Ceremony, Blue
ca. 1960
22 1/2 x 16 9/16 in. (57.2 x 42.1 cm)
Yoshida Hodaka
Japan
(Tokyo, Japan, 1926 - 1995)
Object Type:
Print
Medium and Support:
Color woodcut
Credit Line:
Marion Stratton Gould Fund
Accession Number:
1966.37
Location: Not currently on view
Yoshida Hodaka’s prints combine an awareness of and training in traditional techniques with his interest in other cultures and beliefs; these include not only Buddhism, but ancient pre-Columbian ceremonies, mythology, and folk art.
With its dense blue and purple forms that resemble the inkblots of psychological tests, Ceremony, Blue dates to about 1960, and originates from the latter part of the artist’s “primitive” period. He uses color and form in an attempt to access the most elusive of subject matter, universal human spirituality. Ceremony, Blue is perhaps his effort to create, as one critic called it, an image of something “almost human,” or “something human sensed as ‘present, but not visible.’”
[Label text, 2014]