Adam and Eve

Dated 1980, Watanabe's Adam and Eve is rendered in the katazome stencil-dyeing technique that is the foundation of his entire practice — the first human couple depicted in the bold, flattened forms and rich earth tones of Japanese mingei folk craft. Rather than the Western academic tradition of Michelangelo or Cranach, Watanabe's Eden is a world of deeply saturated color and powerful silhouette, the human figures standing with the same sturdy directness as the figures in ancient Japanese religious art. The Fall's narrative is present, but the emphasis falls on the original wholeness of the pair.