Women at times are like canvases. You see them on the trains, painting their faces, or else walking around wearing intriguing outfits, usually somewhat poker-faced. Consequently, the thought keeps occurring that perhaps they want to be looked at rather in the same way that a painting is looked at — to be appreciated without acknowledging it.
It is this quality — one that invokes the voyeur — that has made women such suitable subjects throughout the ages for artists such as Goyo Hashiguchi, the early 20th-century print maker, who is the subject of the latest exhibition at the Chiba City Museum of Art.
As with the work of his contemporaries, Kiyokata Kaburagi and Yumeji Takehisa, it is the undominating presence of Hashiguchi's ladies that paradoxically dominates his works. Their seemingly patient, passive but thoughtful expressions seem to tolerate our gaze as it roves over the gentle curves of their bodies or the gorgeous patterns of their attire.