Kyōsai Drunken Pictures (Vol. 1)

The first volume of Kyosai's illustrated autobiography of intoxication, published in 1882 and documenting what the artist himself called his most productive creative state: painting while drunk. Kyosai was legendarily fond of sake, and he maintained — not entirely implausibly — that alcohol freed his brush from the constraints of conscious thought and allowed his deepest artistic instincts to emerge unmediated. The Drunken Pictures series is equal parts self-portrait, performance, and artistic manifesto.