Windows

Windows organizes the picture around a grid of openings cut from a building facade, a motif Ono returned to as a way of converting urban architecture into near-abstract pattern. The keyblock would carry the strong rectilinear armature of frames, sashes, and shadowed interiors, with secondary blocks adding muted color in flat fields rather than graduated bokashi. Hand-printing on absorbent washi gives the blacks a slightly velvety density and leaves visible the woodgrain across larger expanses. The subject reflects the modernist current within sosaku-hanga that drew on European printmaking and photography of the interwar years, treating the apartment block or office wall as a landscape in its own right. Within Ono's catalogue, Windows sits alongside his street and town subjects as part of a sustained inventory of the inhabited city, observed without sentimentality but with evident attachment.