prints of the time, which Gauguin would probably have seen before having left for Tahiti. The black layer, printed over the orange, creates all of the forms—the figures, the ground, the background, and the foliage. Although it is printed in black, Gauguin uses different ways of creating gray tones. To represent a pale gray over the sky, above the central figure, rather than removing the wood in a consistent and flat manner, which would leave the space empty, he allows curved lines of wood to remain, remnants of the carving process, which would need to be removed with sandpaper to make the space an empty one. In other places, areas that would otherwise have been printed in solid black have been sanded away slightly. This makes parts of the wood grain visible, especially in the right side, and establishes a wide range of gray tones, as the same black is printed more thinly. The torso of the central figure, and the face of the kneeling figure at the left, are quite a pale gray. There is a fairly continuous range of tones between this and the solid black that is found along the lower edge of the print. In some places, the orange and black blocks do not seem to align exactly. This, in combination with the use of transparent black areas that make the gray tones, creates the sense in places that the image is vibrating. The misalignment does not seem consistent over the entire print. In the central figure the orange block seems moved to the left, and in the left panel the orange seems shifted to the right. From this, I would say that it is quite possible that it is added for an additional expressive effect.

Finally, we have a woodcut print by Asger Jorn, Sommerreise. I do not have the exact year that the print was made, though it was at least before 1970, probably from the late sixties. So, this print shows some of the more modern uses of the woodcut method. This particular print shows a heavily abstracted, expressionistic face, though the artist used a similar technique in purely abstract prints as well. In it, there are different blocks of colour, vivid tones which often seem quite unrelated to each other. They almost never overlap, and the white areas, which are the spaces that have been carved away, form an outline of the shapes. This appearance could have been accomplished in one of two ways. Each color could have been made from a separate block of wood, as is usually done for multicolor prints. There are prints by this artist in which it is obvious that this is what was done, because the grain of the wood, on the spaces of different colors, is oriented in different directions. The effect can also be achieved by carving out only one block, and printing different parts of it at different times. Certain spaces could be covered in tape when one color of ink is being used. The tape can then be removed, so that when the block is printed, only a portion of it will print. This can be done multiple times until the whole image is printed, with a different color each time. This technique might have been used in Sommerreise, since the grain of the wood is clearly oriented horizontally in every space. A combination of both techniques might also have been used. If one block was used for multiple spaces, it is even possible that more than one color could have been printed at once, if they are sufficiently far away.

In this print, we can also see an increased use of the particular qualities of the wood. This is an aspect of wood block printing that has become more prominent in the modern period. Earlier in history, wood block printing was used because it was the only, or the easiest, available method. In modern times, there is a wider variety of available printing techniques, which can be selected for their particular aesthetic qualities. This kind of a use of wood block printing can be seen in Gauguin's prints, like Te Alua, and a few decades later in the prints of the German expressionists.

In Jorn's Sommerreise, the wood grain is made a very prominent element of the image. The outlines are not left clean; there are lines everywhere that follow the grain, contradicting the represented form's outline, showing where a particular stroke made when carving extended beyond the original lines that would have been marked off. This creates a very rough look, characteristic of the wood material, which is used freely and expressively, letting the aesthetics particular to the wood show. It is a material that was once alive, and the remnants of this fact are allowed to show, and become extremely prominent.