russe

DUST LIGHT, LEAVES

Above autumn's burgundy
and rust,
beyond the orange groves
chafing and ruddy in the frost,
a cloud lifts into blue . . .

the west goes up all haydust, flame,
and the flat land glimmers
out to it on the day-stream--
it is Millet's sky of "The Angelus,"

that nine- teenth century sky
we have only in paintings
and in these few still moments
in their rose and amber rags.

As a child, I remember this . . .
standing on the creek stones,
dusk moving over the fields
like a ship's hull pulling away

with that first sense of loss
and release; I saw it was
all about the beginning of dust
rising into the long sky's seam.
into my own two eyes and hands.

A chalk-white moon overhead
and to the right, umber waves
of sparrows back and through
the empty trees . . .

Soon, stars will draw analogies
in the dark, but now the world
is simple as the dead leaves
glowing in this late hour,

simple as our desire
to rise lucent as clouds
in their camisoles of dust,
the cool air burning though us

over leaves drifting on a pond,
over the last memory
of ourselves looking up,
stunned as a carp blinking at the light.

Christopher Buckley

(this whole exploration in hue began when i noticed, in the metropolitan museum's collection, the oddly matching color schemes of the (at top) dagobert peche textile and the callot soeurs gown. i am not sophisticated in color theory, but i poked around until sense seemed to begun being made. the ballet russe had a tremendous influence on design in the first quarter of the twentieth century. how those became the colors of the ballet russe, and how these same colors came to become circulated around the western world, i do not know. but know that matisse as well as bakst designed their costumes, then carried the language of their colors into the world.)

paper wonder cloth wonder

what
frivolous
important
joy.

another cornucopia of treasures have opened their doors much wider than they'd done before -- the metropolitan museum of art. it just occurred to me that one no longer is required to say 'the metropolitan museum of new york' because the great museums of the world are no longer fixed in one place.

you cannot imagine how much this thrills me. for example, one of the first things i did in paris was to go to the museum of decorative arts (i'm not sure if that's what it was called then, then being 1989), go into the back rooms where the glassware wasn't so much displayed as stored in cabinets with labels on them. and i was so enthralled that i took notes so i would never forget:

"daum-- pink fleurs, silver a nuit; albert louis dammouse-- les colours l'art nouveau et iris verre; alphonse georges rayen-- red wheat a blend & lotus; galle-- very pale blue & green; pannier freres-- red carp & lotus; george despret-- les colours...." of course i remember none of these and am not even sure that i am reading my own writing correctly. what you are reading is ecstasy by glass.

having the newly increased access to the met's collections feels like that too. one (me) can spend all day viewing french clothing from the 20th century, taking sidetrips at coco chanel, callot soeurs, madeline vionnet, and the house of worth. while i wish the timeline searches were more, the whole set of fine-tuning possibilities can make finding your particular interests easy.

and look at these colors; it might as well be spring. after the first world war, design was bursting out all over, nature, color, and the drift towards abstraction had become normalized to the western eye, and there was reason to celebrate.

"after the austerity of the war years there was a move towards strong colors and a touch of the exotic." 1

these styles, these artists, are not new to this blog; chinoiserie is more mentioned in that book than japonisme, but it's traces are evident.

designers from the silver studio "show their interest in the formal clarity of japanese designs. particularly influential were the beautifully rhythmic, conventionalized patterns of woodblocks and stencils. arthur silver himself was deeply interested in japanese art, subscribing to bing's artistic japan, and collecting japanese prints and stencil sheets."

the book is quite clear in reminding us that these scrumptious designs were available only to the rich. the rich had more a taste for them; the rich could afford them. i had a similar realization in perusing the 1920s fashions on the met's site. had i been there, i might have worked where i helped design them, but i would never ever wear one. i would never hang these papers on my walls.

fortunately that ache can be assuaged with glory: that one may now devour the riches of the past, almost up close and personal, is incredibly satisfying, and takes up much less room in the closets.

inevitable

inevitable. looking back across the 20th century, it seems that every movement in art history peels smoothly off the one before, uncurling itself as though new. but it's not; it's an inevitable step on the road, given that, expect this.

modern abstract art is inevitable, given the stripped-down shape-for-shape-sake of the bauhaus years. art had been making the dive into abstraction for decades, to the point where meaning and reference become moot: sheer existence. ("just dance! don't think!"1)

art deco into bauhaus is obviously inevitable: abstraction of shape into outline lent itself to form over fantasy. clearing out, clearing away to make way for the modern age in which everyone was too busy to think a wasted thought, or waste a single movement. the line was important then, which was inevitable.

and yes, i am simplifying, but i wouldn't want to fall behind the times! also bold were the times leading into the art deco moment. art nouveau was about that line, that curve, that color, that biological reference...

and art nouveau... that was not inevitable. yes, one could say it was preceded by impressionism, well, it was preceded by impressionism, but impressionism was more about an entire field whereas art nouveau and all of its inevitable followers were about one thing: the line.

to my eyes nothing whatsoever in anything that preceded the arrival of the east predicted what was to follow. the beginning of the line which was not to end. nothing in the tiny and drab patterns of western textiles hinted of the explosion that was to come. (nor predicted was the inspiration by a zionist art nouveau designer from galicia of a british-turned-american designer named louis rhead!)

it wasn't always a linear progression; some of the textiles of the deco stylists more resembled the japanese textiles than did their earlier counterparts. but was this exuberant jump to boldness predictable? i think not!

was the festoonization of clothing with flora and fauna an expected result of incoming culture? why should it be? not a chance! or was it to be expected that practically overnight color broke the color barrier? i pale just thinking of it.

that upper-crust drawing rooms might be thrilled to adorn their walls with spiders might have raised some eyebrows, but other than little miss muffet, everyone would have it no other way. for it was nature and color bursting from their wraps in the holds of the black ships arriving from japan.

and while japan likely viewed their latest fashions as being inevitable, given the season before, not a soul, i would bet, would have ever guessed that in the west they would inspire a series of inevitable progressions for decades and decades to come.

(check out MODA's new blog.)

the music of wallpaper

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.

second hand rose

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.