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1001 — AN INDEPENDENT ART PUBLICATIONLIBERTY OF ART. ART OF LIBERTY.EDITION 01 / THE OPEN JOURNAL
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The Lion Dance Is Silent

A performance held in colour, gesture and the silence of paper.

1001 Editorial Desk29 October 20261 MIN READ

Kitagawa Utamaro gave a dance a surface that cannot move.

01 / 01

The stillness

The Lion Dance is a Japanese colour woodblock print dated 1789. Its subject belongs to performance, but its medium has no duration. The movement arrives entirely through arrangement.

We supply the missing time ourselves. The print is not an inferior recording of a performance; it is a separate artistic decision about what a performance can become.

The Lion Dance, 1789. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public-domain open access image.
THE OBJECT / PRIMARY SOURCE

The Lion Dance

Kitagawa Utamaro · 1789
Colour woodblock print · Japan
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Interpretive writing by the 1001 Editorial Desk. No interviews or original field reporting are claimed for this edition.
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The Lion Dance Is Silent | Liberty of Art. Art of Liberty.