The art of the Swiss painter Felix Vallotton is both deceptive and loaded with revelation. On the surface it has the knowing sophistication and social references of other fin-de-siècle art — Vallotton was active from the 1880s until his death in 1925 — but it also cuts much deeper, pushing us toward a realization of how we perceive.
The exhibition at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan, "Felix Vallotton: the Fire beneath the Ice," is well-named because it hints at this dichotomy between the cool surface of things and the poignant detail or potent vignette that lies within. This is the same distinction that exists between sight and perception, which are two different though related things: sight being the light that floods into our eyes, while perception is that part of our vision with which we engage emotionally or mentally in some way.
A good example of how Vallotton's art illustrates this dichotomy is "Le Ballon" (1899). What is remarkable about this picture is the high angle, looking down. This reduces the view to a patch of ground edged by trees, without any sky or other elements to create a sense of three-dimensional space.