Asama III

 

Kunito Nagaoka

  1940 - PRESENT (biography)

1979  

color etching 

5 1/8 x 6 7/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

26 of 50  

pencil dated after signature and editioned in lower left; artist's chop in lower right "Original Print Kunito Nagaoka"; printer's chop in lower left "Radierwerkstatt Schlemme Berlin" 

 

heavy, antique-white Hahnemuehle/Kupferdruckpapier wove 

published 

John Szoke Graphics, New York, 1981 

20399 

$275.00 

"Asama III" is from a portfolio of five colored etchings printed by Michael Schlemme in Berlin from two copper plates and in three colors. The images are Nagaoka’s interpretations of eruptions of Mount Asama during his lifetime.

Mount Asama is an active complex volcano located in Japan in central Honshu. The volcano is 8,425 feet above sea level. It has had frequent eruptions, including 2004, 2008 and 2009.

Nagaoka commented about this image: "9.23.1950: During an eruption of great force, preceded by earthquakes and subterranean rumblings, Asama spewed forth a mass of liquid lava together with a red-hot rock weighing a thousand tons. A cloud of smoke arose over the volcano to a height of 8000 meters"

"In my ten-year-old experience, Asama is smoking and harmless--only a matter of course. Yet, in the afternoon of an autumn day in a rice field, all dimensions are changed: time stands still in black hole of a pervading fear of the unknown." Nagaoka further commented about these etchings: "Registered eruptions with varying degrees of force: 1954: 287 - 1955: 46 - 1956: 0 - 1957: 0 - 1958: 263 (major eruption on 11.10.58)."

"The menace of the volcano consolidates a knowledge of the powerless dependence of the whole existence of my family who were so close to the land. After a landslide I see in the thin layers of the ages, the finality of all life and the new rice from the deadly ash."