Front Page

The title invites reading the print as either a figure with a newspaper held open across the lap or chest, or a self-conscious framing of the image as a kind of cover composition. Hosoya often places a single figure against a stylized background of patterned fields, and a newspaper or printed page would give him an opportunity to introduce a passage of text-like marks — carved hatchings that read as type without resolving into legible characters. The contrast between the rough block-cut figure and the finer parallel rulings of a printed page is a familiar device in his linocuts. Printed on washi, the deeper carved areas leave a low embossed mark on the verso, and the warmer paper tone subdues the stark black-on-white logic that linocut would produce on Western stock. The work participates in the ongoing dialogue in his mature output between hand-carved Japanese print culture and the printed newspaper imagery that shaped his European postwar training.