Seigensha 2013
224 Pages
Text: Japanese & English
23X30 cm
 
 
This is the first large-format publication on the work of Japanese painter Yamaguchi Akira, whose style combines contemporary oil painting techniques with the classical Japanese composition style ‘Yamato-e’. His work addresses the problematic dichotomy that arises when traditional Japanese and Western art are combined. His expansive scenes with many small figures, meticulous depictions of architecture, and an oblique perspective from above that shows cutaways of buildings, revealing the activity therein, might easily overwhelm the viewer. Sawaragi Noi observes in his essay that the artist is “a designer who has attained the highest level… a highly sophisticated modelmaker.”