Traffic
by Ansei Uchima
- Date:
- 1955
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
by Ansei Uchima
$500–$4,000. Common prints: $500–$1,500. Key value factors: Uchima's luminous landscape prints appeal to collectors of both Japanese prints and modern American art.
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.
Woodblock print
1928
Color lithograph
1930
Color lithograph
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Traffic was created by Ansei Uchima (内間安瑆) in 1955.
Traffic depicts urban scenes and abstract.
