Photography collage on wood

170.2 x 130.2 cm

Canon Meets Utamaro lies at a transitory point in Thomas Bayrle’s artistic career, as he began to use computer software in producing his art in 1988. This work represents a geisha in the style of Utamaro, a master of bijin-ga (“beautiful person pictures” in Japanese) prints within the ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking tradition, through the prism of new camera models being mass-produced in Japan at the time of making. Manually produced through a collage procedure that makes use of the deformation of a printed piece of rubber, Bayrle creates distorted prints of the same camera motif that portray Utamaro’s geisha in a deeply dimensional manner. However, this work does not only facilitate comparisons between traditional and modern means of image production. The work usually comes together with Canon Meets Sharaku (1989), a portrayal of a kabuki actor in the style of Sharaku, made on an Atari computer game. Thus, Canon Meets Utamaro lies midway between the past and future of image production, amidst the medium’s long history of over 300 years.