revolution by simplicity

Many developments in 19th century art reflect the influence of Japan. Artists such as Manet experimented with flattened forms after seeing Japanese prints. Vincent van Gogh collected hundreds of Japanese prints, and they influenced his use of brilliant colors and heavy outlines. Larger artistic movements such as Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau have a great deal of Japonisme at their root. Though the primary Japonisme craze was in the 1880's and 90's, artists and designers continued to use elements of the style for some time, particularly when dealing with Japanese themes.

With respect to book-binding, cover designers employed a variety of techniques that reflected an interest in Japanese style. In the Victorian period, covers that didn't necessarily look Japanese showed the influence through the use of asymmetrical design, strong diagonals, oriental typefaces and motives, and a variety of fill patterns.

In the move away from more gaudy Victorian covers, many designers appreciated the simplicity of some of Japanese style. Some covers mimicked the binding style of Japanese books, or Japanese paper. Others used an oriental style typeface or actual Japanese characters. Asymmetrical design continued to be popular as well as imitations of the flat Japanese landscape style. Many of the covers of books by author Lafcadio Hearn are done in these styles, reflecting his subject matter and immigration to Japan.

Certain known cover designers showed influence by Japonisme. Some of Sarah Wyman Whitman's simple elegant designs have evidence of roots in Japonisme, while others use more explicit Japanese motifs, although she herself denounced the gaudy 1880s eclectic covers that "represented a combination of bad French art mixed with Japanese art; scrolls and arabesques, which had to do with some debased form of book cover mixed with a bit of Japanese fan." Several covers by Bertha Stuart, who designed primarily between 1903 and 1911 show a strong Japanese influence as well.

not, i will admit, wholly new, but i believe all of these extraordinary images are, new to this blog. much much more at the website where these words come from, HERE. these designers, they take my breath away. see more from this blog (including links) HERE.

bamboozled?

as a quiet, ubiquitous symbol, the bamboo has featured in japonisme wherever it occurred. whether it's pictured, or used, or imitated (silver bamboo handles, for example), it has become an instant communication of the east.

it's interesting, however, to look into its usage in japan itself. where it's found, or wherever i was able to find it anyway, wasn't necessarily where i had expected.

yes, it can be found on kimono textiles, and on crafts, like the inro.

in the west there were few instances of crafts where it wasn't used. it's irresistible because it's so graceful, so simple, so emblematic of all that we had accepted the east to be.

in japanese prints, however, there seem to be unexplained limits to it's usage: we will see it, again, as a pattern on kimono.

and, as we've seen before, one might find bamboo in a book of style suggestions.

we will also see it as part of a kabuki backdrop, and it's always used to geographically
place tigers.

but, it seems, and as far as i could find, picturing bamboo groves or forests almost never existed until late in the 19th century. this one hokusai image is the only one i could find. compare their frequency to that of pines.

the yoshida's, father and son, loved them, as did many other artists on into the twentieth century. i can not only find no reason for this, but not even any mention of it.

now this is not to suggest that the bamboo is not beloved in japan. in fact, The sound of the wind in this bamboo forest has been voted as one of 'one hundred must-be-preserved sounds of Japan' by the Japanese government. 1

but although hiroshige did use bamboo's wonderful verticality to accompany the flight of a bird (a sparrow), as did others, the forests and groves were rarely seen.

as 'meaningless,' and quite lovely decoration, though, it could be found in droves throughout europe and the americas.

may we be reassured that these appearances reflected our passion for the illusions we'd formed of japan?

and if so, were these illusions perpetrated by the japanese themselves, or by us?

and, at last, does it matter at all? fashion is as fluid as the wind; listen, you can hear it now. it's a sound which must be protected.

instead, gratitude is a fine option. thank you to tiffany. thank you to rookwood. gratitude to habert-dys. thank you to heintz.

translation is an odd art. what appears to be literal can really only be approx- imate, romanticized, inspirational.

which is quite acceptable.

fishing the second wave

after the first world war, a whole new wave of japanese goods flooded the west, producing a whole new wave of japonisme, though this time it looked much more modern. this was art deco, the next step for the line. 1

but along with japanese goods came japanese people, craftspeople, and therein lies our story, though we'll start much earlier than that.

According to a legend about urushi in the "Iroha-jiruisho" (compiled between AD 1177 and 1181), Emperor Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, a fictional figure and at the same time a symbol of the god of war, one day touches the urushi liquid dripping from a tree. He finds the black blaze of it of such rare beauty that he demands to have it painted on an object. He even appointed a ministry of urushi within his government. While this is just a legend, weapons and armours were indeed made by not only materials such as iron, stone or wood but also with urushi, and it was used as a rust preventing agent on weapons as well, this until the end of the Second World War.

The word 'urushi' has three possible etymological origins: the verb uruosu meaning to moisten as in slaking the thirst; the adjective uruwashii meaning graceful; and the noun nuru-shiru which refers to the 'liquid for paint'. What YamatoTakeru no Miko discovers is this very paint, richly glistening and full of grace.

In the Muromachi period (1333-1568) Rokuonji, the so called 'golden temple' was built, of which the whole first and second floors were painted with urushi and gilded with gold leaves that are five times thicker than the average. Urushi liquid was produced at full capacity, and urushiware became more popular to the common people and urushiware shops appeared in the big cities. Urushi artists paid tax with their skills and had special passports which gave them free way to anywhere in the country at a time when travelling was still very limited and restrained by the law. 2

At the close of Japan’s early modern era, Shibata Zeshin brought the art of lacquering to unmatched levels of technical skill and creative invention. In the 1840s, Zeshin invented daring new lacquer textures and finishes that mimicked rusty iron, rough seas, enameled porcelain, patinated bronze, or the delicate grain of Chinese rosewood. 3

In 1895 Samuel Bing, a German art dealer opened a fine arts shop called 'L' Art Nouveau Bing' in Paris where he sold Asian crafts and new style fine arts. The name of this shop was the origin of the art nouveau style in France and Great-Britain. In Belgium it was called the 'style moderne', 'Jugendstil' in Germany and 'Sezession' in Austria and it distinguished itself by a new two-dimensioned point of view in combination with an extraordinary decorative impression. Bing maintained a close respectful friendship with Zeshin Shibata, a great master in urushi and nihon-ga of that time, and therefore a great part of his art nouveau was remarkably influenced by not merely ukiyoe but also by the distinctive design of Japanese urushi works. 2

while zeshin continued to expand both his craft and his influence, another artist was teaching innovative lacquerwork in japan: shiramaya shosai. though i've tried, i have not been able to establish any relationship between the two men, but there's a generational difference between them; i believe the second could not have helped but be influenced by the first.

as zeshin was involved with bing, two other of his countrymen moved to paris. shoka tujimura, a student of shosai who would go on to win medals at the panama-pacific exposition in san francisco in 1916, and seizo sugawara. described as everything from a penniless immigrant to a japanese lacquer master, it was this second man who would have a major impact on 20th century craft and design.

In 1898 Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese artisan, immigrated to Paris to help restore lacquer at the Japanese pavilion on the international exhibition of 1900 in Paris.

In 1907 he met Eileen Gray, an Irish architect who started learning urushi after being influenced by him. Following her in 1912, the Swiss designer Jean Dunand too started learning urushi by Gray’s introduction to Sugawara.

Thanks to the Viet- nam- ese urushi, which was abundantly available since the colonization by France together with the traditional urushiurushi technique these two European artists were able to produce numerous urushi arts ware. Sugawara did not return to Japan and died in 1940 in France. It can be said that Sugawara had an influence on the fundament for the European artists to create urushi work by means of the traditional technique, instead of japanning. 2

solstice IV: inviting the light

INVOCATION

You came to me first as dawn hauled up on ropes
of apricot above the blackened wall of white pine.

You came from the south, from the highest places,
came down from the mountain running.

You were announced by the crows, the shrill
calls of alarm from the uppermost branches.

You opened your throats in a high harsh singing.
I didn’t know what you were and rose trembling

from the deck chair, stood breathless and still
where the woods surrounded me, gathered dark

and darker as if to stall the light.
You came down, two of you: one young and red-bright

the other old, rust streaked with gray.
You pretended not to know me and lay down

beneath a small granite ledge, lay on the fallen
needles, licking light into your fur.

You came to me because I have wanted you.
You came though I had asked for nothing,

because I was full as a river at flood tide
with sadness.

You came to me, rested, and then rose, first one,
then the other, and ran downhill into the morning.

You who assumed the guise of foxes, come again
as you did that morning on the mountainside.

And wasn’t that you who came last summer
as whale boiling up from the waters of Jeffries Shoal?

Wasn’t it you who came in September as wood duck
over the Stoddard marshes, who flew parallel to my car window?

Come to me again as moose invisible on the night road.
Come the way deer steal across the field at dusk.

Come as raccoon, as coyote. Come carrying your burden
of blood and shadow —

come joyous and light with song, come in sleep,
in the unexpected reaches of the day. I am waiting.


Come red-tailed or black-winged; come fluked
and finned, come clawed and taloned,

renew my breath, come full of the mystery
I am only beginning to know.

Patricia Fargnoli

© 1999, Necessary Light

in autumn town

AUTUMN GRASSES
(Shibata Zeshin,
Autumn Grasses,
two-panel screen)


In fields of bush clover and hay-scent grass
the autumn moon takes refuge
The cricket's song is gold



Zeshin's loneliness taught him this

Who is coming?
What will come to pass, and pass?


Neither bruise nor sweetness nor cool air
not-knowing
knows the way




And the moon?
Who among us does not wander, and flare
and bow to the ground?

Who does not savor, and stand open
if only in secret

taking heart in the ripening of the moon?

Margaret Gibson




From Autumn Grasses
by Margaret Gibson.
Copyright © 2003 by Margaret Gibson.
Reproduced with permission of Louisiana State University Press.
All rights reserved.

rush

WHEN ECSTASY IS INCONVENIENT

Feign a great calm;

all gay transport soon ends.

Chant: who knows—

flight's end or flight's beginning

for the resting gull?



Heart, be still.

Say there is money but it rusted;

say the time of moon is not right for escape.

It's the color in the lower sky

too broadly suffused,

or the wind in my tie.



Know amazedly how

often one takes his madness

into his own hands

and keeps it.

Lorine Niedecker


From Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works by Lorine Niedecker, © 2002 The Regents of the University of California, University of California Press.