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Maki Haku - 1924-2000

Maki Haku

Work 71 - 1, 1971
copyright Maki Haku

Little is known about the artist's life, despite the fact that his works have brought him international fame. As a member of the Sosaku Hanga, the free and individual movement of printmaking he found his own idiosyncratic style and an unusual visual language, which distinguish his work. He made Japan's old traditional techniques and content his own, simultaneously freed it from any kind of connection to the western model, in order to experimentally jump into the international contemporary art world. He accomplished this through the abstraction of Chinese calligraphy as a subject matter in visual art as well as through the self developed printing techniques using concrete.

Towards a Career in Art

Maki Haku

Poem 69-46
copyright Maki Haku

The art was born Maejima Tadaaki in 1924 in the small town Asomachi in the Ibaraki Prefecture, today a highly industrialized coastal region on the main Japanese island of Honshu. The tradition of the region has hardly anything to do with art, rather there is a working man's culture, that historically comes from the mines in the area. It is then all the more surprising that Tadaaki knew he wanted to be an artist. With regards to his education, it is known that in 1945 he chose to attend the Ibaraki Teachers College.

His aptitude for art was not discovered in college but rather directly in the art studio of one of the mentors of the Sosaku Hanga, the Onchi Koshiro, whom he met monthly. The aristocrat and visionary modernist believed that art should follow the western model: the artist is not a gear in a piece of machinery carrying out a plan but rather an individual, who alone is responsible for the entire process and carries it out entirely on his own.

From Tradition to the Modern

Maki Haku

Kaki Z-4, 1988
copyright Maki Haku

Tadaaki adopted the artist's name Maki Haku, which can be seen as a symbolic act in finding his own artistic self-awareness. Haku learned traditional art from Koshiro and it remained only that he emancipate himself and that he find his own artistic path. Maki Haku adopted the path to abstraction and experimented with free association with objects.

Maki Haku became famous for his compositional handling of Chinese characters. The Kanji characters were made into free standing visual elements with an archaic simplicity. With reduction and simplification Maki Haku achieved an expressive synthesis of Japanese visual organization and western abstraction. He did so mostly by means of his woodcut techniques, for which he received the highest recognition in Japan. Maki Haku became a member of Nihon Hanga Kyokai (Association of Printmakers) and in 1958 the Modern Art Society as well.

New Paths Require New Means

Maki Haku

Emanation - 71, 1971
copyright Maki Haku

One can always see Maki Haku's love of experimenting in his work. Even his traditional transposed woodcuts are combined with embossed printing. In addition he used the relief effect of oil based colors in contrast to the purely flat application of water based colors. The grain of the wood and its natural relief were consciously used as means of composing the image. Other materials were used to organize spaces in abstractive pieces or to simulate specific surface textures in non-abstractive objective images. Occasionally he also leaf gold with visual elements.

Ultimately since the 1950s Maki Haku developed his own technique altogether that connected technically joined the tradition with the modern. The creative innovator modelled his illustrations in semifluid concrete, which allowed a more spontaneous function. He embossed the hardened relief on a wooden printing plate or on cardboard. Then proofs were made on thick paper without removing traces of the creation process. The technical and creative act creates a synthesis that should remain clearly discernable.

Exhibitions and Publications

Maki Haku

Poem 71-100 (Sun), 1971
copyright Maki Haku

Maki Haku's participation in exhibitions is not documented in detail. In 1957 and 1960 he participated in the first and second International Biannual in Tokyo, presented in Pistoia, Italy and in other international exhibitions. He was also presumably in attendance at the 1960 exhibition of modern Japanese prints of Sosaku Hanga at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Since then Maki Haku has been one of the most asked for contemporary Japanese artists and his works are seen worldwide in high ranking exhibitions. From 1961 to 1968 he participated in several famous exhibitions overseas. He also participated in the 1970, '71, '74-'82 and '85-'93 CWAJ Exhibition in Tokyo. The Yoseido Gallery dedicated an individual exhibition to him in 1974 also in Tokyo. There was also another individual exhibition in 1991 in San Francisco.

Twenty-one pieces from 1968-1969 were published in a book, decorating the translations of 21 medieval songs which were discovered in 1924 in the "Kinkafu" scrolls. The songs date back to the time between the 5th and 9th centuries. This book of Haku's prints was published in 1969 under the title "Festive Wine: Ancient Japanese Poems from the Kinkafu." The prints in the book are from his folio of calligraphy, to which Haku devoted a of attention during the late period of his work.

Acquisitions and Collections

Some museums and collections have pieces by Maki Haku including:

• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Honolulu Academy of Arts
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Francisco
• British Museum, London
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Cincinnati Art Museum

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Sosaku Hanga