Kyoto Chrysanthemum

Pat Steir

1982

Color woodcut on cream paper

Minneapolis Institute of Art

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 ro