Woodblock prints from postwar Japan is on display through May 5 in the Chao Center for Asian Art

For her first exhibition as curator for Asian art at The Ringling’s Chao Center for Asian Art, Dr. Rhiannon Paget has put together a display of woodblock prints from mid-20th century Japan that seems straightforward at first glance. The walls of the Pavilion Gallery are filled with simply beautiful prints. But there’s nothing simple about them.

They reflect Japan’s creative print (sosaku hanga) movement, which emerged in the early 20th century and came into its own after World War II. The popular ukiyo-e prints of the previous three centuries had been commercial products — a team effort of artist, block-carver and printer doing a publisher’s bidding. Those splashy, sensual “pictures of the floating world” had influenced Vincent Van Gogh and other Western artists. But the feedback loop worked both ways. Japan’s creative print artists absorbed the modernist techniques and individualist approach of Western artists. They also revived the unfashionable woodblock printing techniques of the ukiyo-e artists. But they didn’t want to make assembly line art anymore. In their hands, the old medium had a new purpose — self-expression.

This renegade band of Japanese printmakers was small at first — artists creating art for other artists, basically. After the dust of the World War II settled, Japan and the United States became allies. Japan’s small circle of sosaku hanga artists suddenly had a new, global market. The circle didn’t stay small for long.

This exhibit celebrates the highly personal art they created in the post-war explosion of the sosaku hanga movement.

Yoshida Hodaka’s “Red Wall” (1992) is not what it seems. It looks like abstract art, and it reminded me of the high-contrast, textured images you get from recopying an image through a color copier, again and again. At second glance, I realized that it’s a real world object. The title tells you exactly what it is: a red wall — the kind of battered, neglected, deteriorating wall that you’d see in an urban alleyway. Hodaka started from a photograph of this unlikely subject, then manipulated it to the Nth degree to create a jazzy counterpoint of saturated hot colors flecked with black. The resulting artwork is a hybrid of photoetching and color woodblock printing, and a hybrid of abstract and representational art as well.

Onchi Koshiro’s “Poem Number 22: Fish” (1953) is the haunting image of a highly stylized, amoeba-like fish. The multi-block, ink-and-color print depicts a blob-like shape, its blue outline punctuated by squiggly shapes that could be the organelles of a microorganism — or the fins and gills of an extremely abstract fish. It’s a masterful work of art — and a masterpiece of recycling. Koshiro created the image with salvaged and repurposed elements.

Hiratsuka Un’ichi’s “Stepping Stones in the Afternoon” (1960) is seemingly serene. The monochromatic print shows an irregular path of disc-shaped stones leading across a lazy creek. But Un’ichi created this peaceful image with a kind of attack. He made the ripples and shimmers by holding the chisel sideways and gouging the woodblock. His approach shows the modernist preoccupation with the physical object. This image doesn’t exist in his mind: it’s the meeting of hand, chisel and woodblock and nothing else.

Maekawa Senpan’s “The Process of Making a Leisure Book” (1960) has a similar just-so quality. It’s sequential art about art — specifically “Leisure Books.” These books were illustrated pocket volumes on distracting topics like candy, folk art and the oddities of language. Here, Senpan shows you exactly how he does it in a step-by-step series of prints revealing the different stages of printmaking. (Self-portraits of a printmaker making prints. Is that self-referential or what?) The artist has the look of an ancient sage, apart from the eyeglasses and dangling cigarette. Here, you see a single illustration. An accompanying video shows the entire series. Sadly, the artist died before he could finish it.

Saito Kiyoshi, Yoshida Chizuko, Inagaki Tomoo and other artists cast their own light on the ephemeral world. Abstract butterflies, the Eiffel Tower, a cat made of curves. The subjects may seem conventional at first, but there’s always some hint, implication, parody or ironic self-reflection beneath the surface. Always look twice. And keep looking.