Barracks B

An architectural subject in the vein of Hiratsuka's extended documentation of built structures, here directed at the utilitarian form of barracks rather than the temple and shrine architecture that dominates his Japanese output. The lettered title suggests one sheet from a numbered or alphabetized set of related studies, a serial method he applied repeatedly across his career. Barracks construction — repeating window bays, low pitched roofs, exposed framing — gives a printmaker working in monochrome a ready vocabulary of horizontals, verticals, and rhythmic intervals, all of which suit Hiratsuka's preference for compositions built from large carved planes punctuated by small incident. The subject likely reflects either wartime-era Japanese building stock or one of the American military and institutional sites he encountered during his decades in the United States after 1962. In either case the print demonstrates the carry-over of his architectural eye from sacred to vernacular structures, treating both with the same emphasis on structural geometry isolated against the ground of the sheet.