Dice (Utamaro)

"Dice (Utamaro)" from 1970 is a color intaglio print that stages a dialogue between Ouchi Makoto and the legendary ukiyo-e master Kitagawa Utamaro. By pairing the randomness of dice with a reference to one of Japan's most celebrated print artists, Ouchi creates a work that meditates on chance, tradition, and artistic inheritance. The intaglio process involves incising an image into a metal plate and filling the grooves with ink, producing rich tonal variations distinct from relief printing. Ouchi's decision to invoke Utamaro within this Western printmaking technique highlights the cross-cultural exchange that defined postwar Japanese art, where artists freely combined native references with European methods to forge something genuinely new.