Journey to the West (Monkey King)

This is Sun Wukong cut in wood and lit for the opera: a confident knife-cut black outline over a lacquer-dark ground, then set roaring with mineral vermilion and matte gilt. It fuses the 1592 Shide Tang woodblock Xiyouji with the painted lianpu mask — red monkey brow, gold-rimmed eyes, bone-white muzzle. Somersault cloud-scrolls ribbon the margins and the gold-banded staff runs as a rule down the page. Nothing sits quietly. The page is a stage flat lit from the footlights — an ink-black curtain pulled back on a gilt-and-vermilion immortal caught mid-leap. Densely framed, poster-loud, matte pigment throughout — never pastel, never glossy.