Word: kamakura
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...insuperable problems of technique. Wood is grainy. It favors continuous, compressed shapes with a strong axis along the grain. Anything that sticks sideways from the block-an arm, say-is weak and splits off. Hence the elongated, torpedo-like form of a Shinto deity from Japan's Kamakura period (12th-14th centuries)-a courtier, oddly clownlike in his peaked cap and baggy pants, but carved with a reductive formal elegance that might have inspired Brancusi seven centuries later. All its shapes are circumscribed by the block; one could roll it downhill...