Domhnall

This is a lovely book, a manageable size and weight but with a generous collection of prints, beautifully presented. Saito lived from 1907 to 1997 and seems to have gained recognition abroad before he was respected in Japan. Indeed, prints were seen as more a popular art form than any part of high culture in Japan, which makes one envy the Western collectors able to snap up their best work. If I was such a tourist I would return home without a penny to my name - I'd sell my ticket and walk home.

It is fascinating to turn to him after exploring Japanese wood block prints from the Edo period, notably the amazing work of Hokusai, only to learn that Saito did not consider himself part of that tradition, taught himself how to make prints and considered his artistic influences to be European painters like Mondrian, Picasso, Gauguin or Munch. His images are perfectly at home in that company and that is in itself a delightful discovery. [Curiously, an exhibition of Picasso's linocuts comes to mind, http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ladylever/exhibitions/picasso/index.aspx
which were shown at our nearest gallery immediately before an exhibition of Edo prints, http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ladylever/exhibitions/edo-pop/ ]

Of course, those European painters were in turn influenced by their exposure to Japanese art, a discovery that led Saito himself to re-evaluate his own Japanese heritage and in the end it is a mistake to force too great a distinction. Art speaks to art. I personally would think it made complete sense to place one of Saito's snow scenes from his childhood home village of Aizu alongside a snow scene by Bruegel, say Hunters in the Snow, as much as any more modern Western art.