- Repository Number
- Location
- Artist
- Title
- Date
- Medium
- Technique
- Dimensions
- Edition
- Description
- Provenance
- Inscription
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SC0300-SNO-PR-1
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Newnham - Building A - Level 3 - Hallway towards Student Commons West
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Funeral
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1973
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Print
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Etching
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Woodcut
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53.6 x 67.7 cm
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12/100
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“In his last book, The Tears of Eros, George Bataille contends that eroticism is contingent on an awareness of death. Sawai’s experiences of war and disease certainly provide him with such a poignant awareness.” (Katherine Yitalo)
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In his prints, Noboru Sawai combines Western and Eastern techniques and subject-matter, reclaiming known images and re-presenting them in a way that is deliberately thought provoking. Born in Japan, Noboru Sawai moved to Canada in 1971. In his prints, he frequently combines Japanese colour woodcut technique (relief printing) with Western etching/engraving (intaglio). He works from known imagery, often erotic, and juxtaposes subjects that speak to certain historical cultural values. In Funeral, Sawai refers to Gustave Courbet's celebrated Funeral at Ornans of 1849. In the clouds above the village funeral procession, he includes an image of sexual union between the Hindu god Krishna and his human consort Radha. If the inclusion of an erotic image offends some, Sawai reminds us that when first exhibited, Courbet’s secular painting also shocked polite society because it refused to embellish and sentimentalize ordinary life/people. Sawai reminds us that taste and sensibilities change over time. What was taboo yesterday is exulted today. His prints, while not pronouncing judgment, investigate differing ways in which life, specifically sexuality and death, are approached in the East and the West. (David Phillips, Seneca Polytechnic)
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Purchased from Gallery Moos.
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Signed on the image bottom left corner, Sawai
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