Hair

A second print in Takasawa Keiichi's Hair group, this sheet continues the artist's investigation of a woman's hair as primary pictorial subject. Variants within such a series typically differ in viewpoint — head turned, head lowered, hair gathered or loosened — and in the relative weight given to the dark mass of hair against the pale ground of skin and washi. The technical challenge of these prints lies in the keyblock: the carver must produce strands that read as both line and texture under baren pressure, while color blocks for skin, lip, and any accent garment must register cleanly against the dominant black. As the second in a sequence sharing the same title, the print offers evidence of how sōsaku-hanga printmakers used the medium's iterative possibilities to refine a single motif rather than abandoning it after one realization.