Meiji Beauty No. 3

Meiji Beauty No. 3 engages with the bijin-ga tradition — woodblock-printed images of beautiful women — and reframes it through mixed-media collage on washi incorporating fabric, paper, gesso, and found objects. The Meiji period (1868–1912) marked a transitional moment in Japanese print history when bijin-ga imagery absorbed Western influences in dress, setting, and pictorial convention; Anczelowitz's use of that period as reference positions this piece in a zone of cultural hybridity. Fabric and found objects introduce tactile dimensionality unavailable to woodblock prints, while gesso creates opaque grounds that interrupt the washi surface and deny easy readings of depth. The third in a numbered series, this work treats the female figure not as portrait subject but as organizational principle — a framework around which collage materials are assembled. The figural and abstract subject classifications reflect this tension between representational reference and material abstraction.