Black Hair

Black Hair—a woman's dark hair as subject and title—places Azechi in the bijin-ga adjacent territory he occasionally visited alongside his primary mountain subject matter. The specific quality of black Japanese hair, its weight and luster, the way it organized the visual field when a woman moved or turned, was a subject with deep roots in Japanese art. His bold, simplified treatment would have reduced the hair's flowing mass to a powerful shape-based composition, the black form dominant against lighter ground.