While not every Open Cul­ture read­er dreams of mov­ing to Japan and becom­ing a wood­block print­mak­er, it’s a safe bet that at least a few of you enter­tain just such a fan­ta­sy from time to time. David Bull, a British-Born Cana­di­an who got his first expo­sure to the art of ukiyo‑e in his late twen­ties, actu­al­ly did it. Though he’s been liv­ing in Japan and steadi­ly pur­su­ing his art there since 1986, only in recent years has he become known around the world. That’s thanks to his YouTube chan­nel, which we’ve fea­tured here sev­er­al times before. In the video above, one of his most pop­u­lar, he lets his view­ers expe­ri­ence print­mak­ing from his point of view, see­ing what he sees and even hear­ing what he hears.

Though Bull nor­mal­ly focus­es on the ear­ly stage carv­ing images into the blocks, here he spends about an hour on the final print­ing phase, going through a batch of eight sheets. As even a few min­utes’ view­ing reveals, this is a labor-inten­sive and thor­ough­ly ana­log process.

That impres­sion will be height­ened if you wear head­phones, since, as Bull explains, he shot the video while wear­ing in-ear micro­phones that record the sounds of the job just as he hears them. This par­tic­u­lar aspect of the pro­duc­tion required him to rise con­sid­er­ably ear­li­er than usu­al, in order to avoid the con­sid­er­able day­time noise on the streets of Tokyo right out­side his work­shop — and thus to more ful­ly sat­is­fy the large ASMR crowd.

The term ASMR, or “Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response,” refers to a set of pleas­ing sen­sa­tions trig­gered by cer­tain kinds of sound, often those pro­duced by soft-spo­ken indi­vid­u­als like Bull or the kind of repet­i­tive, method­i­cal tool work he does. Chances are, many if not most of the almost 950,000 views this video has racked up so far have come from ASMR enthu­si­asts less inter­est­ed in Japan­ese wood­block print­ing per se than in the gen­er­al aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to Japan­ese wood­block print­ing — at least at first. We all know how life can go: one day you’re check­ing out YouTube, just look­ing to relax, and the next you’re ensconced in Asakusa, hav­ing whol­ly devot­ed your­self to a three-and-a-half-mil­len­ni­um-year-old tra­di­tion­al art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

A Col­lec­tion of Hokusai’s Draw­ings Are Being Carved Onto Wood­blocks & Print­ed for the First Time Ever

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

If pressed to pick the most inter­na­tion­al art fig­ure of the past dozen years, one could do much worse than the Swedish artist-mys­tic Hilma af Klint, despite her hav­ing been dead for more than 80 years now. As evi­denced by the links at the bot­tom of the post, we’ve been fea­tur­ing her here on Open Cul­ture since 2017, first in the con­text of whether she counts as the first abstract painter. Just a few years before that, prac­ti­cal­ly no one in the world had ever heard her name, let alone beheld any of her more than 1,200 paint­ings and draw­ings. In fact, it was only in 2013, with the show Hilma af Klint — A Pio­neer of Abstrac­tion at Stock­holm’s Mod­er­na Museet, that she first became pub­licly known.

From there, her can­on­iza­tion pro­ceed­ed rapid­ly. One uses that word advis­ed­ly, giv­en af Klin­t’s reli­gios­i­ty, whose inten­si­ty, eso­teri­cism, and rig­or con­sti­tute one of the themes of Alice Gre­go­ry’s recent New York­er piece on the artist’s work, lega­cy, and rel­a­tive­ly new­found pop­u­lar­i­ty, all of it col­ored by the fact that none of her pieces have ever been for sale.

The uncan­ni­ly mod­ern, before-its-time aes­thet­ic appeal of af Klin­t’s work is one thing; the dearth of wide­spread knowl­edge about the details of her life and thought, which has allowed many of her sud­den­ly avid twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry fans to imag­ine her into their pre­ferred artis­tic, philo­soph­i­cal, and social nar­ra­tives, is anoth­er. Yet key to the fas­ci­na­tion of her images is that, hav­ing been born in 1862, she was­n’t a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry woman.

Af Klint bare­ly even belonged to the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, or indeed to any world­ly time peri­od at all. The com­plex and seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry world­view that inspired her art­work is prac­ti­cal­ly inac­ces­si­ble to us, even if we man­age to get through the 26,000 jour­nal pages she left behind. Gre­go­ry inter­views one such (and per­haps the only) ded­i­cat­ed indi­vid­ual, a non­prof­it CEO and af Klint schol­ar ded­i­cat­ed to explod­ing the myths that have so read­i­ly accret­ed around her. One is that she worked alone: evi­dence sug­gests that some paint­ings attrib­uted to her may actu­al­ly have been exe­cut­ed by oth­er mem­bers of her spir­i­tu­al­ist cir­cle, The Five. But even if she turns out not to have been a move­ment of one after all, her name will no doubt con­tin­ue to sell out muse­um exhi­bi­tions for years to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Hilma af Klint: Pio­neer­ing Mys­ti­cal Painter and Per­haps the First Abstract Artist

The Life & Art of Hilma Af Klint: A Short Art His­to­ry Les­son on the Pio­neer­ing Abstract Artist

New Hilma af Klint Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Life & Art of the Trail­blaz­ing Abstract Artist

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

The Com­plete Works of Hilma af Klint Get Pub­lished for the First Time in a Beau­ti­ful, Sev­en-Vol­ume Col­lec­tion

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

When wood­cut artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai made his famous print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa in 1830 — part of the series Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji — he was 70 years old and had lived his entire life in a Japan closed off from the rest of the world. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, “the rest of the world was becom­ing indus­tri­al­ized,” James Payne explains above in his Great Art Explained video, “and the Japan­ese were con­cerned about for­eign inva­sions.” The Great Wave shows “an image of Japan fear­ful that the sea — which has pro­tect­ed its peace­ful iso­la­tion for so long — would become its down­fall.”

It’s also true, how­ev­er, that The Great Wave would not have exist­ed with­out a for­eign inva­sion. Pruss­ian blue, the first sta­ble blue pig­ment, acci­den­tal­ly invent­ed around 1705 in Berlin, arrived in the ports of Nagasa­ki on Dutch and Chi­nese ships in the 1820s. Pruss­ian Blue would start a new artis­tic move­ment in Japan, aizuri‑e, wood­cuts print­ed in bright, vivid blues.

“Hoku­sai was one of the first Japan­ese print­mak­ers to bold­ly embrace the colour,” Hugh Davies writes at The Con­ver­sa­tion, “a deci­sion that would have major impli­ca­tions in the world of art.” When the country’s iso­la­tion­ist poli­cies end­ed in the 1850s, “a show­case at the inau­gur­al Japan­ese Pavil­ion ele­vat­ed the artis­tic sta­tus of wood­block prints and a craze for their col­lec­tion quick­ly fol­lowed.”

Chief among the works col­lect­ed in the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can fer­vor for Japan­ese prints were those from Hoku­sai, his con­tem­po­rary Hiroshige, and oth­er aizuri‑e artists. So famous was The Great Wave in the West by 1891 that French graph­ic artist Pierre Bon­nard would sat­i­rize its styl­ish spray in an adver­tise­ment for cham­pagne. A print of The Great Wave hung on Claude Debussy’s wall, and the first edi­tion of his La Mer bore an adap­ta­tion of a detail from the print. As Michael Cirigliano writes for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art:

Cul­tur­al cir­cles through­out Europe great­ly admired Hoku­sai’s work…. Major artists of the Impres­sion­ist move­ment such as Mon­et owned copies of Hoku­sai prints, and lead­ing art crit­ic Philippe Bur­ty, in his 1866 Chefs-d’oeu­vre des Arts indus­triels, even stat­ed that Hoku­sai’s work main­tained the ele­gance of Wat­teau, the fan­ta­sy of Goya, and the move­ment of Delacroix. Going one step fur­ther in his laud­ed com­par­isons, Bur­ty wrote that Hoku­sai’s dex­ter­i­ty in brush strokes was com­pa­ra­ble only to that of Rubens.

These com­par­isons are not mis­placed, John-Paul Stonard explains in The Guardian: “That the Great Wave became the best known print in the west was in large part due to Hokusai’s for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of Euro­pean art.” Not only did he absorb Pruss­ian blue into his reper­toire, but “prints from ear­ly in his career show him attempt­ing, rather awk­ward­ly, to apply the les­son of math­e­mat­i­cal per­spec­tive, learnt from Euro­pean prints brought into Japan by Dutch Traders.” By the time of The Great Wave, he had per­fect­ed his own syn­the­sis of West­ern and Japan­ese art, over two decades before Euro­pean painters would attempt the same in the explo­sion of Japanophil­ia of the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

View 103 Dis­cov­ered Draw­ings by Famed Japan­ese Wood­cut Artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

Hokusai’s Action-Packed Illus­tra­tions of Japan­ese & Chi­nese War­riors (1836)

A Col­lec­tion of Hokusai’s Draw­ings Are Being Carved Onto Wood­blocks & Print­ed for the First Time Ever

The Evo­lu­tion of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Icon­ic Wood­block Print

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

In addi­tion to the icon­ic scene in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, or appear­ances in ani­mat­ed TV shows and video games, M.C. Esch­er’s work has adorned the cov­ers of albums like Mott the Hoople’s 1969 debut and the spec­u­la­tive fic­tion of Ita­lo Calvi­no and Jorge Luis Borges. A big hit with hip­pies and 1960s col­lege stu­dents, writes Heavy Music Art­work, his mind-bend­ing prints became asso­ci­at­ed with “ques­tion­ing accept­ed views of nor­mal expe­ri­ence and test­ing the lim­its of per­cep­tion with hal­lu­cino­genic drugs.” While he appre­ci­at­ed his cult fol­low­ing, Esch­er “did not encour­age their mys­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of his images.” Reply­ing to one enthu­si­as­tic fan of his print Rep­tiles, who claimed to see in it an image of rein­car­na­tion, Esch­er replied, “Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.”

Rather than illus­trate high­er states of con­scious­ness or meta­phys­i­cal enti­ties, Bruno Ernst writes in The Mag­ic Mir­ror of M.C. Esch­er, the artist intend­ed to cre­ate prac­ti­cal, “pic­to­r­i­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of intel­lec­tu­al under­stand­ing.” Illus­tra­tions, that is, of philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic thought exper­i­ments. The son of a civ­il engi­neer, Esch­er began his stud­ies in archi­tec­ture before mov­ing to draw­ing and print­mak­ing.

The chal­lenge of cre­at­ing built environments—even seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble ones—always seemed to occu­py his mind. Along with themes from the nat­ur­al world, a high per­cent­age of his works cen­ter on buildings—inspired by for­ma­tive ear­ly years in Rome and his admi­ra­tion for Islam­ic art and Span­ish archi­tec­ture.

In the 50s and 60s Escher’s art piqued the inter­est of aca­d­e­mics and math­e­mati­cians, an audi­ence he found more con­ge­nial to his vision. He cor­re­spond­ed with sci­en­tists and incor­po­rat­ed their ideas into his work, mean­while claim­ing to be “absolute­ly inno­cent of train­ing or knowl­edge in the exact sci­ences.” In the 50s, Esch­er “daz­zled” the likes of math­e­mati­cians like Roger Pen­rose and HSM Cox­eter. In turn, notes Maev Kennedy, he “was inspired by Penrose’s per­spec­ti­val tri­an­gle and Coxeter’s work on crys­tal sym­me­try.”

For all the excite­ment he cre­at­ed among math­e­mati­cians, it took a bit longer for Esch­er to get noticed in the art world. When Penrose’s uncle showed Escher’s ver­sion of the per­spec­ti­val tri­an­gle to Picas­so, “Picas­so had heard of the British math­e­mati­cian but not of the Dutch artist.” Escher’s fame spread out­side of the sci­ences in part through the inter­ests of the coun­ter­cul­ture. He may have shrugged off mys­ti­cal and psy­che­del­ic read­ings of his prints, but he had an innate pen­chant for the mar­velous­ly weird (see his copy of a scene, for exam­ple, from Hierony­mus Bosch, above, or his sur­re­al print Grav­i­ty, below).

See the prints pic­tured here and a few dozen more dig­i­tized in high res­o­lu­tion at Dig­i­tal Com­mon­wealth, cour­tesy of Boston Pub­lic Library, who scanned their Esch­er col­lec­tion and made it avail­able to the pub­lic. Zoom into the fine details of prints like Inside Saint Peter’s, fur­ther up—a fine­ly ren­dered but oth­er­wise not-espe­cial­ly-Esch­er-like work—and the labyrinthine Ascend­ing and Descend­ing at the top. Whether—as Har­vard Library cura­tor John Over­holt confesses—you’re a “nerd who loves M.C. Esch­er” for his math­e­mat­i­cal mind, an artist with a mys­ti­cal bent who loves him for his hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry qual­i­ties, or some mea­sure of both, you’ll find exact­ly the Esch­er you’re look­ing for in this dig­i­tal gallery.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Online Inter­ac­tive Doc­u­men­tary on M.C. Escher’s Art & Life, Nar­rat­ed By Peter Green­away

M.C. Esch­er Cov­er Art for Great Books by Ita­lo Calvi­no, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.