Every playing card carries two images. One gives the card its identity and rank. It is the face, distinguishing one card from another. The other is the back. It has to be decorative enough to be pleasant, repetitive enough to conceal, symmetrical enough not to betray orientation, and memorable enough to define the deck as a whole. Its principal task is to withhold information.

Japanese folding screens, or byōbu, follow a similar logic. As mobile walls, they inevitably present two faces to the room. In Japanese tradition, this two-sidedness follows a clear hierarchy, with the image on one side and an ornamental, cloth-covered or gilded reverse.

But why give up the opportunity to paint both sides, as European winged altarpieces often do? A winged altarpiece is designed for precisely this purpose. Its different images belong to different moments. They are revealed through the opening and closing of the wings. A byōbu, on the other hand, presents both faces to the room at all times.

Two independent paintings on opposite faces can never be seen by the same person at the same time. Every view necessarily excludes the other. They are inseparable as objects, yet mutually exclusive as images. A relationship between them is almost inevitably imagined by the viewer, but it can never be observed directly. One image is always remembered while the other is seen.

Coins are interesting in this regard. One face may show the denomination, the other the portrait of a king or queen, or a national emblem. Together they describe different aspects of the same object.

Scott Walker explores the peculiar logic of two-sidedness in a remarkable passage from his lyrics for Ute Lemper’s Scope J:

On the outside
Grows the furside
On the inside
Grows the skinside
So the furside
Is the outside
And the skinside
Is the inside
Oneside likes the
Skinside inside
And the furside
On the outside
Others like the
Skinside outside
And the furside
On the inside
If you turn the
Skinside inside
Thinking you will
Side with that
Side then the
Softside fursides
Inside which
Some argue is
The wrong side
If you turn the
Furside outside
As you say it
Grows on that side
Then your outside’s
Next to skinside
Which becomforts
Not the right side