Night at Ginza
Artist/Culture
Kawakami Sumio
Date1945
Mediumwoodblock print; ink and color on paper
Dimensions20 x 28 cm (7 7/8 x 11 in.)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineMembers' Council Fund
Object number1987.79.9
DescriptionThis witty hot pink and bright blue Ginza (the word is written vertically along the image's right edge) is clearly the bustling place of the moga (modern girls) and mobo (modern boys). The fashionable young women promenading down the street turn their heads to observe and be observed. Kawakami creates a sense of immediacy-of the viewer being part of the crowd-with strong color and by cropping the figures in foreground and middle ground, as well as with the objects inserted along both sides of the picture surface. He is best known for including curious old foreign objects in his prints; the masked profile face seen through the rear window of the car on the left looks like a character from the Italian commedia dell'arte. The artist's consciously rough, simplified carving and his flamboyant color convey the modish modernity characteristic of the place and-its habitues. - -Born in Yokohama and raised in Tokyo, Kawakami was a self-taught artist. Although he discovered printmaking early in life and participated in the Second Creative Print Exhibition in 1920, he made his living as a middle-school English teacher.
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