Turning Japanese II

This was the state of the art of printmaking in 1850,
the dark silence before the dawn of the Japanese
influence on everything:

Then the tsunami hit: and the stories
of the means of that onslaught are many.

Perhaps, since the woodblock prints were supposedly used
as wrapping paper on ceramic imports,
they were inadvertently discovered
by painters buying ashtrays.

(That's what they told me on the sightseeing tour to Giverney.)

There were the scholars, vendors, and pilgrims,
many of whom have been discussed here, whose
curiosity drove them to Japan itself as soon
as they could. They were inspired, profoundly awed,
and they looted the back rooms for whatever they could
for museums and private collections.

Extremely important, too were the Universal Expositions
which bloomed on every shore and brought
artist, craftsman, and person-on-the-street
into direct contact with the Japanese items themselves.

To explore the variety in more depth, check out this.

There were entrepreneurs on all shores (also previously
covered here), who opened shops, started magazines (or both),
to display and sell the imports; or in Japan where they began
to marshall artists to produce what the West wanted.

Now, I'm not saying that each artist pictured here was
introduced to Japanese arts and crafts in one of these ways.
What I am saying is that every single one (and all the more
who are not featured here) was influenced none the less.

No longer was the body's content as important as were its bones.
And all of the other Japonisme-y things: flat planes of color,
asymmetry, outlines. Consciously or unconsciously,
people had begun to see differently.

The language changed, and changes still.

charles
clive

adam and noah and goose

when a japanese print shows many different animals, half of them become surreal, as we see in this image entitled 'the magician's party."

when we in the west, however, show multiple animals, we are much more realistic, showing real situations: the garden of eden, noah's ark, and mother goose.

SECOND ADAM

Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
—Genesis

When the Deluge had passed,
into my head, by twos, came the creeping things,
the horn of their jawbones shining, and the things of the air,
wing-cases breaking like clasp knives, asking their names.

Storm-light colored their passing
with an animal imminence.
They wheeled
on the pile of their plumage, in the dread of their animal being,
and rode in the ark of my head

where the possible
worked like a sea.
Nothing was given me there. Nothing was known.
Feather and scale,
concussions of muscle and fur,
the whale
and the name for the whale
rose on the void
like a waterspout,
being, and ceasing to be:

till keel clashed and I spoke: mayfly,
wood-weasel, stingray, cormorant, mole—
choosing the syllables,
holding a leaf to the torrent,
unharmed and infallible, while Creation descended, in twos.

Ben Belitt

Ben Belitt, “Second Adam” from The Enemy Joy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964). Source: Poetry (January 1964).

when brittany was a place

gauguin stressed the need for firm outlines filled with flat areas of color. some call it cloisonne-ism, but i'd call it something else.

frequently, he used the same yellow paper for his prints as hokusai used as covers for his manga.

it is said he both used and was influenced by emile bernard. it is also said that the reverse is true.

with the advent of railroads and portable painting kits, artists rushed to the edges of france, to brittany, to pont-aven and beyond. artists from throughout the world, even japan.

As an artist escaping in search of “primitivism,” Gauguin was not the first to find Pont-Aven, Brittany. According to historian Caroline Boyle-Turner, the small French village had been drawing in artists since the early 1860’s. Artists were attracted to the region because of its strong local culture and religious fervor. The village, located on the Aven river, was populated by a group who, as Boyle-Turner puts it, maintained qualities of “a cultural past that was governed less by French culture then by a fascinating amalgam of Celtic, Druidic and medieval Christian folklore.” This blend of ancient elements created an environment where artists believed they could encounter a more “primitive” and “true” people.

As Gill Perry points out, this “primitivism,” while still in existence, had diminished by the 1880’s, the peak of Pont-Aven’s popularity among artists and the period when Gauguin was working there. Technical advances in farming as well as the continuing increase in revenue from tourism had helped to move Brittany forward into the modern world and away from the timelessness artists had come looking for. Thus, Perry asserts that artists working in Brittany were more specifically recreating ideas of the “primitive” they were in search of rather than representing the true Breton culture around them. 1

gauguin said, ""Study the silhouette of every object; distinctness of outline is the attribute of the hand that is not enfeebled by any hesitation of will." is this not the heart of calligraphy as well?

"Gau- guin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, thereby dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting." again.

whatever the context, the explanation, or audience, the impressionists, the nabis, and the pont-aven circle of printmakers, benefited themselves from exposure to the prints from japan, and changed western art forever.

signals

By the 1880s, interest in Brittany.... was high and Pont-Aven was already an internationally known enclave for artists (and sightseeing city folk).....

Establishing the regional particularities of Brittany, with its special native costumes and customs, terrain and religiosity, is fundamental to an understanding of the iconography of [Nabi] painting[s].... [in which we see] Breton women's homespun costumes with their characteristic stiffly starched white headdresses, or coiffes.

Each headdress design, explicated in terms of how it identified the wearer, indicated locale and status: small headgear was worn by working class women; a widow let the flaps of her headdress hang loose; sous-coiffes were for working; and special, ceremonial coiffes were designated for holidays. 1

The Edo Period was the most gorgeous period in the history of Japanese woman's hairstyles, with hundreds of different styles existed. They differed according to a woman's age, occupation, regional background and social or marital status.

For example, a single woman wore her hair in such styles as the momo-ware or the shimada-mage. After getting married, the maru-mage, ryowa-mage or sakko styles took over, and a widow's hair was cut short to indicate her status (kiri-gami). The most well-known hairstyle for courtesans was the yoko-hyogo style, resembling a butterfly with its wings spread open. The feudal lord's waiting maids used the katahazushi style, synonymous with their position itself. 2

Clothing, hairstyles, hair ornaments, the way the obi was tied on the kimono, the way of walking were all signs of [a courtesan's] rank. 3

At first hair ornaments were luxury items affordable only by ladies of the nobility, affluent townswomen or high-ranking courtesans. By the Meiji Restoration in 1868, hair ornaments of every variety were available to women of all social classes. 4

Apart from being able to dance, sing, and play, the well-trained geisha was expected to know all the latest jokes and stories, to be quick at repartee, and an accomplished conversationist.

Her dress was as beautiful as that of the courtesan, but she wore her obi tied behind, while her head was not adorned with the enormous hair-pins of the latter. 5




A few comments on the geisha vs. prostitute question: Historically, geisha and prostitutes were completely different classes in Japan. The highest-ranking prostitutes still in existence when the first geisha emerged were "oiran", who had evolved from a previous class of very accomplished courtesans called "tayuu". These women were often quite brilliant artists and poets, and these talents were often considered much more important than sexual prowess. While tayuu were usually very beautiful, they were valued as much for their brains as their bodies. Lower-ranking prostitutes also existed--there were several ranks, arranged according to artistic accomplishment and beauty. (There is a lot of information on this in "Yoshiwara: The Nightless City", which has recently been reprinted.)

The meaning of the word "geiko" (a more recent and specific term for "geisha") is "woman of the arts". When geisha districts were first established, there were very strict rules to keep the geisha from interfering with the customers of the oiran. They had to wear less vibrant colours, and smaller and fewer hair ornaments. The pictures one sees of Japanese women wearing many large ornaments in their hair and very bright many-layered kimono are oiran or tayuu, not geisha. Geisha were not intended to take money for sex (although it was known to happen). But a very successful geisha would not really need to do that. She would earn a great deal of money just for entertaining. 6

You know how Utamaro's beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids
-- Wallace Stevens

brimful of starlight

THE INDIAN UPON GOD

I PASSED along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light,
the rushes round my knees,

My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs;
and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope,
and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles,
and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill
and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl,
and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing,

the moonbeams from His eye.

I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it,
He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made,
and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain
between His petals wide.

A little way within the gloom
a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck;
for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

I passed a little further on
and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

William Butler Yeats


(Yeats never fully embraced his Protestant past nor joined the majority of Ireland’s Roman Catholics but he devoted much of his life to study in myriad other subjects including theosophy, mysticism, spiritualism, and the Kabbalah.)

naked ladies

eating oranges

for seventeen and a half years, every time i ate an orange, i never touched it with my hands. i figured out a way to do the whole peeling and separating part through a plastic bag.

robert just hated that smell on my hands.

while i buried him, a white- crowned sparrow pecked around in the spilled niger thistle seed under the gold- finch feeder. his friend sang. i was grateful.

over time, after once leaving me the gift of a hummingbird in my bedroom slipper, robert learned not to chase and catch birds. he was very smart.

for the last seventeen and a half years it has been just me and robert living alone together. monogamous. this now feels unreal.

i am going to go and eat an orange with my bare hands.

(ohara koson; yoshitoshi; hoytema; walther klemm; carl moser; otto eckmann; carl moser again; totoya hokkei.)