Kyoto Chrysanthemum

Pat Steir made this color woodcut in conjunction with a team of Japanese woodcut craftsmen who were brought together in 1982 by publisher Crown Point Press, San Francisco, for the purpose of collaborating with artists from the Western tradition. In this oversized sketchbook-like image, Steir summed up the artistic ideas of the first twenty years of her career. She gravitated toward conceptual and minimal art, and in Kyoto Chrysanthemum, we see echoes of her mentors: Sol Lewitt’s structures, Lawrence Wiener’s fragments of text, and Agnes Martin’s overall grid. Steir first gained attention for her monochrome canvases of crossed-out roses. Here, in this collaboration with Japanese printmakers, she substitutes in Chrysanthemums and X-es them out in red. Of such activity, Steir said, “I wanted to destroy images as symbols. To make the image a symbol for a symbol. I had to act it out―make the image and cross it out. …no imagery, but at the same time endless imagery.”