<b>MAN EXHALING BUTTERFLY</b> / Taninaka Yasunori1933<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

Taninaka Yasunori was a sosaku hanga artist that danced to the beat of his own drum. His work draws much of its subject matter from the world of dreams and the subconscious. Taninaka learned the art of printmaking from Nagase Yoshiro in the early 1920s, when Nagase’s designs learned toward expressionism and later studied etching with Sekino during World War II. Most of Taninaka’s body of work are prints produced for small sosaku hanga magazines, such as Shiro to Kuro (White and Black). Though he made a reasonably good livelihood from his art, Taninaka was known to be thriftless. Near the end of the war, his home was destroyed in an air raid, and he found himself living in a temporary shack and sustaining himself with a small crop of pumpkins he was tending in the ruins of his home. Tragically, he died of malnutrition in 1946.

In this fascinating design, the artist affords us a glimpse into a world of Taninaka’s own creation. The design illustrates a nude male figure in an enclosed room with a giant open window revealing a city skyline. Having one foot on a pedestal and extending his body forward, the figure, with his mouth agape, exhales fully formed butterflies that flutter out into the room and head toward the open window. There is a light that emanates from the viewer’s left that cast’s a pronounced shadow in the background of this strange vision, amplifying the surreal quality of the scene. The image lingers in the mind as if a riddle or Koan, teasing the viewer with the promise of a deeper level of understanding which is just out of hand’s reach.

Taninaka was a devout Buddhist, and perhaps this design is an appeal to the individual to be mindful of one’s actions and to consider how they may manifest change in the world at large. The figure is only steps away from a blossom that lays on the pedestal, which calls to mind Buddhist sculptures of bodhisattva (Buddhist saints—individuals who are enlightened and so able to reach nirvana but delay doing so to lead others to enlightenment) that are represented standing on these blossoms. This design may be a call to arms from the artist, as to not stand idly by but directly engage with the world and perform actions that contribute beauty and meaning. The artist may also be recalling the Buddhist precept that there is no individual and what remains is solely the work for enlightenment or salvation.

Connoisseur's Note

Man Exhaling Butterflies is considered one of Taninaka’s masterworks and is among his most sought-after prints. This design was originally executed for issue 41 of the sosaku hanga magazine Shiro to Kuro in 1933, which exclusively featured work by Taninaka. This particular impression is an exceedingly rare self-printed work that is seldom seen in the marketplace. This self-printed impression can be distinguished from the machine-printed impression found in the magazine (see image below) by the stronger applications of gray in the shadows, the thicker and more expressive black pigment in the large butterfly, and the loose and expressive printing of the olive pigment throughout the design. Another telltale sign is the kento (registration niche), located at the upper left corner, that was used by the artist to keep the print from slipping off the printing block and ensure the correct registration of the design while printing the work.