Herakles

A crouching, muscular male nude with a beaded, circular-textured beard and hair grapples with a many-headed serpentine or coiled creature rendered in the same bubble-like round motifs, one clawed foot planted forward and a knife lying on the ground below; a bird flies against a small pale sky in the upper left. The composition is rendered in stark black and white with dense, varied patterning — hatching, chevrons, diamonds, and spirals — filling nearly every surface, giving the scene a tense, crowded, high-contrast mood. Hideo Hagiwara's 1965 woodblock print "Herakles."