Kôshirô Onchi (1891-1955)

Onchi violinist Kôshirô Onchi was an innovative, independent, and charismatic artist, a central figure in 20th-century Japanese printmaking. Onchi's experimentation in "creative prints" inspired several generations of artists. Perhaps more than anyone else, it was Onchi who identified the principle of self-carving and self-printing as essential to the sosaku hanga artist.

Onchi was raised and educated within an aristocratic family, the son of a high-ranking official of the Imperial Court who was himself a painter, calligrapher, and scholar of Chinese studies. Later, Onchi attended a Japanese-German middle school in preparation for a career in medicine. His knowledge of German provided him with access to early 20th-century Western art, and the artist identified such painters and printmakers as Wassily Kandinsky and Edvard Munch, among others, as important early influences. Although enrolled in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1910 and engaged in oil painting and sculpture, he soon exhibited a rebellious artistic temperament and dropped out after only four months. His first professional work came in 1911 as a book illustrator and designer through the assistance of the artist Takehisa Yumeiji (1884-1934). By 1914 Onchi had begun publishing his self-printed works in the first issues of the poetry and print magazine Tsukuhae ("Moonglow").

Onchi employed a varied and sophisticated approach to design, over the years exploring figurative, abstract, and symbolic imagery through traditional and experimental techniques, both Japanese and Western. Although Onchi was an excellent draftsman in the realistic manner (see, for example, his portrait of the poet Hagiwara Sakutarô, printed by his pupil Jun'ichirô Sekino), his exploration into abstract composition must stand as seminal in the development of the sosaku hanga movement. He not only used woodblocks to print his images, but also incorporated diverse, unconventional materials, such as fabrics, string, paper blocks, fish fins, and leaves. (Note the small portrait at the top left, designed by Sekino, and showing Onchi as he examines one of his abstracts.)

Onchi's interest in abstract art was evident early in his career, including contributions to the aforementioned periodical Tsukuhae, and during the last 15 years of his life abstraction came to dominate his oeuvre. Onchi believed that the purpose of art was the expression of an artist's subjective experience. He was not interested in merely replicating an image from a set of blocks and thus he made very few editions. Onchi viewed woodblock prints as distinctive pictures produced by carving, their essence coming from the special quality and process of using blocks to impart shapes and colors onto paper. For Onchi, this meant an opportunity for experimentation and variation. In some instances Onchi made only one or two proofs from his blocks; if the result was what he wanted, he printed no more.

The figure on the upper right depicts the violinist Suwa Nejiko in a concert given in 1946. Although untitled, it is known as Aru baiorinisuto no insho ("Impression of a Certain Violinist") because in the following year, Onchi composed a poem with that title, dated October 12, 1947, which was based on his strong emotional response to the event. The verses speak of Suwa's pale face and white silk robes illuminated by a yellow light, her energetic playing before an occupation army audience grating upon Onchi's spirit. (There is at least one known earlier impression or trial proof with yellow color on the face and background in evocation of the stage lighting.) Onchi ends his poem with a lament for the tragedy of Suwa's art under such conditions, using the yellow color as a metaphor for his sadness. The portrait of Suwa blends representational and abstract elements with an effective use of stark contrasts and limited color. The shape of the violin is also used as a boldly drawn black frame for the composition, as well as for the shape of Suwa's head. Perhaps the repeated shape-within-shape motif implies the confinement of the Japanese spirit in the aftermath of war, as suggested by Onchi's poem.

Onchi lyric Onchi was an admirer of Western classical music. The designs in his important "Lyrique" series on musical compositions, begun in 1932, were intended as visual analogies of his responses to hearing the works of composers such as Bartok, Borodin, Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. In that same year, Onchi wrote that there was an equivalence between the sounds in music and the colors and shapes in the pictorial arts. Music and art were means through which the artist could find "the heart" or emotional truth. The expression of emotion could be more successful when color and shape were separated from representational art, and so in that sense abstract compositions were the "true sphere of painting." At that time Onchi called this type of art a "lyric."

Although musical analogies might seem inevitable with such titles, we should avoid rigidly applying them to Onchi's works. The concept of "lyrique," for example, had additional meaning for Onchi, particularly later on, as it signified the expression of subjective moods. This was suggested when Onchi included such words in his "lyrique" titles as "sorrowful," "happiness," "melancholy," or "grief." Similarly, he used "impromptu" in his titles, which was often meant to convey a feeling of playfulness and spontaneity rather than a strictly musical equivalence.

The composition on the immediate right is titled "Lyric No. 32" and dated 1955, Onchi's final year. In his mature treatment of the "lyric" theme, Onchi achieved a notable synthesis of color, shape, and density. There is an allusive musical quality to the placement of the forms and their rhythms. Transparent colors overlap and mutate, darker areas obscure paler ones, textures add dimensionality and physical presence, and floating shapes introduce movement. The composition is in flux, intentionally ambiguous, but the impressive control of the print medium and non-traditional print materials argue against chaos. The receptive viewer feels the resonant power of such designs. © 2001 by John Fiorillo

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Merritt, Helen: Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.
Sotheby's: The Roy G. Cole Collection of Fine Sosaku Hanga. New York, June 19, 1990, lot. 93.
Statler, Oliver: Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. Rutland & Tokyo: Tuttle, 1956.
Swinton, E. de Sabato: The Graphic Art of Onchi Kôshirô: Innovation and Tradition. [Dissertation, 1980] New York: Garland Publishing, 1986.