Work No. 4

The fourth in Hamanishi's numbered Work series, this intaglio print continues the artist's reductive titling practice, in which the image is presented without textual gloss. Although recorded as an etching, the print follows Hamanishi's mezzotint method: a copper plate is rocked to full tone, then progressively burnished to expose the lighter values that compose the image. Work No. 4 occupies a position in the sequence where Hamanishi typically introduces variation in scale or compositional density relative to neighbouring plates, allowing the series to be read as a sustained study rather than a set of isolated images. The mezzotint surface produces blacks of a quality unobtainable by other intaglio means, with light passages appearing to emerge from within the plate rather than to be applied to its surface. The print extends the line of contemporary Japanese mezzotint practice initiated by Yozo Hamaguchi in mid-twentieth-century Paris.