Poem 68-15

A self-taught printmaker, Maki Haku was a prolific member of the Creative Prints (sōsaku hanga 創作版画) movement begun in the 20th century. He first gained recognition for calligraphic prints, often using seal script for its aesthetic qualities. His seal characters might be recognizable words, or, as seen in these two prints, could be altered and stylized, suggesting inchoate meanings or empasizing the pictorial character of seal script.

Maki Haku had a unique printing technique in which he carved a woodblock, leaving the characters and other parts raised, but then covered the carved-out areas with cement that he shaped. When printing, he used thick paper and pressed it onto the cemented areas, transferring the rough, irregular texture onto the print. When this method was combined with seal script characters it produced an archaic, almost primeval quality.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Maki Haku created prints using seal script that were simply titled Poem, followed by a number indicating the year of production and where the print fell in the production sequence, in this case the fifteenth print of 1968. This allowed the meaning of the print to be ambiguous and evocative, even when the seal characters were recognizable. Here the characters seem to be invented by the artist, but suggest natural forces and, at the bottom, an animal of some kind.