Diary; Aug. 10th '91, 1991

Tetsuya Noda's Diary; Aug. 10th '91 is a 1991 entry in the Diary series, the dated, autobiographical sequence that has anchored Noda's reputation as the most distinctive practitioner of contemporary mokuhanga-mixed-media in the postwar generation. Begun in 1968 and continued throughout his career, the Diary series treats each print as a page from a visual journal, with the date functioning as title and the image as the day's recorded impression. Noda's working method combines a Gestetner mimeograph stencil, derived from one of his own photographs, with hand-carved woodblocks printed on absorbent Japanese paper. The mimeograph layer carries the photographic information, often a portrait, a domestic scene, or an object encountered on a trip, while the woodblock impressions supply color, texture, and the unmistakable tactile presence of the traditional Japanese print. The August 10th, 1991 sheet, held in the Harvard Art Museums collection and surfaced via ukiyo-e.org, comes from a mature period in which Noda's compositions had grown increasingly confident in their reliance on minimal incident: a single figure or motif framed by quiet, breathing space. The Diary series as a whole has been widely exhibited and acquired by major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the British Museum, and individual sheets such as this one document not only the artist's life but also his sustained argument that the print can be a medium of intimate, ongoing record rather than a fixed image.