Books

"Books" of 1949 represents Onchi at his most playfully intellectual: a still life of books — perhaps his own library, perhaps an idealized arrangement — that celebrates the printed word through the medium of the printed image. The woodblock print depicting books stages an encounter between two forms of impression and transmission: the cultural value of literature mirrored in the cultural value of printmaking. Onchi was a significant figure in Japanese book culture as well as printmaking, and this work reflects his lifelong conviction that the beautiful book and the beautiful print were related forms of art.