Jazz

Jazz is a 2017 lithograph that likely depicts a Jazz apple, a variety developed in New Zealand and widely sold in American supermarkets. Nam's still-life lithographs frequently focus on branded or packaged food items, and the Jazz apple — identified by its sticker label bearing the variety name — falls within this territory. Lithography allows the tonal gradation necessary to describe the apple's bicolored skin, moving between deep red and golden yellow across its surface. The Birds & Flowers subject classification connects the work to [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) tradition, positioning a commercially cultivated apple within a pictorial lineage devoted to nature study, though here the nature in question is thoroughly mediated by consumer branding and global agriculture.