Mad Man Prints

When I tell people that I'm working on a print series that combines aspects of New Jersey boardwalks and traditional ukiyo-e woodcut prints, the latter part of that statement goes over the heads of a lot of people. And for those who are familiar with that artistic period, a percentage assume that the series will involve erotic, if not pornographic, images. While it's true that artists from that culture produced some very explicit images, they are just a small percentage of all the thousands of woodcuts produced in that culture. Most are simple portraits, street scenes, and landscapes with or without figures. The most famous Japanese woodcut to westerners is the image above, from Hokusai's portfolio, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Nothing too racy about that.

People who know me know that I'm a big fan of the tv series Mad Men, set at an early 1960's advertising agency in New York. In addition to the well deserved accolades for the writing and acting performances, the show is noted for its attention to detail of design from that period, something I've long been interested in. (Life magazines of that era have provided reference to prints of mine going back to the mid-1990's) Naturally I was eagerly watching last night's 3rd season premier, and it did not disappoint. But I did get a pleasant surprise. The firm's senior partner (Bertram "Bert" Cooper) has been shown in previous seasons to be a fan of Japanese culture and a collector of art. (an episode last season had a plot line about a Rothko painting he had just purchased and hung in his office) In last night's episode a group of executives are seen to be checking out Cooper's latest art acquisition, a Hokusai print. Not a view of a mountain, but a rare erotic work of his, involving a woman and a couple of octopuses, one I'd seen before when doing the initial research for my Floating World series. I'm not going to post the image here, but you can find it on this wikipedia page if you're curious. In any case, I'm very happy to see a woodcut get such prominent placement on a quality television show. I'd love to have one of my prints featured on Mad Men, but the current season is set several years before I was born, and they are sticklers for accuracy. (Several years ago I had a dream that an exhibition postcard with one of my woodcuts was seen tacked to the wall in the girls' apartment on the tv show Friends, but that's not the same thing)