Transcendence No. 2

Produced in 1959 using ink and color on paper, the second "Transcendence" print addresses the act of surpassing limits, whether physical, spiritual, or perceptual. The title stakes an ambitious claim for abstract art: that arrangements of form and color on paper can provoke an experience of going beyond ordinary awareness. Masaji's 1959 output includes several prints with similarly elevated titles ("Profundity," "Space"), suggesting a period of intense philosophical engagement with the possibilities of abstract printmaking. The ink-and-color woodblock technique grounds this aspiration in material reality. Transcendence, if it occurs, must emerge from the encounter between the viewer's eye and the specific marks that Masaji carved into cherry wood and transferred to handmade paper. The abstract forms do not illustrate transcendence but attempt to occasion it.