Year: 1999
Medium: color Xerox print of reworked woodblock
Dimensions: set of 16, 41.5 x 29.5 cm (16 3/8 x 11 5/8 in.) each
Edition: 13 of 50 + 10 A.P.
Acquired from Pace Gallery, 2025
This work comprises 16 pieces featuring color pencil and paint over illustrations from Ukiyo-e art books, which have been reproduced as Xerox copies rather than woodblock prints. A ukiyo-e masterwork has been taken as the base for each individual piece. For instance, “Slash with a Knife” is adapted from “Under the Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji),” with the print rotated 90 degrees, and the famous claw-like waves repurposed as messy hair. All 16 pieces are individually titled. Chōkōsai Eishō’s “The Courtesan Shiratsuyu of Wakanaya,” in which a great beauty is depicted holding a goldfish bowl, is treated such that the figure’s head is adorned not with glossy hairpins but with nails protruding in all directions; an “Ocean Child” stands like a sea monster in the strait of Hiroshige’s “Awa: The Rough Seas at Naruto” in which one looks down on the whirlpools like flowers. Utagawa Kunisada’s “The In-demand Type (Thirty-two Physiognomic Types in the Modern World)” portrays a woman taking care of her oral hygiene, but here a “Issun-bōshi / Cup Kid” has been placed in the bowl she holds to rinse her mouth. Studs and a mohawk hairstyle have been worked into Sharaku’s “The Actor Ichikawa Ebizo in the Role of Takemura Sadonoshin” to create “Punk Ebizo,” whose charms include the comparisons the title invites between Nara’s work and the underlying ukiyo-e masterpiece. Ukiyo-e prints were created with world-class multi-block, multi-color printing techniques. Unlike hand-painted works, they could be mass-produced, establishing them as accessible commodities for the general public and allowing them to be enjoyed widely and easily. Nara’s choice to use a Xerox copying machine was no mere prank—it comes from thinking about an ukiyo-e, woodblock printing-like approach for the modern era (with the work produced towards the end of the 1990s). There is no doubt that Nara understood the various avenues of experimentation undertaken by artists preceding him, undoubtedly there are the examples of Sigmar Polke—a prominent artist from Germany, where Nara spent many years—as well as “The Xerox Book,” by leading conceptual artists of the 1960s, and “Nove Xerox AnneMarie” (1969), by leading Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti.
