Earth (in Arles)

This print represents Hasegawa's response to the landscape of Arles in southern France, a site inseparable from Van Gogh's intense engagement with Mediterranean light and agricultural land. Rather than quoting the Dutch painter's imagery, Hasegawa interprets the Provençal earth through his own woodblock vocabulary — the sun-baked ochres and terracottas of the Camargue translated into flat carved passages and graded ink applications on [washi](/glossary/washi). The parenthetical in the title positions this as one print in a geographic series, with Arles serving as a specific coordinate within Hasegawa's broader investigation of how earth registers spiritual meaning across cultures. The abstract treatment removes particularizing details to isolate what the artist identifies as the essential quality of this specific ground — its color weight, its relationship to sky, its memory of cultivation.