The Haiku as Visual Form: Stanton Macdonald-Wright's Haiga Portfolio

January 24, 2022 - May 8, 2022
Mānoa Campus, Krauss Hall, John Young Museum of Art

Stanton Macdonald-Wright

January 24 – May 8, 2022

John Young Museum of Art, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

The American artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright created the "Haiga Portfolio" from 1966 to 1967 while working in Kyoto, Japan. The series of experimental prints offer visual interpretations of "haiku" by six Japanese poets including Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. Macdonald-Wright felt the immediacy of the "haiku" poem could serve as a model for the abstract painting he sought—it was a form that could quickly get to an essential truth while omitting extraneous detail. In the twenty colorful, quasi-abstract woodblock prints we see Macdonald-Wright revisiting the early twentieth century European ideal of making visible relationships between color, abstraction and feeling. The result is a visually spectacular proto-psychedelic series testing the relationship between words and images.

Closed Fridays & Saturdays; Feb. 21, Presidents' Day; Mar. 13 – 19, Spring break; Mar. 25, Prince Kuhio Day; Apr. 17, Easter.

Image:

Stanton Macdonald-Wright

"The spring sea swelling and falling all the day," 1966-1967

Woodblock print on mulberry paper

Information, dates, times are subject to change.


Ticket Information
Sun. – Thurs. 12:00 – 4:00 p.m. Admission is free.

Event Sponsor
Art & Art History, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Sharon Tasaka, 808-956-8364, gallery@hawaii.edu,

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