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.

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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.

peres de la nouveau

in 1895 a little man from germany opened a shop in paris. he called it l'art nouveau. the new art.

the man's name was bing. s. bing. he has two first names upon which no one seems to be able to agree:

sigfried, or samuel. being more an entrepreneur than an artist (his family was in the porcelain business), he turned astonishing instincts into a wealth of beauty. he wore a kimono when he was in his shop, selling arts (slightly japonized?), many of which he'd commissioned, from europe and the united states.

in order to encourage the interest and sales in japanese arts and crafts, which he also imported and sold, bing started a magazine, le japon artistique, which lasted three years. in it he educated, featured, and fascinated his worldwide readership (it was printed in three languages) with color reproductions and early photography of the objects he was importing and wishing to sell.

across the globe, another entrepreneur, not an artist, was soon to coin his own phrase: shin hanga. new prints. watanabe shozaburo was every bit the showman as was s bing. and his instincts were his guides as well. european educators who had been invited into japan, the meiji government's rush into all things new, put a halt on the japanese interest in the very prints, the ukiyo-e, that had been so fascinating the west. and even that market was dwindling.

watanabe collected his own group of artists, and inspired them to do the "slightly westernized" prints that he knew would interest a worldwide market. among them were hiroshi yoshida (though he was to break ranks), ohara koson, hasui kawase, ito shinsui, and many more.

one wonders where we might be without the salesmen, the showmen, and the entrepreneurs. perhaps far less rich, in the best meanings of that word, than i had ever imagined before.

(more on these subjects to come, of course)

(image by hasui kawase)