Traffic
by Ansei Uchima
- Date:
- 1955
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Description
Traffic (1955) is a color woodblock print that takes the movement of vehicles and people through urban space as its subject — a thoroughly modern theme for a medium associated with pre-industrial Japan. The traffic of 1950s New York, where Uchima lived and worked, was a sensory assault of yellow cabs, delivery trucks, pedestrians, and the constant percussion of horns and engines. Reducing this chaos to abstract form requires identifying the underlying patterns: the grid of streets, the stop-and-go rhythm of traffic lights, the streams of movement that flow and pool and break apart. The woodblock's carved precision gives structure to what, in life, feels structureless.
More Prints by Ansei Uchima
More Urban Scenes Prints
A Hundred Shades of Ink of Edo: Kiyonaga's Pipe (Edo zumi hyaku shoku: Kiyonaga no kiseru)
Woodblock print
View of Kabuki Theater from Matsuya (Ginza Matsuya yori Kabukiza), no. 3 from the series "Pictures of Ginza, First Series (Gashu Ginza dai isshu)"
1928
Color lithograph
Distant View of Mitsukoshi Movie Theater in Shinjuku from the Sixth Floor of Hoteiya (Hoteiya rokkai kara Shinjuku Mitsukoshi Musashi no kan enbo zu), no. 1 from the series "Scenery of Shinjuku (Gashu Shinjuku fukei)"
1930
Color lithograph
Spring Dusk at the Tōshō Shrine in Ueno
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Traffic was created by Ansei Uchima (内間安瑆) in 1955.
Traffic depicts urban scenes and abstract.