Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

[comicdonna]

I hope the injury heals quick, Flex!  

[Flex Mentallo]

1 hour ago, comicdonna said:

I hope the injury heals quick, Flex!  

Thanks Mike!

[KirbyJack]

Hope the hard boiled eggs weren't damaged.

The prints are sublime, by the way.

[Flex Mentallo]

16 minutes ago, KirbyJack said:

Hope the hard boiled eggs weren't damaged.

The prints are sublime, by the way.

Hee hee

[sacentaur]

Beautiful images, Michael. It’s amazing the amount of technical skill required by a team to create these incredible woodblock prints.

While I don’t own any original Japanese prints yet, I do have a large dealer located just a mile away from me. The temptation is soooo strong...

 

[Flex Mentallo]

14 hours ago, sacentaur said:

Beautiful images, Michael. It’s amazing the amount of technical skill required by a team to create these incredible woodblock prints.

While I don’t own any original Japanese prints yet, I do have a large dealer located just a mile away from me. The temptation is soooo strong...

 

I can well understand, Steve. But once you get bit...I'm content to stick with the books! More books on Japanese Woodblocks to come later. Meanwhile, while speaking of Yoshi toshi, in his early career, he sought to make a name for himself with editions of prints featuring ultra violent content, the so-called 'bloody prints' which is an aspect of Japanese culture still present today. These prints were a best-seller with each design illustrating a killing in cruel undisguised detail.  During the printing process glue mixed with red pigment has been added that gives the blood on the prints a  “thickened” realism. Interesting to compare with American atomic age horror comics, but published more than a hundred years earlier - in fact for decades Yoshi toshi was known only for these, and it is not until far later  that his other, gentler series found renewed popularity. He is now considered the foremost uki-yoe artist of the late period. After him, it ended.

Spoiler

‘Furuteya Hachirōbei killing a woman in a graveyard‘ (published 4/1867) from the series ‘Eimei nijuhasshuku (Twenty-eight Famous Murders with verse)‘

 

Edited December 19, 2019 by Flex Mentallo

[sacentaur]

This is one I’ve been looking at from my local gallery, it’s priced at a grand:

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Some Yoshi toshi prints for sale here

[Flex Mentallo]

11 hours ago, sacentaur said:

This is one I’ve been looking at from my local gallery, it’s priced at a grand:

 

Now that's what I call a palate cleanser!

[Flex Mentallo]

Who does not love Krazy Kat? I've owned various books over the years but none quite measuring up until I learned that Fantagraphics had published the entire oeuvre in three wonderful volumes. They were by then long out of print and as happens with OOP books were monstrously expensive - at least, the first one was available, but the second and third volumes were nowhere to be found. Dead listings on Amazon quoted them at over $2000 apiece. Suffice to say, after many months of fruitless searching, I eventually got lucky when they popped up on Ebay. Not cheap, but only a fraction of what I feared.

Needless to say, I was overjoyed, since KK is eternally fascinating, and, one might say, at the very epicentre of my current interests. Short of owning original artwork [calling Bangzoom!], these would be the pinnacle...

[Flex Mentallo]

KRAZY & IGNATZ: THE COMPLETE SUNDAY STRIPS 1916-1924

[Flex Mentallo]

KRAZY & IGNATZ: THE COMPLETE SUNDAY STRIPS 1925-1934