(Cat's) Tail

(Cat's) Tail is a study that takes a single anatomical detail---the curling tail of a cat---as its principal subject, a compositional choice that radically simplifies the picture plane and pushes the print toward near-abstract design. This kind of focused excerpt has roots in the cropping and close framing that Edo-period ukiyo-e artists, including Utagawa Kuniyoshi in his cat prints, used to bring humour and intimacy to animal subjects, and which twentieth-century printmakers extended further. In mokuhanga, a tail rendered against a plain ground exploits the medium's strengths: a clean carved keyblock provides the contour, a single colour block supplies the mass of fur, and a subtle bokashi gradation can suggest the soft fall of hair from base to tip. Printed on absorbent washi using a baren, the result is a quiet, almost calligraphic image. The work belongs to the cluster of cat subjects that dominate Fukami Gashu's small documented body of prints.