japonisme

mew

2012-01-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

there's so much to say about today's selection of images, but i won't say it all because to tell you the truth i am simply not interested in who patented what technique and who showed what when. i shall remind you, though, that what all of these artists were doing at that moment of time was nothing short of revolutionary in that they were breaking free of the academy's formal classicism. though each has his own distinctive style, they are clearly friends and brothers, and students of the new japonisme that facilitated that break.

crossword

a woman moves through dog rose and juniper bushes,
a pussy clean and folded

between her legs,
breasts like the tips of her festive shoes
shine silently in her heavy armoire.

one blackbird, one cow,
one horse.
the sea beats against the wall of the waterless.
she walks to a phone booth
that waits
a fair distance from all three villages.

it’s a game she could have heard on the radio:
a question, a number,
an answer, a prize.
her pussy reaches up and turns on the light in her womb.

from the rain,
she says into the receiver,
we compiled white tables and chairs under a shed
into a crossword puzzle
and sat ourselves in the grid.

the receiver is silent.
the bird flounces
like a burglar caught red-handed.
her voice stumbles
over her glands.
the body to be written

in the last block—
i can suck his name
out of any letter.

all three villages cover their faces with wind.

Valzhyna Mort

Source: Poetry (December 2009)

no faces of eve

2012-01-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

What great evil has man committed that he deserves this terrifying partner called woman? It seems to me that with such violently contradictory thoughts and so clearly opposed impulses, the only possible relationship between the sexes is that of victor and vanquished. *

Is it fair to understand Felix Vallotton through his artwork? Through his written words? Is it fair to feel one understands a man through his history as told through facts? Through the opinions of his contemporaries? Each is probably just as fair as when we, in all our inescapable subjectivity, judge one of our fellows. All I can say is that, from what I've read, quite a number of his interpreters and critics, and there are many that agree with my conclusions, and many that are wrong.

I'd like to just say... though... or shall I say, "state the obvious" -- These women have no faces! Not only that, but their colors are often practically inhuman, unhealthy, surely, and they look more like moulded plastic than flesh and blood, polished like fine wood, and constructed with all the right angles in all the right places. If touched, these bodies, even sitting by a fire, would be cold.

Consider, if you will, the very numerous images of "intimate" scenes. Here too, women consistently have no faces. As with the nudes, we seem to be peering closely, and yet cannot avoid a feeling of distance. Whose distance is really being registered? Is Vallotton commenting on the falseness of the apparent closeness depicted, demonstrating his despair at this "truth," or is the distance with the heart of the artist, leaving Vallotton himself the one with the inability to close the deal?

Many analyses of his work seem to take misogyny for granted: "the men were frightened by woman's new-found freedoms...." There have been those of his critics, both in his day and now, who will interpret Vallotton's work either as a brilliant and unsentimental exploration of the duplicities and failures inherent in marriage, or as evidence of his fear thus hatred of women. Should we excuse misogyny as temporal? Tell me when it started and when it stopped.

A smooth brow. A pale eye, well placed, but without brilliance under sickly eyelids, a short aquiline nose, a prominent upper lip where the beginnings of a retiring moustache could be detected, a thick-lipped mouth purposefully half-opened over quite beautiful teeth, but separated, and then, suddenly, the failure of everything in the weak little chin, a haphazard little chin which blemished the ensemble and spoiled it with its weakness. *

(He could almost be narrating his own artwork.)

The facts of Vallotton's own sentimental life are also ambiguous: was he a simple loving man dissolved by life's necessities, or a callous, selfish charlatan, motivated only by his need for fame? For ten years, Vallotton lived in the Latin Quarter with Helene Chatenay, a working-class woman whom he painted often, and cherished dearly, grateful for her generous emotional support.

At that ten-year mark, Vallotton leaves her, and marries a wealthy widow, Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, with associates in the world of gallery owners and patrons of the arts. Has he thereby confirmed his own worse suspicions on the nature of love, or merely followed the instructions of his heart? He is quoted as saying words to the effect that, Helene knew I had plans to go off and marry some day.... He is reported to have been dispirited since the day he left her behind choosing, apparently, love over money. However he is also reported to have been, from the time of the wedding, happier than he had ever been in his life.

* The two excerpts in italics are from Vallotton's posthumously-published novel, "La Vie Meurtriere." It is about a painter with many biological details that match Vallotton's, who murders his working-class lover with a distant though passionate blood-lust. These deaths, which are supposedly accidents, fascinate him as participant, as observer, and as narrator.

How I miss my simple stupid days when I thought, when I looked at Vallotton's work, that I was seeing Eros, without catching a whiff of the
Thanatos lurking so closely by.

unlocking the fat trap

2012-01-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

i have talked about fat before. but until january 1st, 2012, i had little in the way of stats. below are excerpts from the New York Times' fact-filled magazine piece, The Fat Trap. in the meantime, in my quest to find a decent physician, i had to interview a number of frogs. the one i have in mind is the one who responded to the question as to why he thought so few people kept weight off since losing it. with an expression saying, 'isn't it obvious?' he made it clear: for the same reason they got fat in the first place: they're lazy, and they're not quite honest. these doctors need to be educated.

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study.

Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

Researchers know that obesity tends to run in families, and recent science suggests that even the desire to eat higher-calorie foods may be influenced by heredity.

That experimental binge should have translated into a weight gain of roughly 24 pounds (based on 3,500 calories to a pound). But some gained less than 10 pounds, while others gained as much as 29 pounds.

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

Scientists are still learning why a weight-reduced body behaves so differently from a similar-size body that has not dieted. Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.

How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely.

Tara Parker-Pope

1112 (sounds almost like beethoven)

2012-01-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

2011-12-28T13:41:00.001-08:00

all glowing to you

2011-12-23T22:33:00.001-08:00

the yoshiwara of paris

2011-12-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

with the help of two extraordinary websites, i would like to take you back to the pleasure quarter of montmartre, the yoshiwara of paris.

i feel drawn to the people, those side-liners who represented a working class aching for and gaining some personal liberties and leisure time with which to mingle with the swells and the song-and-dancers in what became one of the first venues where classes met and mixed, and only sometimes for money changing hands.

there has always seemed to me something more comfortable about unrefined folk; in high school i always said i yearned for squalor, and talked in the 'dead-end-kids' jargon. and even the greaser kids, the ones that went to viet nam right after high school, asked me to teach them how to dance.

but in the bohemian, artistic, rebellious fin-de siecle the times still echo in our times today; strikes were rampant, the taste of freedom creating the craving for more. Montmartre's remote location and inexpensive lodgings contributed to its transformation into a primarily working-class neighborhood in the second half of the nineteenth century. Known for its revolutionary politics and underground culture, its liberal reputation lured students, writers, musicians, and artists to the area in the early 1880s.* the geographical division of classes sent the upper class scurrying to the outskirts, looking for the women and wine, for the sin they likely couldn't find at home.

Replacing the Latin Quarter as the locus of the city's intellectual and artistic community, Montmartre boasted a thriving bohemian culture that was driven by its critique of deca- dent society. Its raucous café-concerts and cabarets featured satires and crude, often subversive, performances that mocked the Third Republic's bourgeois morality and increasingly corrupt politics. Cabarets and café-concerts were favorite spots for avant- garde artists, who sought to capture their celebrated performers, hazy atmospheres, and artificial stage lighting.*

i guess that, despite privilege, the follies of the bourgeoisie never fooled me. as the monocled stuffed-shirts ogled the can-can dancers, so the husbands of my parents' friends ogled us hippies. nobody had all the answers (though both sides thought they did) (of course), but one side had less to protect and appeared to have more fun.

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the appeal of the cabarets and café-concerts extended well beyond the borders of Montmartre. Its performance halls provided a rare opportunity for the mixing of social classes, particularly between bourgeois men and working-class women, whose interactions were often based on prostitution. The blurring of class boundaries contributed to Montmartre's reputation as a place for escape, pleasure, entertainment, and sexual freedom.

By the time of the World's Fair held in Paris in 1900, Montmartre had developed into a veritable entertainment industry, boasting over forty venues comprised of cabarets, café-concerts, dance halls, music halls, theaters, and circuses. The area's underground bohemian culture had become a part of mainstream bourgeois entertainment through the rapid commercialization and marketing of its venues and performers. As a result, Toulouse-Lautrec and his avant-garde contemporaries lost interest in Montmartre's nightlife and sought their modern subjects elsewhere. What had begun as a critique of decadent society had become a symbol of decadence itself.*

just like what happened with the hippies too.

the two sites i referred to up top are the always valuable Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History in italics with asterisk.* the second is an amazing compendium of theophile steinlen's work. i have never seen anything as comprehensive.

"Days grow longer!" scientists say.

2011-12-21T07:39:00.001-08:00

Thanks, Chet. Yes, as all the kiddies out there know, this is the one day of the year that we use up our oil reserves -- Why? -- well, to oil the gears, of course. Yes, every year at this time this ole world has just been getting slower and slower.

Surely everybody out there has noticed the nights getting longer and longer. That's because the earth's gears are running out of lubricant! So let's all take a great big breath and, say it with me, "Spill baby spill!" as we pour that oil, and watch what happens. slowly but surely -- wait -- I believe I can already see... yes! I can feel it! the days are getting longer already! Back to you, Chet....

everyone is the other

2011-12-13T19:14:00.001-08:00

i do believe that fear of the 'other' is genetically encoded in each of us, presumably to build strong families and communities, as these are the modes of survival. particularly when you're nomads, wandering in the desert.

i wonder what our genes think of cyberspace. or is our growing likelihood to spend a fair percentage of our socializing while sitting alone at a desk also genetically determined as a response to overpopulation.

but in the current climate of world-wide community, is this genetic imperative as out of date as dragging women around by their hair? in a word... YES!

this train of thought began first thing in the morning when i heard a commentator on the radio announce that the TLC program, 'All-American Muslims" would be cancelled due to advertisers, under pressure from a right fringe group complaining that the evil side of muslims was being hidden & that the whole show was propaganda, pulled out of the show.

he had it wrong. in fact the network is hoping that all the uproar will help the show's ratings. but i still cringe at the mention of that much hatred, that much fear. and it started me thinking about how i usually saw this kind of hatred when it had been encouraged by someone for political reasons. and in this country it's the right that's pretty much the sole contender for the role.

so as i say, i started wondering about how that old genetic drive would come out now, if it were never aroused because someone thought they could benefit in terms of money and power by doing it. and i can barely conceive of it.

if we were never told, well, let's let the song from South Pacific say it best:

YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's
too late,
Before you are six or seven
or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

we have learned much, in our 'modern' times, about how we no longer have a need to brainlessly act on every genetic imperative. we have been thrown together in shared experiences. is it possible for us to embrace those experiences, those people?

or is this actually something we can never accomplish? if we had the drive to create all these religions (which are all the same at base), all these empowered entities, maybe there is something integral to our very fiber about those boundaries, those fences, those tightly closed gates.

but then, when have you hated the most beautiful girl in the room, or the neighbor whose yard wasn't kept as you liked it? when have you behaved as primitively as a carefully taught being, and can you, could anyone, just not ever be taught?

i once saw in a shop that had a strong anti-ivory stance a postcard that said 'we are all elephants.'

today, we are all muslims.

in memory of memory

2011-12-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

i sat in my swing in some late- autumn sunshine, watching the rays catch a column of tiny flies -- large colonies fly intricate patterns with no clear order, never brushing each other, like a huge flock of snow geese turning in the sky. not for the first time i wonder about them. what kind of insects are they? why do they occupy the same geography of the air for hours at a time, going up, or down, or in a circle? (it might be simplest to assume their zen nature, but then everything has zen nature.)

how will i find this information? i will probably phone the insect department at uc berkeley and ask. it's the kind of thing that i think i need more information than i have even to google. then it hits me like a bolt from the blue: even if i find the right person and ask the right question, i will not remember the answer. i've proved this to myself over and over. for one, there is a reedy kind of plant in my pond and i can never remember its name! i have looked this up dozens of times, and am today still unsure. or like spelling. if one is referring to other human beings, or rather the lack of them, are there two o's in the common word for that? again, i've looked it up. many times. i just say 'nobody' instead.

there have always been things i can and cannot remember. i can remember phone numbers for many decades, but that's because, as a synaesthete, i remember their colors. i have never remembered names, even when trying those 'cute' memory prompts. and as is not unusual amongst aspergergians, i feel an almost undeniable urge to nickname everybody. the length of time someone's real name lasts in my memory is about one minute. i'm not bragging, nor am i complaining. i accept that this is how i am.

more disconcerting are the actual changes. now, to give you some examples of the memory that was: in my early 20s i worked for a few months in a real estate office answering the phone. there were maybe fifteen agents with as many phone lines and i could easily, always, remember who was on which line and who it was for. no notes. a decade later as i became editor, publisher, designeer and everything else of a literary magazine. i kept many tiny items in my mind at a time and still could remember the addresses of my subscribers.

i still fool myself, saying, 'ok i don't need to write it down -- i'll remember.' why do you think there are too-frequent omissions of artists' names? (there would be more, but for the hours spent retracing my steps, trying to find the missing info.) i know people who remember everything. every- thing. i remember small bits and pieces of events, conversations, but the vast majority of time is forever gone. i used to be better, though, it's clear. i assume it's age, but don't people say of children, 'he'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on.' it could also be that much of my past is not worth remembering; i'll give you that with the acknowledgement that it's mind-fucking.

but the period of time that's missing grows larger and larger: in the last couple of years, i have shown up on the wrong day for doctor appoint- ments three times. i forget in their entirety phone conversations and one's in person as well. i lose the lists i make to help me remember. if i want to look something up online i have to remember to do so quite a number of times before i actually do it. i do look things up by the dozens most every day, so compared to much of the human race i am probably unusual.

did you wonder if this all bothers me? i nonchalantly throw caution to the winds, embarrassed occasionally, yes. but i forget that too. apparently the time one spends in the far reaches of the right brain gets deducted from the time in the left. i am consistently happier that any time i can remember, but then.... when i lose my way, i rest relieved in the fact that i will remember too little to be bothered in a day or two at the most. in the land of the imagination, in the land of awe and wonder, it's the present that is what counts, and none of this has hampered my ability to be there.

if i have a total lapse and post the same post more than once, something about which i worry, you will forgive me, won't you?

he read a book!

2011-12-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

THE DAY I READ A BOOK

(click Jimmy's photo to hear him sing this song!) ...... Jimmy Durante

When I look back through life I find,
Lots of memories remain,
Certain days stay in my mind
And keep running through my brain,
I remember the day that Ederle swam the channel, what a splash.
I remember the Wall St. Crash
Or when Winchell first shouted, “Flash!”
But there’s one day that I recall though it was years ago.
All my life I will remember it, I know.

I'll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious, seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
So it wasn't hard to bear,
The day I read a book.
It's a shame I don't recall the name of the book.
It wasn't a history, I know, because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book. I can't remember when,
But one o' these days, I'm gonna do it again.

Ah, lit'rature!
There's nothin' like sittin' home next to the fireplace, with a pipe, a dog, and a good book at your feet.
But if you walk into my house, you’ll see loads of books.
And believe they are not there just for appearance.
I press an awful lot of butterflies.
My literary appetite is “stupendious.”
They don’t write them quick enough for me.
The book of the month didn’t come out fast enough,

So I read the book of the week!
The book of the week didn’t come out fast enough,
So I read the book of the day!
The book of the hour!
The book of the minute!
But that wasn’t even fast enough.
So far this week I’ve read six books that haven’t been written yet!
But I’m not confined to home reading.
I once spent two weeks in library.
I would have been outta there sooner,
But I had buried my nose in a book and forgot which book I buried it in!
A “dilemmia.”

Why on the first page of this book they printed the author’s name,
And right underneath it was a private phone number.
Copyright-1-9-3-9.
But I’m gonna send it back.
I’ve been dialing that number for four months
and nobody has answered.
Nevertheless, while perusing through the library,
I found the tract that I was looking for.
It wasn’t the Encyclopedia “Britannia”!
It wasn’t Ferverum Briago.
It was a book that was 3,857 pages thick.
And I’m glad I took it!
It fit perfectly under the short leg of my pool table!

It was not a history, I know because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book.
I can't remember when,
But one o' these days,

I'm gonna do it again.
Yes, and one of these days,
I’m gonna do it again!

desire, the body, and the gaze

2011-12-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

"In the years immediately after World War I, several impulses within the German modern dance movement attempted to present the nude body
as a sign of a modern, liberated identity “in the age of mechanical reproduction." Congruent with the appearance of the Nackttanz, or nude dancing, was the discovery, one might say, of modern relations between desire, the body, and the gaze."

Some felt "that to overcome a pervasive fear of the female body one had to gaze at it with the same seriousness that one applied to the contemplation of artworks. [Paul Leppin] argued that eroticism manifests itself most powerfully in conjunction with the expression of intense religious feelings, for ecstasy is always a response to an immanence of the divine. Dance offered the strongest potential for signifying and experiencing ecstasy, but Judeo-Christian dogma had smothered dance in its determination to separate eroticism from great religious feeling. As a result, European dance culture could present nothing more than the feeble, "sweet and decayed" eroticism of the waltz."

Individuality means losing oneself in the formless and the immense without even remembering one's limits.... The time must come which shakes us, which revi- talizes the dormant evil and splendor within us, tremendous powers, doubts, which rumble in our hearts like the thunderstorms of romanticism, oaths, hate, anticipations." [He] implied that serious erotic dance entailed both nudity and rhythmic motions simulating orgasm and sexual intercourse. It was these movements more than any other... that undermined the mechanization of identity imposed on the body by Judeo-Christian dogma and its ambassador, the French-Italian ballet tradition."

Gertrud Leistikow (1885–1948) [was considered] the most tragic and "Dionysian" of all German modern dancers, the figure closest to the primeval concept of dance as an expression of an ecstatic body. [Her] nudity served to expose movements concealed by costume and mask; more important, it revealed the "thousand-fold play of muscles" in the body. Unlike the many prewar female dancers who linked the performance of graceful movements to the signification of an elevating spirituality, Leistikow favored a hard, convulsive, ecstatic, even violent type of movement. The "thousand-fold play of muscles" disclosed by her nudity made her body a radical sign of power and freedom, contradicting traditional inclinations to inscribe female bodily strength in theosophic, exotic, and spiritual terms. Moreover, Leistikow was in her mid-thirties when she had artists document her nudity; it seems quite possible that, because she did not depend on photography to transmit her image, she succeeded in making nudity a sign of modernity without imprisoning that sign within the image of virginal youthfulness pervading female nude dancing in the 1920s."

Gertrud Leistikow had a slender, supple body, but her face lacked charm, elegance, or mystery. She therefore constantly sought to hide her face, partly through suave manipulation of shawls, veils, or masks but also through movements that called attention to the beauty of her body. Her earlier dances tended to project a tragic, melancholy aura, but after she moved to Amsterdam her distinction seemed to lie in her peculiar cultivation of the grotesque. What made Leistikow's dances grotesque was her determination to invest the simplest movements with startling dramatic power, an unsuspected intensity of conflict.

Leistikow's concept of the grotesque was cosmopolitan, so perhaps her grotesque dances constituted a curious evolution of a controlling tragic aesthetic rather than a break with it. Junk suggested that the grotesque dance displayed "more strength than grace" or, "more recently," substi- tuted "the bizarre for the graceful," as manifested through "unusual positions, deformed body structures, and adventurous leaps and gestures" (98). In other words, grotesque dancing did not necessarily imply a comic mood but perhaps made a calculated challenge to aesthetic conventions of "gracefulness" and bodily composure. Brandenburg thought such a challenge led Leistikow into the realms of the demonic and heroic rather than toward any spirit of parody, frivolity, or malicious travesty.

This determination was perhaps most mysteriously evident in Gnossienne (1924), which used as accompaniment Erik Satie's equally simple and haunting piano melody "Gnossienne No. 1" (1889). Here Leistikow stood in a tight-fitting, shimmering gown and faced the audience in a veiled light. She concentrated the dance almost entirely in the hands and arms, which undulated slowly, like waves, horizontally, then vertically, while her face constantly stared straight ahead with Sphinxlike inscrutability (one had to see the dance more than once to make this observation, so strongly did the arms and hands attract focus). After performing a pattern of arm undulations, the dancer took a step forward and turned into profile to repeat the pattern but raised her right leg slightly and held it suspended for the duration of the repetition. Then she turned and faced the audience again and repeated the pattern. The dancer repeated the initial pattern five times, thrice forward and twice in profile. With each repetition, the dancer merely moved forward a step or, while in profile, suggested a step in another direction without actually taking it. The dance conveyed a sense of a body very slowly and hesitantly moving closer to the audience without, in its trancelike state, even seeming aware of the spectators."

[For example, in one dance] A violet spotlight becomes coldly reflected in the pearl ornamentation of the hair. It makes the head of the dancer, with Medusa-like, wide open eyes, perch over the purple shawl which entwines and strangles her throat. The crass red cloth separates head from body, so that the head seems to float in the air, but through constant transformation the little cloth serves the movement of the dance: now it dips and flows like blood, then it throbs and flutters like lightning flashes, then it spreads like an imperial mantel around the shoulders, then it tightened again like a noose around the neck. And the language of the body discloses just as much fear of death as desire for death."

all excerpts from the online book, Empire of Ecstasy, by Karl Toepfer
drawings from here

it's all cinderella

2011-11-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

imagine, if you will, what these blended titles may be.
pick one from each list....

PROTAGONIST

• a stressed-out lawyer

• a busy fashion executive

• a determined bride-to-be

• a workaholic hollywood publicist

• a driven marketing executive

• a successful but overworked business woman

ACTION

• warily welcomes a stranger into her home

• ends up hitchhiking to her wedding

• meets a life coach and is granted 12 wishes

• is knocked unconscious in a car accident

• is visited by the ghost of her former client

• wishes to see what her life would be like if....

HAPPY ENDING

notice i didn't say 'happy endings.' they all, of course, end the same way. a good man will always be more satisfying than a life lived in the business world. nowadays, some women do hold on to their careers, but only once they have reinstated the man where he was meant to be.

her work will then be denigrated, the guy rescues her from some dastardly foe, she thanks (her lucky star, elf, santa, whatever), and they ride off into the future, with bells ringing.

these are all, as you've probably guessed, taken from plots of christmas movies (frequently on lifetime or the hallmark channel). but i ask you: how often must women be sacrificed upon the logs of christmas?

and so as to not come across as an miscreant fool, i will admit that sometimes the protagonist is a man (like nicholas cage or ebeneezer scrooge -- except for that time susan lucci played scrooge). but, i believe, my point is still well-taken. the warmth of christmas mainly serves to remind us that jesus has preferred roles for all of us, and if you choose to rebel against these values, they just may come and make a movie about you.

to the young people & the union members & the old people & the vets & etc who crack nuts & who i hope i might have been one had this been then

2011-11-24T07:29:00.001-08:00

FABLE

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig.’

Bun replied,
‘You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things
and weather
Must be taken in together,

To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.’

Ralph Waldo Emerson

invent the sacred dance

2011-11-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

SATURDAY NIGHT

Music is most sovereign because more than anything
else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost
soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with
them and imparting grace.
—Plato, The Republic

The cranes are flying ...
—Chekhov

And here it comes: around the world,
In Chicago, Petersburg, Tokyo, the dancers
Hit the floor running (the communal dancefloor

Here, there, at intervals, sometimes paved,
Sometimes rotted linoleum awash in beer,
Sometimes a field across which the dancers streak

Like violets across grass, sometimes packed dirt
In a township of corrugated metal roofs)
And what was once prescribed ritual, the profuse

Strains of
premeditated art,
is now
improvisation,
The desperately new,
where to the
sine-curved
Yelps and spasms of
police sirens outside

The club, a spasmodic feedback ululates
The death and cremation of history,
Until a boy whose hair is purple spikes,

And a girl wearing a skull
That wants to say I’m cool but I’m in pain,
Get up and dance together, sort of, age thirteen.

Young
allegorists,
they’ll mime
motions
Of shootouts,
of tortured ones
in basements,
Of cold
insinuations
before sex

Between enemies, the jubilance of the criminal.
The girl tosses her head and dances
The shoplifter’s meanness and self-betrayal

For a pair of stockings, a scarf, a perfume,
The boy dances stealing the truck,
Shooting his father.

The point is to become a flying viper,
A diving vulva, the great point
Is experiment, like pollen flinging itself

Into far other habitats, or seed
That travels a migrant bird’s gut
To be shit overseas.

The creatures gamble on the whirl of life
And every adolescent body hot
Enough to sweat it out on the dance floor

Is a laboratory:
maybe this
lipstick,
these boots,
These jeans,
these earrings,
maybe if I flip
My hair and
vibrate
my pelvis

Exactly synched to the band’s wildfire noise
That imitates history’s catastrophe
Nuke for nuke, maybe I’ll survive,

Maybe we’ll all survive. . . .

At the intersection of poverty and plague
The planet's children—brave, uncontrollable, juiced
Out of their gourds—invent the sacred dance.

Alicia Ostriker

“Saturday Night” from
The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998.
Copyright © 1998 by Alicia Ostriker.
All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, upress.pitt.edu.

reasons to believe

2011-11-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

why have any religions at all? i can think of good and bad reasons. good includes socials and nice music. soaring, glorious music; what of the fact that soaring music encourages dissociation? is that the enduring state that all religion leads to?

now, yes-- all the religions are different; Buddhism and Catholicism couldn't be more different, could they? we are told that Buddhism doesn't even sanction believing in anyone. Buddha is not a godhead.

but they are the same in brandishing ritual and rules: anything to break you from everything you know. but from there, because that break may just be the best thing for you, don't they take you in exactly the opposition direction from where they claim to be leading you? to the truth?

we might say that the truth lies within you; then why do each of these rule that possibility out? a theory occurred to me yesterday. religion as panacea for a ubiquitous OCD. how few of us unfurl complete confi- dence every day? religion gives you an approving voice at all time, as long as you pay the dues. and raw energy is dispersed in endless, mindless ritual.

'opiate for the masses,' yes. "Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again." temper this by the fact that it could also be zoloft or pel mells, or GTOs or viagra, or baked potatoes with sour cream: anything that tells you, in a very gentle voice, how okay you really are.

just think: if you really believed that, they could sell you nothing. nothing! not Lutheranism nor betty crocker nor anything else. and your terrors would all belong to you again, and
your salvation.

returning to the source

2011-11-01T18:52:00.001-07:00

there's a lot of talk on the print blogs about treasure found or envied on ebay and elsewhere. most of these fall into the general category i call japonisme, ie. drawn from the styles and methods of the newly found japanese prints that had made their way to the west.

what may sometimes be forgotten is that one may find treasures on ebay or elsewhere that is less the derivative and more the original. (by the way, the beak on the egret is color-added by me.)

now of course, these distinctions become hopelessly tangled when we talk about the era around 1900, give or take 20 years, when these were made. unquestionably, the influence had been felt in both directions. though to my eyes, it's easy to tell which is western and which is japanesse.

in any case, these can be a delight on their own standing. now, i've "prettified" them, and hope i haven't made them much worse, but i was only trying to compensate for the difficulties involved in photographing an item to list and not for any deficiencies in the art itself.

it's just amazing to me what's available for so little; treasures indeed. looking at the monkeys, the bunnies, the birds, from both cultures it can be very interesting to notice the differences and the similarities.

while there are numerous japanese print shops that offer these illustrated books, on ebay i've found only one. this seller, who goes by 'utagawa123,' offers a tremendous amount of these beautiful books, which seem to be in wonderful condition, and whose prices all start at $9.99

the prices do get bid up sometimes, but i found only 3 that had gone over the neighborhood of $300, and some end up selling for much less. all but one of the images here are from her ebay stock. the one is the top right, that gorgeous swan. it comes from Morra Japanese Art, who also offers many wonderful ehon, books.

of course, if you're like me, more inclined to look and learn than to collect, there are always the MFA in Boston, and the NYC Public Library Digital Collection. there are millions of other places -- enjoy finding them on your own!

catch a scent of salt

2011-10-24T20:20:00.001-07:00

1812

.亡母や海見る度に見る度に
naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni

my dead mother--
every time I see the ocean
every time...

Issa's mother died when he was a small child. In his diary, this haiku is followed immediately by another ocean poem:

murasaki no kumo ni itsu noru nishi no umi

on purple clouds
when will I set sail?
western sea

In mythic terms, the western sea separates this world from the Pure Land. The ocean, then, is a barrier between this world and the next, keeping Issa separate from his beloved mother.

Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

OUR VALLEY

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts
saying the mountains
have no word for ocean,
but if you live here
you begin to believe
they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one,
like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours.
Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in,
and the men
who carved a living from it
only to find themselves
carved down to nothing.
Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Philip Levine

(c) copyright 2011 Philip Levine

MOTORCYCLE CRASH

DYING MAN (inner voice): Don't look at me so stupidly! Haven't you seen anyone croak before? Shit, is it this easy? I'm lying in a puddle, stinking like an oil tanker. I can't really end up here like a cow shit! Everything so clear! How they stand there gawking at me. The oil puddle...

DYING MAN (Inner voice): Karin, I should have told you yes-terday... This thing got out of control. ...I'm so sorry. Karin! Now I'm lying here. I can't simply... I have to... Karin, there are so many things I still have to do! Karin, Baby, things look bad for me.

DAMIEL
(speaking for the DYING MAN):
As I emerged from the valley out of the fog into the sunshine...
The fire
at the edge of the prairie...
The potatoes in the ashes...
The boat-house
far off at the lake...

DAMIEL and the DYING MAN:
The Southern Cross,
The Far East,
The Great North,
The Wild West,
The Great Bear Lake!

DYING MAN:
The Isles of Tristan de Cunha.
The Mississippi Delta.
Stromboli.
The old houses of Charlottenburg.
Albert Camus.

DYING MAN :
The morning light.
The child's eyes.
Swimming in the waterfall...

(click to see the scene)

VOICE OF THE DYING MAN (off screen):

The flecks of the first raindrops.
The sun.
Bread and wine.
Skipping.
Easter.
The veins of leaves.
The fluttering grass.
The colors of the stones.
The pebbles on the river bed.
The table cloth in the open air.
The dream of the house...

...in the house.
The neighbor asleep in the next room.
Sunday's peacefulness.

The horizon.
The light from the room...

In the garden.
The night flight.

Biking with no hands.

The beautiful stranger.

My father

My mother.
My wife.
My child.

from Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders and Peter Handke 1

something fishy across the pond

2011-10-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

i acknowledge readily that i leave out the commentary on most posts nowadays; despite the fact that i know there are new readers all the time, and that even those who have been reading this blog for a long time, and pretty regularly, are likely to have never read the whole thing, i get tired of repeating myself. i feel didactic. nevertheless, i think some exposition is now called for.

but first.... not since edward penfield playfully stole from many of the famous artists of his day have we seen the kind of trickery of v l danvers of the work of ohara koson. for example see above; where ohara koson called his image 'carp and fly,' (note the location of the flies) danvers reiterates the theme while punning on the word 'fly'! now before ed chides me again, i must admit to the ohara images, both of them, have been flipped for illustration purposes. the arc of each fish is even quite similar.

we see this same game recreated in danvers's second 'sporting' poster; the mallards. in an experiment i tried, i was able to prove to myself that the necks and heads of the male duck in both images is the identical angle.

i was interested to learn that both artists were active during the 1920s; danvers was following, in these posters and those in the previous post, as well as those of many japanese-influenced artists and illustrators of the age, many of the elements of the japanese prints, while dropping some others. you will still see the japanese-y signatures, asymmetry and background items, but more importantly, you will get the areas of flat color while losing the outlines.

in 'small town,' you can see this even more clearly than in the examples here, but studying that one will inform your viewing of this one. my argument falls apart entirely. the closest i could come, which isn't that close, is allen seaby's, though he was earlier. (toshi yoshida also did grouse, but his are not flying, and to me they look like babies, but what do i know?

danvers' cormorant is his most realized example of japonisme. there too i could find no 'original.' his mastery of the form is now obvious. perhaps he no longer had a need to borrow.

OCCUPY EARTH

2011-10-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

small town

2011-10-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

why do train whistles, red rooftops,
and abandoned row-boats somehow
make us feel safe, and with our true
souls revealed?

SMALL TOWN

You know.
The light on upstairs
before four every morning. The man
asleep every night before eight.
What programs they watch. Who
traded cars, what keeps the town
moving.
The town knows. You
know. You've known for years over
drugstore coffee. Who hurts, who
loves.
Why, today, in the house
two down from the church, people
you know cannot stop weeping.

Philip Booth

"Small Town" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. © Penguin Group, 1999.

1804

.山里や秋の雨夜の遠歩き
yamazato ya aki no ame yo no tô aruki

mountain village--
a rainy autumn evening's
long walk

Issa, translation by David Lanoue

images that should make us feel
lonely instead make us feel whole
and bathed in golden light.

PASSION FOR SOLITUDE

I'm eating a little supper
by the bright window.
The room's already dark,
the sky's starting to turn.
Outside my door,
the quiet roads lead,
after a short walk, to open fields.
I'm eating, watching the sky—
who knows
how many women are eating now. My body is calm:
labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.

Outside, after supper,
the stars will come out to touch
the wide plain of the earth.
The stars are alive,
but not worth these cherries,
which I'm eating alone.
I look at the sky, know that lights
already are shining
among rust-red roofs,
noises of people beneath them.
A gulp of my drink,
and my body can taste the life
of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.
A small dose of silence suffices, and everything's still,
in its true place, just like my body is still.

All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course:
a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness—
I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of
water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant,
and each stone,
lives motionlessly.
I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.

The night doesn't matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn't enough for itself,
it needs too many companions.
Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it's in charge.

Cesare Pavese

translation by Geoffrey Brock

"Passion for Solitude" from Disaffections:
Complete Poems 1930-1950.
Copyright © 2002 by Cesare Pavese.

it's neighborhood,
being tucked into bed,
the smell of fresh bread,
the human voice,
the slam of the
refrigerator door....

1805

.里の火の古めかしたる月夜哉
sato no hi no furumekashitaru tsuki yo kana

the village fires
old and familiar...
a moonlit night

Issa, translation by David Lanoue

High Wire Venus

2011-10-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

OFF A SIDE ROAD NEAR STAUNTON

Some nothing afternoon,
no one anywhere,

an early autumn stillness in the air,

the kind of empty day you fill
by taking in

the full size of the valley
and its layers leading

slowly to the Blue Ridge, the quality of the country,

if you stand here long enough, you could stay

for, step into, the way a landscape, even on a wall,

pulls you in, one field at a time,
pasture and fall

meadow, high above the harvest, perfect

to the tree line, then spirit clouds and intermittent

sunlight smoky rain riding the tops of the mountains,

though you could walk until it's dark
and not reach those rains --

you could walk the rest of the day into the picture

and not know why,
at any given moment,
you're there.

Stanley Plumley

Stanley Plumly is the author, most recently,
of "Posthumous Keats:
A Personal Biography"
(Norton, 2008).
All rights reserved.

will you still love me?

2011-09-30T07:22:00.001-07:00

LUCKIES

The loop of rusty cable incises
its shadow on the stucco wall.
My father smiles shyly and takes
one of my cigarettes, holding it

awkwardly at first,
as if it were
a dart, while the yard slowly
swings across the wide sill
of daylight.
Then it is a young man’s
quick hand

that rises to his lips, he leans against the wall,
his white shirt open at the throat,
where the skin is weathered, and
he chats and
daydreams,

something he never does.

Smoking his cigarette,
he is even
younger than I am,
a brother who
begins to guess,
amazed, that what
he will do will turn out
to be this.

He recalls the house
he had
when I was born, leaning against it
now after work, the pale stucco
of memory, 1947.

Baby bottles stand near the sink inside.
The new wire of the telephone, dozing
in a coil, waits for the first call.

The years are smoke.

Reginald Gibbons (also born 1947)

what is hidden; what is shown

2011-09-27T20:00:00.001-07:00

COUTURE

1. Peony silks,
in wax-light:
that petal-sheen,

gold or apricot or rose
candled into-
what to call it,

lumina, aurora, aureole?
About gowns,
the Old Masters,

were they ever wrong?
This penitent Magdalen's
wrapped in a yellow

so voluptuous
she seems to wear
all she's renounced;

this boy angel
isn't touching the ground,
but his billow

of yardage refers
not to heaven
but to pleasure's

textures, the tactile
sheers and voiles
and tulles

which weren't made
to adorn the soul.
Eternity's plainly nude;

the naked here and now
longs for a little
dressing up. And though

they seem to prefer
the invisible, every saint
in the gallery

flaunts an improbable
tumble of drapery,
a nearly audible liquidity

(bright brass embroidery,
satin's violin-sheen)
raveled around the body's

plain prose; exquisite
(dis?)guises; poetry,
music, clothes.

2. Nothing needs to be this lavish.
Even the words I'd choose
for these leaves;

intricate, stippled, foxed, tortoise, mottled, splotched -jeweled adjectives

for a forest by Fabergé,
all cloisonné and enamel,
a yellow grove golden

in its gleaming couture,
brass buttons tumbling to the floor.

Who's it for?
Who's the audience
for this bravura?

Maybe the world's
just trompe l'oeil,
appearances laid out

to dazzle the eye;
who could see through this
to any world beyond forms?

Maybe the costume's
the whole show,
all of revelation

we'll be offered.
So? Show me what's not
a world of appearances.

Autumn's a grand old drag
in torched and
tumbled chiffon
striking her weary pose.

Talk about your mellow
fruitfulness! Smoky alto,
thou hast thy music,

too; unforgettable,
those October damasks,
the dazzling kimono

worn, dishabille,
uncountable curtain calls
in these footlights'

dusky, flattering rose.
The world's made fabulous
by fabulous clothes.

Mark Doty

From Atlantis by Mark Doty, published by Harper Perennial.
Copyright © 1995 by Mark Doty.

why i don't believe in hell

2011-09-25T11:20:00.001-07:00

my father kinda looked like a mixture of mayor bloomberg and alexander nikolaevich yakovlev (photo composit). today would have been his 99th birthday, if he had not died in 1980.

he smoked a pipe, sometimes cigarettes, he had a manhattan every night when he got home from the office. with a cherry. and he played 'fur elise' on the piano. he bought himself an eames chair, and was always the second son, the one least favored.

as a pup, he had done some disc jockeying on the radio, and he was the best dancer i ever met.

when i came home from dates, he would be sitting at the dining room table eating corn flakes and reading the paper.

as i thought about him, new of his talents kept popping into my mind. singing 'scarlet ribbons.' acting in musicals at the jewish center -- 'captain sammy's showboat' (directed by my mother). he could draw middling good, and had wanted to go to art school, but ended up following in his older brother's footsteps to go to medical school at the university of chicago.

a month before he died, my mother's mother died. in the car on the way to the funeral he cracked jokes the whole time.

when i look at him in the tangle of my memory, i can only seem to find a mangled creature, partially melted into himself, some darkened parts that look like they might be from burns.

no, i don't think i'm seeing him now. i thinking i'm finally seeing him with clarity, he who will always be in my memory. how can one believe in hell? a man may spend some kind smiles in his lifetime but if he also places his own pain & fear & terrors onto his children with a scream and the back of a hand, he is being rightly tortured at that time.

A Crown of Autumn Leaves

2011-09-23T11:20:00.001-07:00

Our voices press
from us
and twine
around the year's
fermenting wine

Yellow fall roars
Over the ground.
Loud, in the leafy sun that pours
Liquid through doors,
Yellow, the leaves twist down

as the winding
of the vine
pulls our curling
voices—

Glowing in wind and change,
The orange leaf tells

How one more season will alter and range,
Working the strange
Colors of clamor and bells

In the winding
of the vine
our voices press out
from us
to twine

When autumn gathers, the tree
That the leaves sang
Reddens dark slowly, then,
suddenly free,

Turns like a key,
Opening air where they hang

and the winding
of the vine
makes our voices
turn and wind
with the year’s
fermented wine

One of the hanging leaves,
Deeply maroon,
Tightens its final hold, receives,
Finally weaves
Through, and is covered soon

in the winding
of the vine—

Holding past summer's hold,
Open and strong,
One of the leaves in the crown is gold,
Set in the cold
Where the old seasons belong.

Here is my crown
Of winding vine,
Of leaves that dropped,
That fingers twined,
another crown
to yield and shine
with a year’s
fermented wine.

Annie Finch

For Mabon (fall equinox), Sept. 21
copyright Annie Finch 2011

title

2011-09-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

i have to go into the hospital tomorrow and i'm scared.

i had a heart attack ten years ago, and apparently the stents need to be replaced.

i have recently been feeling poorly, so they did these big fancy tests on me and that's what they found.

i had this best friend for about 25 years, but a couple of years ago we drifted apart. but amazingly, we just became friends again, and she's going to drive me to and pick me up from the hospital. strange how these things happen.

i have to go in tomorrow, monday, at noon, for a procedure at 2:30pm. they don't put you completely asleep so you're aware of what's going on, and will remember it.

supposedly, if they turn out not to need replacing anything (they won't), i can go home later that same day, tomorrow night. as deeply as i wish to do that, i guess i more hope that they can fix me.

but this is the first night i will not sleep with ruby since we've been together, almost 5 years.

it's no accident that my anniversaries with both ruby and this blog are so close to the same amount of time. some part of my beginning it at about that time was because robert -- my cat before ruby -- had begun to die. and ruby came very shortly after he did.

but the hardest part of ten years ago was being away from home, from my garden, from my cat.

if i come back from this time feeling better,
maybe it will be a healing experience.

yellow silk @ 30

2011-09-13T11:02:00.001-07:00

thirty years ago today i came home with cartons and cartons of the first issue of my new magazine, yellow silk. cartons and cartons would be piled into my car then unloaded into the middle of my (fortunately large) second bedroom which served as my office. as would become a habit, we threw a fundraiser to pay the printer; harry the baker made a cake that looked like a magazine cover, and bunches of poets came to read their work from the magazine. since the first issue was all women (they responded to a cal for manuscripts more quickly than the guys did), we had the reading at a local women's bar, the long-gone bacchanal. the place has been called britt-marie's for years now, and they've kept the old 'stained glass' B over the door.

a funny thing happened last night. i was reading over the excerpts from the magazine that i had put online long ago, and an amazing thing happened -- i felt really proud. i hadn't read that poetry for years, i guess, and it was like it was all new to me, and i loved it, and i wanted to share it with you, despite the fact that i saw the million typos for the first time too!

so please enjoy some little bits from the 15 years that it lasted.

there are many stories, ask if you want. i just might answer you.

or go see more. Yellow Silk

by the way, please don't order anything on the website. also, to progress from page to page, the easiest way is to start on any given issue. click on any word that is underlined. this will take you to another page with work from the same issue. on that second page, in eensy tiny letters, it will say, 'go to next issue' (or something like that. if there is no underlined word, the 'go to next issue' will be on that table of contents page.

don't call me rosie!

2011-09-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

why are we always flowers? my love is like a red red rose. no she's not. a rose is a rose, and she is a person. she will not wilt within a week. she will not lose her color, turn brown, and dry out. and you know that if she does, max factor will have the solution she's looking for.

but since she is actually a living human, why should she? why is it so important to keep the appearances: colors, glows, silken-like qualities of youth? because why are women here but to reproduce.

no, i don't believe that, even if it's true. it's just that the older i get, the more a biological determinist i seem to get. to not be living your life as a woman whose main goal is to family and reproduce, is to consciously depart from your genes.

and face social retribution when you do. though defining one's self should be everyone's own private prerogative, it simply is not. each individual is a part of a larger social animal, and it is that animal's job to mind the bits and pieces. anyone who might question, or cause another to question, is a "Bad Influence." (maybe even mentally ill)

why must jennifer lopez be seen in a different outfit every week when she judges american idol? even i feel that pressure, even if i'm just going to the store. is it true, as i tell myself, that i just can't stand repetition, or something else, something much darker and inbred?

and we are not allowed to do anything that marks us as uninterested in reproducing. how often will you see an ad on tv telling you that you look beautiful in white hair, why change it? and in fact, where does it say that you needn't be beautiful?

i admit it, i'm
the odd one out. asperger's gives one distance. if you don't "get" the rules, you are more likely to notice their forms. but that does not invalidate my questions. is there a future role for women in which to be called a red, red rose would be an insult?

at one point,
will we be free enough to live without expectations? or are the expectations a necessity if our species is to survive? like sand through an hourglass, an individual life passes along its genes and then moves on. anyone who wants to stop it can must pay the price. and all this goes on beyond our ken and beyond our reach.

until someone reaches out to pluck that flower.

Of Woodblocks and Puppets

2011-09-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

German-born Gustave Baumann found his way to Brown County [Indiana] in the early part of the 20th century via the Art Institute
of Chicago and a return to Germany. After studying printmaking in both locales, Baumann set up a press in a vacant store in Nashville and
there perfected his skills.

A trip into Brown County to investigate art possibilities led the artist to tell a biographer that "Brown County was easy to commute to, and I found that restful something we all yearn for. Life was simple. I could stay two months for $100."Baumann leased or rented the rooms over Genolin's drug store—four rooms for $4 a month.

During his time in Brown County, Baumann was commissioned by Indianapolis based children's poet James Whitcomb Riley to create
12 illustrations for his book, "All the Year Round." "I did the book,
but not knowing the rules of the game, it turned out to be a Baumann book with Riley text. It consequently was a dismal flop," Baumann
told a biographer.

"I liked the place," Baumann said. "Someone has said that literature and art flourish wherever people give themselves time to think. Indiana was one of those places. The artist was accepted with amused tolerance. As such, he could move around freely without being exploited as a strange creature who radiated publicity value. But art is a kind of tyrant. It pushes you around. It came to me dressed up in wanderlust."

The same wanderlust that brought the printmaker to Brown County
is the same wanderlust that took him away. He once wrote, "Instead
of being tied to a musty museum, the artist likes to herd in colonies where life and landscape are a source of inspiration. There are
many of these all over the United States. Some of them have worn themselves out. Of those that persist, Provincetown, Brown County, Indiana, Taos, New Mexico, and Laguna Beach, California, are perhaps the best known."

It was New Mexico that lured him from Brown County. The Baumann's home in Santa Fe became a meeting place for all kinds of poets and writers. "In fact, the whole artistic community met there," said one
of their friends. "Jane had a sort of open house tea every single day,
and anyone who wanted to could come and join. She was a wonderful cook and baker."

Baumann had started making marionettes around 1930 for a change from prints and oil painting. "He never worked them, though," said his daughter Ann. "He couldn't coordinate speaking and manipulating them. Mother could and he advised." Over time the collection of carved wooden marionettes grew to about 60, with three modeled after Ann, Jane and Gustave himself. And the family and their friends began putting on puppet shows in the Baumanns' living room. They also took the show to various schools, to Colorado, and to Albuquerque.

The artist's talented work in the wood for blocks for his prints carried over into his marionettes, leading one of his New Mexico friends to say, "They're remarkable things, just as artistic as his wood blocks. He loved working in wood, was a master carver, and this is where he put his creativity. They [the marionettes] brought an awful lot of enjoyment
to a lot of people."

Joanne Nesbit
Our Brown County

see more of these wonderful marionettes

work your best!... (for me?)

2011-08-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

conditions in the US during the twenties, the period during which all four of these poster series were published. also, it was the period which resembled conditions here today in many ways.

these four series, two of which are new to me, all of which seem to me to have very different views of human nature. the mather posters are boosters, 'you go get'm, guys!' the bill jones ones are frequently scolding. the a.h.brand ones, which are to be found nowhere but swann's aug 3 2011 catalogue, at least not that i could find; they are elegant and kind -- more reminders than instructions.

the buzza mottos are so charming. i've come across them now and then over the years, but they are only rarely photographed well enough to reproduce here. and their favorite subject is mothers. still, they are also boosters. see finsbry's flickr for more.

the thing is, why did they all appear at just that moment? this was the 'roaring twenties,' and a time in our history in which the separation between the rich and the poor was devastatingly vast, much like it is today.

power was held by the few, and rights were being stolen from their workers. the lopsidedness toppled the economy, again, much as it has today. workers with no money in their pockets can't consume, and without consumers a business will fail.

so why these posters at that moment, and what, if any- thing, can they teach us about today?
i just can't see myself clear to understand.
are they morale boosters handed out instead of power?
are they the greedy trying to squeeze just that penny more?
(if we're going to fund FEMA we have to cut social security!)

what do you think?

read more
• heller posters
• international posters

involved in the minutiae

2011-08-18T20:24:00.001-07:00

(interview between ada calhoun & michael lewis, here)

Ada: I was taken aback by some of the things in [your new book, Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood], like, if I can read you one quote: "At some point in the last few decades the American male sat down at the dining room table with the American female, and let us be frank, got fleeced." I was shocked by that, because when I look it our generation, it seems like men are happy to play their part.

Michael: Ah, well, you must know different men than me.

Ada: I think I do.

Michael: Bear in mind that most of the men I'm surrounded by are in Berkeley, California. So, the men I know are very much in the left end of the spectrum. Relatively highly involved dads. On the one hand, it is completely true that there are a lot of men who take great satisfaction in being involved in the minutiae and messiness of actually raising children. But, it is a much smaller universe of men who take any pleasure in the newborn stage. Men, I think, tend to engage once they start to be able to play with the thing and talk to it and have some kind of communication.

But, even so, there is just a wealth of bitching and moaning about the responsibility that I hear and it never really gets voiced. In the universe I'm talking about it's men who are potentially breadwinners at the same time that they are having all these new caretaking responsibilities and they don't have a real mental model to use....

But I do think that there is just enormous friction about who is supposed to do what. I think, actually, that when men are made to do things they don't want to do, like take care of a child, which they assumed the mother was going to take care of — I think they can get enormous rewards from it, but nevertheless it can be messy getting to that place.

(continued here)

corporations are not people, my friend

2011-08-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

THIS IS A PERSON

THESE ARE PEOPLE!

THESE ARE PEOPLE TOO!

THIS IS A PERSON

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

beauty

2011-08-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

how strong is beauty. it will utterly transport you. it will teach you lessons about being still. sometimes you can even fear its power, its power to turn you into someone else, its power to change you forever. but whatever your fear, you have no choice in the matter. if it is too frightening, you can look away, but the power of beauty to change you is the gift your soul desires.

Emil Orlik & Gustav Mahler:

2011-08-08T14:45:00.001-07:00

A MEETING OF MINDS
Born in the Czech Republic (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in the mid-nineteenth century to middle-class, German-speaking Jewish parents, Emil Orlik (1870–1932) shares many biographical details with Gustav Mahler. Even so, these similarities could be overlooked as insignificant if it weren’t for the parallel paths that these artists took in later life, which eventually led to a hasty friendship and a mysterious falling-out. Orlik’s father was a respected tailor and the family lived in Prague near (but significantly not in) the Jewish ghetto. Like Mahler’s family, they were proud of their success and hopeful for the future. Orlik would later, like Mahler, also show a fascination with his Jewish heritage, producing lithographs (1897–1904) of everyday life in the Jewish quarter: crumbling buildings, somber bearded men, and the famous ancient Jewish cemeteries (still a must-see for visitors to Prague), with tombstones jutting from the ground like broken teeth.

Like Mahler, Orlik was confident in his calling as an artist and sure of his ability, but his talent was not immediately realized. In 1889, Orlik obtained permission from his father to study art in Munich; however, he was denied admission to the renowned Academy of Fine Art there, so he enrolled in a private art school. After proving his talent, he was accepted at the Academy, although he soon grew exasperated with the conservatism of the professors and left in 1893 to work in modern, naturalist styles popular at the time. The years at the Academy, however, had sparked an interest in him that would guide his life’s work: printmaking.

During the next few years, he began to develop his career, contributing work to journals such as Jugend (“Youth”) and, in 1897, the prestigious journal Pan, where he published his first woodcuts. The art of the woodcut became a passion for him, and in 1898 he went on his first trip abroad — to England, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Paris — where he had the opportunity to see many Japanese color woodblock prints. Japan had opened to the West in 1854 and there had been a steady stream of artifacts from the East since that time. The Impressionists (e.g., Whistler, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Cassatt) had embraced Japanese art more than two decades before Orlik discovered it, but trends moved slowly and the German/Austrian artistic tradition was only beginning to feel the waves of the Japanese tsunami that hit Western art at the end of the nineteenth century.

What Orlik saw in museums and print shops, particularly in Paris, was new and exciting to him. Along with the other artists who formed the Secession in Vienna, he was looking for an utterly new, uncorrupted form. Internationalism also appealed to Secession artists: “We want an art without xenophobia. The art of other nations should stimulate us and show us what we ourselves are; we shall appreciate it, and admire it if it is worth admiring; but imitate it we shall not.” Orlik’s aesthetic held true to this declaration.

In 1899, Orlik became a member of the Viennese Secession and began showing works in that city, and in February 1900 the Secessionists exhibited a collection of Japanese art, which gave Orlik a “foretaste” of the trip he would soon take. Japanese art had, by this point, been taken up wholeheartedly by Secession artists, as evidenced by Gustav Klimt’s vertical compositions and use of gold leaf and print patterns, Oskar Kokoschka’s interest in Japanese fans, and Carl Moll’s use of woodcut and simplified landscape. ... Given the Mahlers’ place in Viennese high society, it seemed almost inevitable that they should come to know Emil Orlik, but this acquaintance would have to wait, as Orlik was headed off on a two-year trip to Japan (1900–1901).

The purpose of this trip, aside from satisfying a Wanderlust he seemed to retain throughout life, was to learn the actual techniques of Japanese color woodblock printing from the source. Concerned that artists of the Jugendstil may have “gotten it wrong,” he sought an authenticity of style, subject, and technique that other Secession and Impressionist artists seemed to disregard. Known as a friendly extrovert, he seems to have met and studied with many of the Japanese practitioners at the time. In this remarkable period, the Japanese were as avidly interested in the West as Westerners were keen on Japan. Japanese journalists published some of Orlik’s prints in their newspapers at the same time that Orlik was collecting original Japanese artwork to bring back to Europe. After returning from this trip, Orlik published a collection, Aus Japan (1904), and also showed sixteen works at the 13th Viennese Secession Exhibit.

It was after his return from Japan that Orlik first met Mahler. The Czech conductor Josef Stransky remembered a meeting between Mahler and Orlik in a cafe in Prague:

“The Master agreed to be introduced to Orlik and during the lively conversation Orlik sketched a drawing of Mahler’s head on a postcard. Mahler was delighted and sent the card to his sister right away and invited Orlik to visit him in Vienna. So that evening was the inception of Orlik's widely admired etching."

Stransky assumed that this encounter in 1904 was the first meeting between the two, but now it appears, according to Henry-Louis de La Grange, that Mahler and Orlik already knew each other. The famous charcoal drawing and the etching date from 1902 and 1903, respectively. Orlik also encountered Mahler at an April 14, 1902, gala for the Secession’s Beethoven Exhibition, where Mahler conducted a choral passage from Beethoven’s Ninth (“Ihr sturzt nieder, Millionen?”), transcribed for six trombones. Like Klinger’s sculpture and Klimt’s frieze, Mahler’s refashioning of Beethoven was a liberal interpretation; however much traditionalists may have winced to behold this spectacle, the artists were upholding their motto: “Down with borrowed styles,” which resonates with Mahler’s own epithet “Tradition is slovenly.” At a banquet in honor of Max Klinger that night, “There were numerous speeches, and Emil Orlik, recently returned from Japan, gave a toast in spoof Japanese.”

Orlik’s portraits of Mahler are the finest that exist of the composer, and are really exemplary by any standard. Although Orlik never used a “true” Japanese style (he retained central perspective, for instance), he effectively chose aspects of Japanese design to incorporate in his work. One critic remarked of Orlik’s exhibit, “He is today the most Japanese European. But he is still European.” Orlik’s skillful use of Eastern techniques is evidenced by the simple, elegant lines indicating Mahler’s upper body in the etching. The graceful linear motion complements the meticulous detail of the face. In addition, in the charcoal drawing Orlik uses a calligraphic pen-and-ink style to lend the portrait a fluidity that evokes the momentum and force of Mahler’s personality.

For some reason that I have been unable to discover, relations soon soured between Mahler and Orlik. One year after their meeting in the Prague cafe, Mahler wrote a letter to Alma indicating that his enthusiasm for Orlik had waned. Alma picked up on the shift in emotion, as in this letter to Mahler:

“Yesterday evening I went alone into the 'Blue Star' and I met the unavoidable Orlik (whom I always meet, whereever I go). Naturally I sat beside him and let him speak his mind. What he had to say about Japan and China ‘I acknowledged.’ He is however a confused fellow and described the whole thing not from his own perspective, but rather from some reports he got somewhere . . . Then he talked about his trip to Provence and what he had learned artistically there. He painted very differently since then—landscapes and the sun became his teachers, and it was so uplifting to wander in new artistic territory. I suspect that he took photographs there and traced pictures of Cezanne and Van Gogh. Besides that, I have the impression of him as a good-natured and honest (in the bourgeois sense) man.”

It will take more research to discover or even speculate about the reason for this sudden and drastic shift in relations between Orlik and the Mahlers. Certainly they ran in similar circuits in society and shared similar interests: the theater (Orlik later designed costumes and sets in Berlin) and the Far East. Mahler’s own fascination with Eastern philosophy and music, which produced Das Lied von der Erde, are rooted firmly in this period around 1900–1902, in which the influence of Asian art and music was flourishing in the trend-setting circles of Viennese artistic elites. Orlik, one of the first Western artists to actually visit Japan, was very important in contributing to the dialogue about Japanese art and how it could and should be incorporated into the “new style” that was being born in the salons and coffeehouses of Vienna.

Emil Orlik moved to Berlin in 1904 and took a post as head of the graphic art and book illustration department at the Academy of the Museum of Applied Arts. He remained there until his retirement in 1930, teaching such artists as George Grosz. In 1917, Orlik was chosen to be the only artist to document the peace talks at Brest-Litovsk. His last overseas trip in 1923 was, like Mahler’s, to New York City, which he said was harder to get used to than China. Orlik died of a heart attack in 1932, just as the Nazis were intensifying their murderous campaign against the Jews in Europe. All but one member of Orlik’s extended family perished. Despite this tragedy, however, his art remains to tell the extraordinary story — often overshadowed by the dark clouds that soon would oppress the twentieth century — of a time when “xenophobia in art” was denounced, exciting information about the world was becoming available, and a new century was unfolding in a spirit of curiosity and creativity, exploration and experimentation.

Jan Hoeper
from the Mahler Archives

for more about Emil Orlik

also thanks to anonymous for the inspiration!

disagree with awe

2011-08-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

In our narrow-minded fuss over progress -- while displaying an artistic hubris that only listens to its own voice -- we would have already reached complete bankruptcy, despite the short duration of the modern movement, if Japanese art had not served it as a pillar. With few exceptions, every innovation we wanted to achieve in the realm of natural forms here in Europe had already been done as well, or often much better in Japan -- imparted to us with a certain deviation from its national style.

In Japan all the preconditions were at hand for a tendency toward this quasi-naturalistic sort of art: not organically-arranged forms in the manner of Greek art, but rather effects with completely smooth surfaces; instead of monumental structures, playful, simple forms whose only function is to be held in the hand and to be tenderly observed by an individual.

A rich technique, and nonetheless one which at times rests in the quality of handwork. A loving examination of nature, a measured stylization, one that has been practiced for centuries. A sensitivity for color, taken to its extreme, besides a good deal of plain childlikeness, a joy in the bizarre, in the wonderful ways of nature. It is an art from which one can learn an infinite amount and which could just as easily lead one astray.

Whoever is used to see art forms as something not coincidental -- as we should all be, the devotees of Winkelmann's art history -- who ever sees them instead as the necessary historical result of the general development of art, will find it unlikely that our century, which experienced a complete crisis of all views and lifestyles as a result of the appearance of the natural sciences, would be able to create its artistic expression purely from the reserve of the past.

A period that sets itself so strongly apart from the past, must, and will create for itself a new sphere of shapes, which one day will be recognized as the style of the natural scientific age.

Julius Lessing, "What's Modern in Art?" Berlin, 1898

here i offer a few more images from the book/exhibition in my last post, and some extrapolations. we've seen before the design inspirations that were the triangle of glasgow, vienna, and poiret with japan but more is offered: the hoffmann at the bottom left, the moser in the middle, and the japanese on top. was the comb made for expert? we'll never know, but if it was, it might lessen its inspirational value. we'll never answer these questions. as we've seen, people constantly disagreed at the time as well. but nobody can disagree with awe.

see the whole year of 1898 of "ver sacrum" from which many of the images these two posts were taken.

Verborgene Impressionen : Hidden Impressions

2011-07-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

these images and the comments below are from the exhibition and catalogue of the same name as this post, held in vienna in the spring of 1990. again, we can see how the perspective and the artwork itself changes from country to country.

[commercial trade between austria and japan did not begin until 1869, as no treaties had yet been signed. at last the ships from austria were in japanese waters, and mercantile interests were being pursued.]

Art was included in their planning only to a minor extent -- at first. Export, import, commercial profits in the account-books, that was the motto. However, through its industrial products and handicrafts, Japan, only just linked to world trade connections, provided this very thing -- art, and did so in a fascinating way. In massive numbers and for prices that were as unprecedented as they were horrendous, china, lacquered works, bronzes, silk, all sorts of dyed textiles and other handicrafts were leaving the country en masse.

In a remarkably short time discriminating connoisseurs and artists in the west discovered in an art which up until now had been practically inaccessible, an expression of bourgeois culture that was comparable to theirs, highly cultivated, and refined, one that would maintain the search for new means of artistic expression, and, even more important, enrich it. "In every field", summarised the preface to the catalogue of the great Japanese exhibition in the Vienna Secession in the year 1900 "new experiments were taking place, a searching and feeling for new means of expression, which nature was not going to render simply by a naive enjoyment of the world of appearances.

The intention to simplify, to find the quintessence of things became the criterion. The pioneers of art were searching for models they could build on, that they could develop within themselves. They found what they were looking for in the age-old culture of the East, in the art of the Japanese." "Japonisme", as it was called, meaning the sum total of all the very varied influences of Japanese style, moved in to conquer western creativity and sensibility.

First of all it overtook western Europe and then, after a certain lapse of time, moved from there to central and eastern Europe as well. In its more narrow sense Japonisme is a phenomenon that can be explained according to its own aesthetic principles; indeed, taking an example from the graphic arts or painting, this can be seen most clearly wherever the accustomed, almost mathematical exactness of perspective is sacrificed in favour of an emphasis on decorative surface. As well as this, the fact that the ornamentation can be repeated arbitrarily may well diminish individuality but the elements of timelessness and universality this adds are equally valid.

Europe discovered these principles most of all in the woodcuts and engravings, which were cheap and easy to get hold of. In spite of strict decorative composition and an equal emphasis on line, form and colour in these works the whole area of the page, whether painted on or left free was endowed with the utmost vitality. Exterior characteristics, such as the choice of extremely wide or high formats or fan-forms, which would have been incomprehensible without the Japanese were eagerly exploited by our artists as well.

This art, which had spread all over Europe, which had been welcomed mostly with exultation but also with occasional biting criticism, had become a special stylistic medium enabling it to satisfy not only the expressive needs of many artists, but also to correspond to a certain "Zeitgeist" in public taste. For Japonisme was more than just the transference of aesthetic feeling into works of art; above all it was a phenomenon in the history of intellectual development and taste.

In its broadest sense Japonisme was encountered in almost every livingroom, an exotic spice which had become an integral part of almost every area of domestic and social life, whether in the sugar and tea tins decorated with Geishas, or mocca-cups from Karlsbad and Schlak-kenwerth, who set themselves up in competition with Imari and Satsuma; from ball-dresses a la kimono to postcards with blond "musumes"; from travelogues and novels, written by more authors than one Loti, to the first collections of Japanese art in our museums; from Viennese and Budapest educated classes, the Bildungsbiirger, citizens hungry for culture, who became Japan-connoisseurs and fanatics; from artists between Bleiberg and Prague, who wanted to see Nikko and Kyoto with their own eyes, to the dozens of manufacturers who produced Nippon knick-knacks for mantlepieces and glass-cabinets.

"Japonisme" was a motley if pretty miscellany, where understanding and imagination, art and kitsch, the genuine and the pretended were often uneasy bedfellows; out of this emerged, in its own radical and independent potency, the art of the Viennese Secession, or of a Gustav Klimt, and went on to attain an overriding significance; all this came from the same soil and humus, the intensive cultivation of the fashion for things Japanese.

Peter Pantzer, Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst - 1990

the music of wallpaper

2011-07-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

while actually reading the text in my copy of 'hidden impressions,' the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at the MAK in vienna, of instances where the japanese influenced the austrian arts. we'll get back to that catalogue in a future post, but for now, let's follow this little adventure.

i was wildly taken with the two images of japanese endpapers, the cranes on the salmon background and the puppies. sure i had seen a western equivilent, i searched for days to no avail. all of the western endpapers, even those from childrens' books, were, to my eyes anyway, far more rigid by design.

refusing to give up, i started perusing some others of my books. i double-checked the catalogue and all of my other books about design in vienna at that time: nothing. why, i asked myself, and still do, have japanese endpapers in the catalogue with no japonisme version for comparison?

i started on my other books about paper, wallpaper, and had myself an aha moment. i recalled having noticed so many times how actually un-equivalent these matches-up usually are. rarely does a japanese design form get re-interpreted in some into something comparable back and forth. usually, it, like some inherited traits, skips a generation.

but once i found these, not only didn't they surprise me, but they gave me deeper understanding in both sides of the equation. first, we've discussed the lesson that the west learned that caused them to question the validity of any differences between art, decoration, and craft.

no one embraced this concept more strongly than the nabis, for whom there was no less a creative act in creating wallpaper than in painting a painting. much of what we know as paintings are actually bits of a wall-hanging or a screen (see here), but even when the item was a painting itself, it was covered with wallpaper, and, or, the sort of design that hangs in an invisible balance between subject and surround.

in fact, the more one looks at the work of the nabis (here represented by maurice denis, pierre bonnard, and vuillard), the more one sees rhythm, pulse. these pieces do not make a statement, they make a song.

and the songs have continued out in ever widening circles. whistler sued over it; the right to see a surface as something other than flat, the right to name a painting a symphony, a rhapsody, a song.

ワードが広がっている

2011-07-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

if you google-image emile reiber, you will find only, or almost only, items of domestic use and decor, clocks, vases, and the like covered, each of them, with gorgeous, elaborate, asianesque embellishments. preceding these, however, was leiber's Premier Volume (of which, as far as i could see, there was no Deuxieme) of his albums.

following, you will find a lame, google assisted, translation of a bit of Le Japonisme, the catalogue for l'Orsay's landmark exhibition of the same name in 1989. i hope the translation makes some sense, and will gladly provide the french to anyone who asks.

In this time of new explorations, style-books for artists began to appear. These presented samples of Japanese ornament for craftsmen to study, or simply copy, thus adding to their repertoires examples of the Japonesque: The books featured replicated objects, as in Albums-Reiber, or, more often, the designs of objects or books found in valuable collections.

An attempt was made as well to feature each in its original context. The artists and designers who created the style-books had as a goal the reproduction of the arts of one spot of the world that they may travel off in any and all unexpected directions.

Japanese art, rapidly becoming more and more popular, began to become the subject of books.

In 1877, the first volume of Albums-Reiber appeared. Emile Reiber, a Japonisant from the start, choose almost half of his images from the items of daily life in the Japanese culture, like tea, combs, or items in bronze.

He also featured caricatures drawn from the Manga of Hokusai (see the little mice), which quickly found themselves being used to decorate plates in the factory Vieillard à Bordeaux. Wisely, Reiber gives these Hokusai manga the figurative title of Encyclopedia so as to ensure that they will be appreciated as valuable for as long as interest in Japonisme continued.

It was also regularly reprinted in Japan. After 1880 M. Blanc du Vernet published a series of pieces on Japanese art, and in 1876 the painter Gustave Moreau did the same.

There are also, in Reiber, entries about Japanese costume; a note on one reads "the head-covering of silken crepe in turquoise blue, recalls the fashionable women of Brittany," thus adding important context. That context can be seen easily in the work of the artists of Pont-Aven, Gauguin or Sérusier, when they paint the Breton in the manner of the Japanese.

In the 1880s, collections devoted solely to Japanese motifs multiplied; editions appeared from Thomas Cutler and George Audsley (A Grammar of Japanese Ornament), and Christopher Dresser (Japan, its Architecture, Arts and Art-Manufacture).

Among the other early books covering Japanese art history were Louis Gonse's L'Art Japonaise in France in 1883, and William Anderson's The Pictorial Arts of Japan in London in 1886. The apotheosis of this movement was the luxurious publication by S. Bing's "Artistic Japan," (1888-1891), a vast collection of images and short articles on Japan by the best specialists of the moment. The range of the nationalities of the contributors revealed the existence of a true international society of lovers Japanese art.

translated by me from the French essay by Genevieve Lacambre

to my eyes, generally depictions of anything japanese by one is not japanese is always marked by it's non-japaneseness. reiber's reenactments are so charming. the same, i should add could be said of any two artists of different cultures; you've seen the japanese portrayals of the westerners who barged in in the 1850s. i want to look at this more fully.

Where am I standing, if I'm to stand still now?

2011-07-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

1795

.朧々ふめば水也まよひ道
oboro-oboro fumeba mizu nari mayoi michi

in hazy night
stepping into water...
losing my way

Issa
David G. Lanoue

The season word in this haiku, oboro, refers succinctly to a hazy night of spring. In this uncertain, dreamlike light, Issa steps off a path into water. Hiroshi Kobori notes that the poet's state of mind is like the misty night. He feels insecure and bewildered, aware of the uncertainty of his own future.

According to Lewis Mackenzie, this haiku alludes to the death of one of Issa's friends, a Buddhist priest. On a journey, Issa went to visit him only to find that he had been dead for several years. Mackenzie translates the last phrase, "Ways of delusion!" See The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa (London: John Murray, 1957; rpt. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984), 30.

In Saigoku kikô ("Western Provinces Travel Diary") there is an explanatory prescript of which Shinji Ogawa offers this paraphrase: After hearing of his priest friend Sarai's death, Issa begged his replacement for a night's stay at the temple but was refused. Counting on Sarai, he had come over 300 ri (732 miles), "without a soul to lean on, going over the fields and the yards..." See Issa zenshû (Nagano: Shinano Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1976-79) 5.36.

Makoto Ueda reports that Issa found a place to stay that night "just one hundred feet away"; Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004) 33.

Debi Bender likes the repetition and alliteration in the opening phrase (oboro-oboro). To preserve this subtle music, she suggests this translation:

misty, misty moon
stepping into water
losing my way

Issa, Debi Bender

THE BROKEN SANDAL

Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
And–

Where was I going?
Where was I going I can't
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I'm
to stand still now?

Denise Levertov

revolution by simplicity

2011-07-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

Many developments in 19th century art reflect the influence of Japan. Artists such as Manet experimented with flattened forms after seeing Japanese prints. Vincent van Gogh collected hundreds of Japanese prints, and they influenced his use of brilliant colors and heavy outlines. Larger artistic movements such as Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau have a great deal of Japonisme at their root. Though the primary Japonisme craze was in the 1880's and 90's, artists and designers continued to use elements of the style for some time, particularly when dealing with Japanese themes.

With respect to book-binding, cover designers employed a variety of techniques that reflected an interest in Japanese style. In the Victorian period, covers that didn't necessarily look Japanese showed the influence through the use of asymmetrical design, strong diagonals, oriental typefaces and motives, and a variety of fill patterns.

In the move away from more gaudy Victorian covers, many designers appreciated the simplicity of some of Japanese style. Some covers mimicked the binding style of Japanese books, or Japanese paper. Others used an oriental style typeface or actual Japanese characters. Asymmetrical design continued to be popular as well as imitations of the flat Japanese landscape style. Many of the covers of books by author Lafcadio Hearn are done in these styles, reflecting his subject matter and immigration to Japan.

Certain known cover designers showed influence by Japonisme. Some of Sarah Wyman Whitman's simple elegant designs have evidence of roots in Japonisme, while others use more explicit Japanese motifs, although she herself denounced the gaudy 1880s eclectic covers that "represented a combination of bad French art mixed with Japanese art; scrolls and arabesques, which had to do with some debased form of book cover mixed with a bit of Japanese fan." Several covers by Bertha Stuart, who designed primarily between 1903 and 1911 show a strong Japanese influence as well.

not, i will admit, wholly new, but i believe all of these extraordinary images are, new to this blog. much much more at the website where these words come from, HERE. these designers, they take my breath away. see more from this blog (including links) HERE.

no wedgies either

2011-07-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

No ironic commentary on their clothing, their religion, their customs, shall be done, and no rude or insulting words shall be sent them.

We will not use the words keto (Chinese hairy) akahige (red beard), and ijin (barbaric).

One should not face them with impert- inence.

When we visit a strange house, one should be wearing clean shoes.

Foreign missionaries must be respected as equal to Japanese priests.

Avoid disturbing the games or rides strangers by throwing tiles, stones or sticks, or spitting, throwing fruit peels and scraps of cigars on trains or boats where you find them.

oddly, these words appear just under that lovely photo of the horikiri iris garden. if there is a larger context, neither my french skills nor my translating (google) patience give me any real context. it may surprise you (it surprised me) to learn that the photograph was taken in 1915, and hiroshi yoshida's print of the same place is from 1928. and the book is HERE.

firebird

2011-07-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

FLAMINGO WATCHING

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings
a city’s worth
of furbelows.
She seems

unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,

and flexible to the point
of oddity. Perched on

those legs,
anything she does
seems like an act. Descending
on her egg or
draping her head

along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous

to convince an audience
she’s serious.
The natural elect,
they think,
would be less pink,

less able to relax
their necks,
less flamboyant
in general.
They privately expect
that it’s some

poorly jointed bland
grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

Kay Ryan

hanging

2011-06-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

i'd been considering this post for a good while now, smart and politically savvy, with videos that make today's washing machines look like miraculous sea creatures, and doing laundry appear similar to dancing the ballet. oh give me a break, i'd think. a chore is a chore. etc. then i saw this poem, and my vision was changed.

THE WASH

A round white troll with a black, greasy
heart shuddered and hummed "Diogenes,
Diogenes," while it sloshed the wash.
It stayed in the basement, a cave-dank
place I could only like on Mondays,
helping mother. My job was stirring
the rinse. The troll hummed.
Its wringer stuck
out each piece of laundry like a tongue--

socks, aprons, Daddy's shirts, my brother's
funny (I see London) underpants.
The whole family came past, mashed flat
as Bugs Bunny pancaked by a train.
They flopped into the rinse tub and learned
to swim, relaxing, almost arms and legs
again. I helped the transformation
with a stick we picked up one summer

at the lake. Wave-peeled,
worn to gray, inch
thick, it was a first rate stirring stick.
Apprenticed on my stool, I sang a rhyme
of Simple Simon gone afishing
and poked the clothes around the cauldron
and around. The wringer was risky.
Touch it with just your fingertip,
it would pull you in and spit you out

flat as a dishrag. It grabbed Mother
once--rolled her arm right to the elbow.
But she kept her head, flipped the lever
to reverse, and got her arm back, pretty
and round as new. This was a story
from Before. Still, I seemed to see it--
my mother brave as a movie star,
the flattened arm pumping up again,

like Popeye's. I fished out the rinsing
swimmers, one by one. Mother fed them
back to the wringer and they flopped, flat,
into baskets. Then the machine peed
right on the floor; the foamy water
curled around the drain and gurgled down.
Mother, under the slanting basement
doors, where it was darkest,
reached up that

miraculous arm and raised the lid.
Sunlight fell down the stairs, shouting
"This way out!" There was the day, an Easter
egg cut-out of grass and trees and sky.
Mother lugged the baskets up. Too short
to reach the clothesline, I would slide down
the bulkhead or sit and drum my heels
to aggravate the troll (Who's that trit-

trotting...) and watch.
Thus I learned the rules
of hanging clothes: Shirts went upside down,
pinned at the placket and seams. Sheets hung
like hammocks; socks were a toe-bitten
row. Underpants, indecently mixed,
flapped chainwise, cheek to cheek. Mother
took hold of the clothespole like a knight
couching his lance and propped the sagging

line up high, to catch the wind. We all
were airborne then, sleeves puffed out round
as sausages, bottoms billowing,
legs in arabesque. Our heaviness
was scattered into air, our secrets
bleached back to white. Mother stood easing
her back and smiled, queen of the backyard
and all that flapping crowd. For a week

now, each day, we'd put on this jubilee,
walk inside it, wash with it, and sleep
in its sweetness. At night, best of all,
I'd see with closed eyes the sheets aloft,
pajamas dancing, pillow cases
shaking out white signals in the sun,
and my mother with the basket, bent
and then rising, stretching up her arms.

Sarah Getty

From The Land of Milk and Honey, by Sarah Getty,
published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Copyright © 1996 by Sarah Getty. All rights reserved.

released

2011-06-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

RELEASE

With rod and tackle box,
I'm slogging through soft sand,

a red sun going down in the surf,
swag-belly clouds drifting in

with Ray, only two months dead,
going on about girls that summer

we studied French in Québec and
guzzled Labatts at the Chien d'Or,

about how he'll marry again, keep
at it until he gets it right—
Pas vrai?

Above the tide wrack, a woman
in a two-piece with half my years

kneels struggling in the sand
with a pillow of feathers,

one wing flapping—a pelican
tangled in fish line, treble hook

in the bill pouch,
the other in its wing.
Ray says, Ask her out for a drink

but she says,
Could you give me a hand?
I drop the tackle and secure the wing

while she croons to calm him and
with one free hand
untangles the line.

With pliers from the tackle box,
I expose the barbs and carefully clip,

a total of six loud snaps.
Then I hold
the bird while she frees
the last tangle

and we step back,
join the onlookers,
a father explaining care to his kids.

The pelican now tests his wings, rowing
in place. He looks around and seems

to enjoy the attention, just as Ray did
in bars, buying drinks and telling jokes.

But this college boy with a can of Bud
is no joke and says they watched it flap

all afternoon
from that deck on the dune.
His buddy agrees with a belch

that buys a round
of frat boy laughter.
Ray tells me the kid needs his clock cleaned

just when the pelican waddles up
and puts his soft webbed foot on mine.

He tilts his head to
catch my look, then
flapping runs into the air,
tucks his feet,

and climbs, turning over our small circle,
before heading west. Dazzled and dumb,

I'm faintly aware of the woman,
then gone,
weightless and soaring over water, looking

down on myself slogging through sand,
certain that I'm being watched,

if only by another self
who will have to tell how it happened.

Peter Makuck

From Long Lens by Peter Makuck. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Makuck.

birds of a feather....

2011-06-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

...can now

get married

in New York!

it just got better

second hand rose

2011-06-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

simultaneous with ukiyo-e, was chiyogami, printed with woodblocks, just like the prints.

one story has it that the prints were "discovered" as they were used as wrapping paper; chiyogami was created as wrapping paper!

considered as decorative rather than narrative, the collections and comments are far rarer than are those for ukiyo-e. i'll recommend some great books; if you want the whole story, it really is all over the internet.

it was used for bookbinding and toy-making as well as for wrapping gifts. when i first saw chiyogami, i felt aha! i have found the missing link.

but researching this post, at this moment in my life (of which there is always one), has opened up in me more questions than i would ever answer.

and i ask, should i always want to? the brain may wonder, and allow that to be it. does everyone have to be a scholar?

perhaps i will list some of the questions: why is all of the western design i see so orderly? do the japanese prints seem orderly to the japanese?

why do color combinations and print pairings seem so often off-kilter to my eyes; we would never wear that print with that one. see all the kimono prints. do the japanese see the west as having an odd sense of color and coordination in a look?

what about the wiener werkstatte allowed more chaos in design than other western styles of the time? why do a blog? to look things up in wikipedia or books? to parrot informative information?

why have we insisted upon answers and orderliness? have we understood anything about the japanese at all? stop thinking.

just.

stop.

don't tell me it isn't happening

2011-06-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

NEW

The long path sap sludges up
through an iris, is it new

each spring? And what would
an iris care for novelty?

Urgent in tatters, it wants
to wrest what routine it can

from the ceaseless shifts
of weather, from the scrounge

it feeds on to grow beautiful
and bigger: last week the space

about to be rumpled
by iris petals was only air

through which a rabbit leapt,
a volley of heartbeats hardly
contained by fur, and then the clay-
colored spaniel in pursuit

and the effortless air
rejoining itself whole.

William Matthews

these are the sixteen kinds of irises that grow in my garden.
the ones with their names attached DID NOT BLOOM this year.
profuse iris, with, at most, one bloom.

i called the local experts,
and they said that they're hearing this from a lot of people;
i said that in 20 years this has never happened,
and they said that they're hearing about things
that haven't happened in as long as 100 years.

Don't Tweet That

2011-06-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

People! It's a penis! Get over it!

behind 'the poster'

2011-06-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

i had seen covers of this magazine, the poster, frequently around the web, and in my books, but no amount of searching seemed to turn up much of anything besides these hints. slowly but surely, i would collect one here, one there, whenever i'd come across them; suddenly, what did i know but that i had collected the cover images of most of them! much to my surprise! but not only that, i was taught once again, google something today, you don't find it, google it again tomorrow: one can now find the entire text of every article in the magazine's history (and all the visuals with paid services)!

so here, straight from the november 1898 issue of the poster:

JAPAN & POSTERS by CHARLES HIATT

IF imitation be the sincerest form of flattery, Japan, in matters of art, is now the most flattered nation in the islands, seen from this distance, seems world. Not so long ago, the appreciation of Japanese art was confined to a handful exquisitely informed amateurs such as the De Goncourts, and to a few artists, amongst whom Whistler was incomparably the most distinguished. Nowadays the cult of things Japanese has spread not only to Kensington, but even to Clapham and Brixton, and one would find it difficult to discover any self-respecting villa residence in London in the decoration of which nothing suggested the adorably graceful land of Hokusai and Outamaro.

It will be news to many people, even to some who are interested in the pictorial placard, that there are such things as Japanese posters. The life of those favoured Asiatic islands, seen from this distance, seems too idyllic to allow of the clamour of advertisement. And yet the picture-poster of is no new thing even in Japan : the idea of it, at all events, has existed there for ages, just as it existed in ancient Greece and Rome. To come to more recent times, we find that the first elephant ever introduced into Japan was advertised much as Barnum might advertise a new addition to his menagerie. The year in which the Japanese first saw the biggest of all beasts was 1729, and its arrival was heralded by a placard illustrated with a wood-cut coloured by hand. In addition to this, pilgrims to Japanese shrines were in the habit of leaving a memorial of their visit in the shape of little illustrated bills bearing their names posted on the wall of the temple, on much the same principle as the modern European cad cuts his name in the bark of a tree, or scribbles it on the wood-work of a railway carriage. Again, the Japanese theatres have for a long time been in the habit of exhibiting large panels on which are depicted the incidents of the plays performed and the counterfeit presentments of the chief actors engaged.

It is not, however, with the poster in Japan, but with the influence of Japanese art on the poster in Europe that this article is concerned. It is scarcely too sweeping to say that in some degree all the best modern illustrated placards including even those of Cheret, Grasset, and Mucha have been influenced by the Japanese colour print. In the work of some of the mâitres de affiche the influence is much more marked than in that of others. Amongst modern French poster artists none is more mordantly original than Toulouse-Lautrec : to accuse him of imitation would be merely absurd, and yet nearly all his great wall pictures show clearly that he has been a careful and ingenious student of Japanese work. At the first blush it would seem as if he owed his inspiration solely to a particular aspect of the life of modern Paris, but a closer observation reveals the fact that his best designs have much in common with those wonderful prints which are at once the delight and the despair of Occidental draughtsmen. His "Jane Avril," that delightful design which combines the hues of the crocus, the primrose, and the crimson tulip, is conceived in manner essentially Japanese.

In H. G. Ibels we have another Parisian who has drunk deeply at the well of Oriental inspiration, with results altogether charming and distinguished. Without sacrificing his individuality, he has learned not a little of his technique from the study of Japanese models. The same, in a less degree, may be said of Henri Riviere, if we may judge him by his three designs "L'Enfant Prodigue," "Le Juif Errant," and "Clairs de Lune." I might multiply on account of their subject matter they these examples almost to infinity, but could hardly fail to achieve a certain those which I have quoted are sufficient to illustrate my argument. In this connection, however, it is impossible not to mention Degas, the wonderful master of line, whose work has so much in common with that of the best Japanese artists. So far as I know, Degas has not yet made an essay in the affiche, but if he were to do so, we may be sure that he would produce something new and fascinating.

In this country the attention of the great mass of the people was undoubtedly first drawn to things Japanese by the "Mikado." Mr. Gilbert's amazingly felicitous excursion into the realms of topsey-turveydom did more to popularise the delicate picturesqueness of Japanese art and costume than a library full of learned treatises. The posters which advertised this production, though degree of prettiness, were thoroughly English, and, it must be added, thoroughly bad. Since then, however, the poster movement has taught our artists much, and when a second Japanese musical play was mounted they were able to give a much better account of themselves. They saw their opportunity and made the most of it. The "Geisha" was generously advertised, and much credit is due to Mr. George Edwardes for employing not one, but several of the ablest English designers in the preparation of posters to proclaim far and wide the delights of his new production.

The English theatrical poster a short time ago was one of the most crude, inartistic, and frequently brutal productions which the imagination and hand of man ever devised. The memory of it makes one shudder, and it is altogether pleasant to turn one's thoughts to the agreeably fantastic designs which lured us to Daly's Theatre when the "Jewel of Asia" was there for our amusement. It is almost unnecessary to say that the talent of Mr. Dudley Hardy was enlisted for the "Geisha." Mr. Hardy's versatility and ingenuity are only exceeded by his amazing industry. It is wonderful that he does so little that is bad. This Japanese bill is not amongst his happiest efforts: in manner and execution it is essentially English, and lacks the verve which made the bills for "A Gaiety Girl" so attractive. Mr. Edgar Wilson's poster for the "Geisha" was more fortunately conceived. The Japanese girl with her huge parasol is an excellent piece of work, and the colour-scheme, which includes glowing scarlet, bright yellow, dull green, and red-brown, is a very striking one. Even better is the design by Mr. John Hassall which, in the disposal of the pattern and in the graceful and naive arrangement of the details,recalls the Japanese colour print in the happiest way. In advertising the "Geisha," Mr. Will True proved himself a resourceful artist who possessed a fine sense of colour, and who was, in addition, a capable draughtsman. One of his bills is actually a Japanese print re-drawn and surrounded by a conventional border. It performed its primary business of advertising to admiration, and the wise collector will do well to add a copy of it to his treasures.

The other bill by Mr. True is graceful in line and harmonious in colour. The Japanese lettering, it should be noted, is an accurate translation of one of the songs in the “Geisha," and forms a most interesting detail of the placard. The collector has already seized upon the advertisement which Mr. Mortimer Menpes designed to advertise a recent exhibition of his pictures at Dowdeswell's. Although only in black and white, the spirited drawing of the figure makes a copy of this little poster a very desirable possession. I have before me as I write a window bill advertising a book entitled "A Cycle of Cathay," by Dr. Martin, first President of the Imperial Tungwen College, Peking. It is in black and white, and is adorned by a grotesque and vigorous Chinese figure well calculated to arrest the attention.

The foregoing is merely a rough note on a subject about which a good-sized volume might be written: it professes to be nothing more. If I have not touched upon the Japanese element in the masterly posters of the Beggarstaffs, it is only because I hope, at some future time, to be able to deal with the subject at such length as it deserves. Surely nobody will deny that the artistic invasion of England by Japan has, on the whole, been beneficial to our arts and crafts in general, and to the art of the poster in particular. It may be -I do not say it will be -that when the halcyon days of our admiration have passed, we shall not be inclined to estimate the art of Japan so highly as we do now. In the meantime, there can be no doubt that we are drawing from it much healthy inspiration, and not a few novel and entirely legitimate technical devices.

for more, see reVIEW's list of articles from 'the poster' here,
and here, for even more options.
and here, from the same people, a whole list of wonders.

the moon in the stone

2011-05-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

who, after all, is the artist? or has the concept of the individual artist always been a myth? even the most solitary of the arts, writing, is probably only solitary in a small percentage of the time; as an editor, i have seen unedited manuscripts. editors, like trans- lators, are the silent hand in the process of creating art in literature.

what about painting? there, i will admit, it's hard to imagine paintings to be group endeavors. but let's look at it from another perspective: beyond even the time when students collaborated on the master's pieces, the history of art is crammed with stories of agents and galleries telling the painters what the public wants, what they can sell.

who is the artist in these little birds, the carver of the form, or the maker of the color? for me, the color in the work of almeric walter is the revelation. turns out, though, that the two ele- ments were contributed by two different people. henri berge carved the creature, walter himself developed, or rather refined, a method of calling the most from his production of pate-de-verre.

which is just like what it sounds like, mashed then made malleable glass, poured into moulds (of the little statues) which have been painted on the inside, and then with various powders and chemicals to insist on the color to go where the artist wants. who is the artist?

pate-de-verre, marqueterie-de-verre, pate-de-cristal.... numerous glass artists were avid to employ these revived methods which had been originally popular in ancient greece and rome. to my mind, of the first, walter and berge were the undisputed mas- ters, but there were other artists who offered some wonderful pieces.

one of these was gabriel argy-rousseau, who, as far as i can determine, designed his own pieces (and is a very early user of a hyphenated last name, borrowing the 'argy' from his wife's name). i really like this piece, and some of his other work is mesmerizing, but in the end the limited pallet of both color and style, loses my interest.

francois-emile decorchment produced some spectacular pieces, his experimentation drew some fabulous results, but his output of this style was limited to far fewer than the 100 or so pieces walter and berge produced.

when i was in paris, the one item in the museum of decorative arts that most aston- ished me was a simple string of glass flowers, a necklace by lalique in which every little flower seemed to contain the light of the moon. i can't tell you how that moonlight is inserted into these pieces, nor why i am so profoundly touched by it, but it is, and i am, and for this i am grateful.

the maestro, without a doubt, despite the grand trickery of decorchement, the cool brilliant elegance of lalique, the constant charm of argy-rousseau, or the radiance of walter and berge, was, of course, emile galle.

there was no technique with which he did not experiment and excel. there was nothing in the range of art nouveau styles and techniques which he did not only make his own, but take the form to an incandescent new level.

the saddest case is that of daum, the entire clan, who were the ones to bring glassmaking to nancy. galle came to nancy a bit later, establishing his own firm, a companion and competitor to the daums. sad because while they were the first, while walter and berge started off working for him. though walter sold him the rights (non-exclusively) to his methods, to my eye, the daums were never able to quite pull it off.

daum was salieri to galle's mozart; while some of his (their) work is beautiful, as a whole it is just not a revelation of genius. but i can't presume sadness from this distance. nor envy. nor pride. what is important is that the daums created an atmosphere in which great miracles could happen, and they continue still.

i must add my gratitude for a wonderful blog
for seeing this amazing, mostly regional, work: HERE