the new math

we've already looked at dow's moment of epiphany, the realization that what he had been looking for was the book of hokusai prints right there in his hands. let's look a little closer:

dow has now met ernest fenollosa, and is studying with him at any possibility.

"In May, Fenollosa, with a certain flair he had for the dramatic, opened a door and showed Dow two magnificent screens by Okio. Dow looked at them in silence for a space and then exclaimed, 'Why can't I do that?' (The subject was a pine covered with snow.)

To this question Fenollosa replied, 'You can do it if you dare, but you don't dare.'

Dow instantly replied, 'I will dare!'

This pleased the Orientalist and he exclaimed, 'You will, you will, and I dare you to do it.'"

clearly, this was a moment of discovery for dow, of synthesis and excitement. he began seeing in a new way, one that, from his own perspective, returned to the basics in art, what all cultures had at some time done, the essential line, with everything extraneous removed.

the clarity of his vision was such that he went on to formulate, and to develop ways of teaching these insights to others, work that some say became more important than making art itself. he is credited for having changed the way art is regarded and taught in this country radically, and his methods were the staple of american art education for many years.

•

okay -- so we have a moment of person discovery, life-altering, piercing and pervasive. so.... um.... -- what about all these other guys??! was it worldwide epiphany-itis?

i went to the jung pages and apparently the descriptive phrase i wanted to use, 'collective unconscious,' doesn't actually mean what i have always taken it to mean, so that won't work, unless i am allowed to redefine (or expand its definitions) the concept to what i always thought it meant and what fits in rather well here, namely that there is some mysterious (until science figures it out) connection of every human's mind that rises and falls with the tide and explains how one idea can occur in many places at the same time.

spontaneous combustion?

wasn't this the stuff of impressionism, anyway? the release of detail in pursuit of truth?

artists throughout the west were paring down, simplifying, following ideas they had imbibed from the japanese prints; did each and every one of them feel themselves to be a solitary traveler?

it's such an interesting phenomenon-- i wish i knew the name for it.

when things change, we each want to name it, to own it, and to think we know the reason why.

a thing of beauty

for various reasons, japanese gardens spread throughout the west, and it was all due to the opening of japan. water lily gardens were planted throughout the west, the brooklyn botanical garden being the first public one, and they became a common symbol in the arts and crafts of the time.

as we've discussed here earlier, part of the impetus for this happening was the japanese gardens installed at the various world expositions which happened with regularity around the us and europe. the other reason was the emigration of a large japanese population to america's west coast. among them were students of their own culture and, probably most importantly, were gardeners.

AFFIRMATION

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall

Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Copyright © 2002 by Donald Hall. All rights reserved.

From ENDYMION

A thing of beauty is a
joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases;
it will never
Pass into nothingness;
but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
pite of despondence,
of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and
o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching:
yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty
moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of
the dooms
We have imagined for the
mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have
heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

John Keats

sunday
is
the
one-year
anniversary
for
this
blog!




























i
honestly
can
barely
believe
it.
























please let me
know what you
would like to see,













or would like
me to do for
the anniversary
(if anything!).

Brilliant moon,
is it true that you too
must pass in a hurry?
Issa

Above the veil
of mist, from time to time
there lifts a sail.
Gakoku





Nine time arising
to see the moon
whose solemn pace
marks yet only midnight.
Basho














Kisa Lagoon--
the morning sun rising
autumn dusk
Issa


Brother of W. Corwin Chase. The brothers taught themselves the art of the color woodcut in the mid 1920's using Frank Morley Fletcher's manual and produced magnificent color woodblocks for only about ten years.

the coburn and the dow

it's difficult for our eyes to even see it now, but the transition in art from depicting the literal to depicting the subjective was wildly revolutionary (as we've already seen). and this goes for photography as well as painting. for many years after their introductions both painting and photography were 'required' to reflect reality 'accurately.' at least that was true in the west.

in japan, it was different. it was just understood that the reality the artist produced was what he made of it. when arthur wesley dow suddenly realized this, supposedly while reading a book on japanese prints at the fine arts museum library in boston, it changed his work forever. he felt that this is what he had been looking for, what his work had been needing. dow realized that he did not want to be copying the prints, something he came to criticize whistler for doing, but rather creating his own style using the principles he had learned from viewing the japanese work.

it is our loss that dow spent far more time teaching, from his school in ipswitch to columbia, to the pratt institute in new york, with many stops in-between, than he did making art, and yet he bequeathed us the wonders of the work of his students.
one student, alvin langdon coburn, wasn't a true beginner when he came to ipswitch in 1903. (he would go



on to begin to photograph many of the 'men of mark' in europe the following year). he and dow became more than strictly student and teacher, as they twice went to the grand canyon together to shoot photographs, or paint.

coburn said of dow's ipswich school, "we were taught painting, pottery, and woodblock printing, and i also used my camera, for dow had the vision, even at that time, to recognize the possibilities of photography as a medium of personal artistic expression. i learned many things at his school, not least an appreciation of what the orient has to offer us in terms of simplicity and directness of composition....i think that all of my work has been influenced to a large extent and beneficially by the oriental background, and i am deeply grateful to arthur dow for this early introduction to its mysteries." the world was learning this from the japanese artists who, until being 'taught' otherwise by the westerners they were so enthusiastically trying to emulate, did not make a distinction between 'crafts' and 'art.' in europe the nabis embraced this philosophy (more on this later); additionally part of this was establishing photography's place as a fine art as well.

many thanks to pinholeman for turning me on to coburn!!

picture info: top right: 'salt marsh' dow; top left: 'moon over cherry trees' hiroshige. 2r: 'the blue dragon' dow's painting of the scene out his studio door; 2l: 'the dragon' coburn's photo of the same spot. (here i've stuck in dow's 'ipswitch meadows' because it struck me that this was essentially the same painting as his 'grand canyon'!) 3r: 'grand canyon' dow; 3l: 'grand canyon' coburn. 4l: 'oh-hashi bridge' koho shoda; 4r: 'london bridge' coburn.
blueinall