ding dong ding

VOICES OF TWO BELLS
THAT SPEAK FROM
TWILIGHT TEMPLES...
AH! COOL DIALOGUE


BUSON

MY TWO PLUM TREES ARE
SO GRACIOUS ...
SEE, THEY FLOWER
ONE NOW, ONE LATER


BUSON

NONE BROKE THE SILENCE...
NOR VISITOR
NOR HOST ...
NOR WHITE
CHRYSAN-
THEMUM


RYOTA

on the first day

first, yes. i know this is the same song as yesterday. but it's the version i wanted off this very wonderful tribute to joseph spence cd that i have called "out on the rolling sea." since it's all music from the bahamas, i thought the singers were from there too. uh, nope. blue murder.

second-- i and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of folks here in berkeley followed our annual new year's day ritual: we went shopping for calendars at the pegasus bookstore annual calendar sale: 3 for $10! what a great lot of calendars i found there yesterday. now this one from the carl larsson calendar -- what is that pink thing??! in front of the lamp.

i also found one of 'impressionist photographers'! this gertrude kasebier is hanging on my wall at this moment, and if i lean my head just a little to the left i see her there.

while i was poking around in the piles and piles of calendars, i started talking with a woman about design. turns out her father did this, among numerous other WPA posters! one of my favorites! wouldn't it be cool if our obama puts artists to work as part of new deal redux?

now, a couple of days ago, you know, the one with the crescent moons, i had an image i was going to use till i suddenly remembered it was new, as opposed to the 100 years old that it looks.

his name is john martinez.

these are both images from a long series he did about operas.

look how amazingly he manages to meld jugendstil, art nouveau and other japonisme styles.

kids

some half- formed thoughts on children, and women, and both of them in life, and both of them in art, etc.

i've been look- ing at these ima- ges, trying to find images from before 1850, thinking about how women and children are pictured.

it seems that until that date, both were formal, in western images, but in japanese images, children seemed more like children.


this one is from 1850, in case you need a reminder.


i have no conclusions at this point...




wondered about whether or not women and children were being seen as property in the west, but couldn't quite get my mind to fit around a concept of women being more 'equal' in japan....

so can you prove me wrong? have you got any guesses? any answers?

permission

i have been thinking about something for a while now; i'll share it with you, but also, i'm curious to hear any thoughts you might have.

as i've mentioned, one of the things that exposure to japanese work afforded western artists was the 'permission' to paint subjects not considered right for art before this.

we've already seen some of the lovely and profound effects utamaro's prints of mothers and infants had on mary cassatt and many others.

two other professions now open for interpretation were theater people and courtesans. one only need think of toulouse-lautrec to remember both.

but another job pictured with interesting frequency are the washerwomen of the world, the laundresses, les laveuses.

i begin to ask myself about all of this.

is it a matter of class, primarily, the distance of the lower class makes them safer to interpret?

not that many of the painters were of many higher of a class, but they had a certain status, particularly among themselves.

perhaps it's a matter of decorative appeal. there is something quite lovely of a white-bonnetted or apronned woman hanging the white wash on the hillside.

more scenic surely than a woman at a typewriter.

not to say that the upper-class was not painted, but what percentage of that was portraiture, bought and paid for?

so i love to look at these too, as well as the dancers and actresses and whores.

but is it, i ask myself, because i too easily see women in subservient positions; it's natural, known.

after all, isn't this what we're best at?

silver

PEAR TREE

SILVER dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted.



O silver,
higher than my arms reach
you front us with great mass;




no flower ever opened
so staunch a white leaf,
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver;

O white pear,
your flower-tufts,
thick on
the branch,
bring summer
and ripe fruits
in their
purple hearts.

"H. D." (Hilda Doolittle) 1886–1961

white ducks

Darkening waves –
cry of wild ducks,
faintly white.

Ocean waves are dark,
only calls of ducks
faintly lighten in the sky.

Dusk falls upon the sea as
ducks call
faintly in the whiteness.

The sea darkening . . .
oh voices of the
wild ducks
Crying, whirling, white.

The sea darkens;
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.

The sea grows dark.
The voices of the wild ducks
turn white.