the magnolia blossom

MAGNOLIAS

alabama:

the first,

a girl child.


the rocking chair

is cold,

the porch colder,

but i could sit

here for a year,

thinking of my child,

her dwindling.

the magnolias

too are

windswept

graveward.

neither live

oak nor reed

resists the

weather's breath,

but each lets go

its green,

its living part.


spring,

when it comes,

is at first wet,

becoming lush,

giving way

to the darkgreen darkness

where magnolia leaves

hover like wings,

inches off the receding earth.

then the blooms on the tree will open.

they are so clearly flesh of

our flesh.

without the prolonging bone,

so clearly transitory.

when touched --

and i touch them --

the blossoms smudge,

the flesh dying beneath my acid hands,

turning brown in the shape of fingertips.

andrew hudgins

from saints and strangers
c copyright 1985

come spring

COME SPRING

The first warm days of spring, give them to me,
a tepid rain, crocus poking through last year's leaves.

Give me the heart of it, pale yellow, sky blue,
trees bare but for the hard buds, the few birds.

To hear the screen door
slam again.
To shoo the flies
from the house,
the spoiled fruit.

I'll take all of it,
Mother of Summer,
the smell
of manure shoveled
over the potatoes,
diesel fumes

from the refuse truck,
scent of creek bottom,
feral,
lime-laced,
cracked open
effusion of rotting eggs.

Even sinus infections
and rusty rake tines
sunk in rank earth
near the shed,
mushroom spores,

the asthmatic crank of winter-bound bikes,
fevers,
flu,
cold sores,
loose ends.
Even the crows,
hawking

their dull black cloaks
for the shiny wings
of iridescent spring.
Let them ride
the rippled air

over the barren Sunday parking lots,

the farther fields,
where the weeds will grow thorny,
wild and tall.

Dorianne Laux
copyright 2008

(today is exactly forty years to the day since i moved to california. it's my anniversary. and because she has put a spell on me so that i cannot see a rabbit without thinking of her, this is for karla.)

Happiest Vernal Equinox to Each of You.

Thank you for visiting this blog.

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.), fin

so much has been left out of this series. there's been no mention of genocide or theft, though those are surely in the background when we mention national parks, for example.

we haven't talked about the marginalization of nations who were relegated to the position of being 'bad guys' in the 'westerns' which had started filming in 1903.

what we have talked about was beauty, and cultural transference, and best intentions, and, sometimes, best results.

we have talked about many of the similarities between the paintings from the first half of the 20th century done by american indians to those edo era prints from japan: outlines, areas of flat color, image simplification.

we haven't mentioned the effects on their art of giving new art materials to the native tribe members; i missed commenting on the fact that in none of the traditional indian paintings do we see 'close-ups'; like fred astaire the indians would only dance when their whole body showed.

that somehow the grimaces, the revealed faces, that we see in the kabuki actor portraits are there in the work of the indians painting today. that many of them retain some of these elements we've discussed, that they are, in my opinion, some of the most extraordinarily gifted artists working today. that, by and large, the work from the native artists is seen as genre painting, and is ignored in the major international art universe.

oscar howe was a yanktonai indian and student at the santa fe studio school. a letter he wrote in 1958 illustrated, all too clearly, one of the effects this marginalization:

"Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? Are we to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child and only the White Man know what is best for him... but one could easily turn to become a social protest painter. I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains."

see some of rick bartow's gorgeous work here and here. see fritz scholder here or here. there's so much online, in museums around the country, and here.....

i've surely left out much, but i've learned a lot doing this. i hope it's been interesting for you. i guess it's like this whenever you undertake to learn something new: what you end up with are tears of sadness and a heart filled with wonder.

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) VII

(click images to enlarge)

as we've seen over the last two weeks, native americans and native american lands grew in fascination after the completion of the railroad which made them accessible. The artists went first, some with exploitation in mind, and many with inspiration in their hearts; the beauty, the people, the weather: it was as though a new nation have been born in the middle of this one. in fact, it was many nations, and they had been there all along.

with the artistic communities growing, an interchange between painters and indians who wanted to 'learn to paint,' began. classes became frequent, and from them came work which began to be shown around the country. before long the bureau of indian affairs set up indian schools around the country with a strong emphasis on teaching the arts.

In 1932, Dorothy Dunn established The Studio at the Santa Fe Indian school where she nurtured many of the well-known "easel artists" such as Ben Quintana, Harrison Begay, Joe H. Herrara, Quincy Tahoma, Pablita Velarde, Eva Mirabel, Tonita Lujan, Pop-Chalee, Oscar Howe and Geronima Cruz Montoya.1

quincy tahoma (1921-1956) was a navajo painter. he was a shepherd for many years, but then in 1932 decided to go to the santa fe indian school where he learned to paint in dorothy dunn's 'studio' class. he went on to become one of the most prominent pupils.

At the Studio, at the federal government's Santa Fe Indian School, Dunn promoted the "modern flat-art" style featuring clearly outlined, bright forms rhythmically linked in a seemingly dimensionless yet narrative space. 2

the Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School became the centerpiece of the Collier administration's commitment to Indian arts and a model for other Indian schools across the country. 3

The studio attracted student artists from tribes all over the United States and was so influential that it is possible to speak of the "Studio style" that dominated American Indian painting through the 1950s and reverberates among the work of many artists today. 4

(sources: 2. "Modern By Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style." Publishers Weekly (Nov 27, 1995); 3. Journal of the Southwest (Summer 1998); 4. DISCovering Multicultural America. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) VI

(click images to enlarge)

For a decade or more Winold Reiss dedicated his talents to creating a pictorial epic of the North American Indian which shall preserve the distinctive characteristics of these fast vanishing tribes. The Indians of the Northwest were his favorite subject for research and the large number of portraits and figure compositions in color and in line which he made of the Blackfeet Indians constitutes a veritable saga of the tribe.

Mr. Reiss brought to his task an unusual and paradoxical combination of talents...his interest in racial type and character and his unfailing eye for the decorative aspects of his subjects. Indianologists commended Mr. Reiss's studies of the aborigines for their ethnological accuracy and the knowledge of custom and folklore which they display; and those in search of decorative art which shall also have an authentic American note were very apt to commission Mr. Reiss for the carrying out of their ideas.

It is perhaps another paradox that a painter of German birth should have been a pathfinder in discovering the decorative possibilities of the North American Indian. Mr. Reiss was born in the Black Forest and received his training as an artist with his father, Fritz Reiss, well known genre painter specializing in the peasant types of the Black Forest, and with Franz von Stuck at the Royal Academy in Munich. 1

this story is not without debate nor without sadness, but there's another chapter or two to go through before we get to that.

for now let us just point out clouds and how they had become seen. winold reiss opened an art school in glacier natonal park where he taught tourists and some of the blackfoot indians who were most often their subjects. blue eagle studied with him privately. what the world had begun to incorporate into their design awareness was 'art deco,' and current awareness is the only thing that one can teach.

we can see it above in winold's magazine cover and fred's buffalo hunt, in nc's book cover and in my photo. clouds have always had linings upon occasion, but they were never painted quite like that until they saw the styles of the japanese.

(for some fascinating background, and perspective, check this out.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) V

(click images to enlarge)

"Where are the blossoms of those summers!
-- fallen, one by one;
so all of my family departed,
each in his turn,
to the land of spirits.
I am on the hilltop and
must go down into the valley;
and when Uncas follows
in my footsteps there will
no longer be any of the
blood of the Sagamores,
for my boy is
the last of the Mohicans,"
Chingachgook spoke to Hawkeye.

winold reiss grew up in germany poring over the tales of james fennimore cooper.


While Hawkeye and the Indians lighted their fire and took their evening's repast, a frugal meal of dried bear's meat, the young man paid a visit to that curtain of the dilapidated fort which looked out on the sheet of the Horican. The wind had fallen, and the waves were already rolling on the sandy beach beneath him, in a more regular and tempered succession. The clouds, as if tired of their furious chase, were breaking asunder; the heavier volumes, gathering in black masses about the horizon, while the lighter scud still hurried above the water, or eddied among the tops of the mountains, like broken flights of birds, hovering around their roosts. Here and there, a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.

(from the last of the mohicans)


winold reiss's young heart was captivated, and he decided very early on that he would go to america to see the indians for himself, and to paint them.

and he did, but not before he developed a monumental career for himself in the arts. this cover which he did for a magazine which he helped found places him directly in the japonisme moment.

we see all of the familiar signs of the times as we have seen in the german posters we've looked at in the last few weeks, and at the american ones they inspired, and the japanese portraits of actors which had in turn inspired the germans.

the outlines, the bold patterns, the flatness and outlines, the blocks of color; the diagonal structure is not utilized, but had that moment of japonisme not happened, winold reiss would not have designed this cover the way he did.

In common with many other German boys whose imagination had been stirred by Fennimore Cooper's novels, Mr. Reiss had a romantic interest in the North American aborigines. He wanted above all else to paint them. But his romantic imaginings were tempered by an artistic training which demanded accurate observation of character.

And so he decided to come to America in 1913 for the express purpose of studying the North American Indian in his native habitat and also to introduce modern decorative art, which, although a flourishing and accepted style in Munich and Vienna, where it had its origin, was practically unknown in the United States. The Crillon Restaurant, which Mr. Reiss decorated in 1920, was the first demonstration of the decorative possibilities of the new style. Since that time Mr. Reiss has been one of the outstanding pioneers in introducing a modern decor which should harmonize with American architecture and express American taste. 1

The career of Winold Reiss was congruent with the seeds of the Arts and Crafts and Applied Arts movements. Both employ bold lettering and simplified forms, large expanses of flat and contrasting colors, and strong lines: the distinctive attributes of the German Poster Style.

While the first M.A.C. cover was self-consciously sophisticated and represented a tour-de-force of the lithographic art, the tenth (ca. 1917) shows us another, quite different, side of his artistic personality, the love of primitive natural motifs and the ability to reduce and simplify them to essential patterns of form, line, and color. The bird and flower motif becomes a signature in much of Reiss's later work small design sketch whose strong lines, squarish grids, and punctuation of broad flat surfaces with simplified decorations recall the work of Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Secession. 2

(sounds like japonisme to me....)

cont. on page later

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) IV

(click images to enlarge)

(cont.) at first i figured it probably was more evidence that the american indians were descended from travellers from asia. well, the dna does uphold this evidence, but does that explain the art?

this migration was something like 50000 years ago 1; does that explain in any way the relationship between this fritz scholder, whose grandmother was luiseno, but who considered himself an american from missouri, from around 1979, and the utagawa toyokuni from about 1779. and anyway, those migrations covered most of the planet, but there is no other culture whose art so resembles one the other.

i also wondered abut the idea of 'primative cultures' creating similar arts. well, as tonto would have said, 'who you calling primitive, white woman?'

what i was to learn was, as my old friend artie rausch used to say, 'neither that simple nor that complex.'

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) III

(click images to enlarge)

about 30 years ago i took a book out of the library about american indian paintings. (and please, let me say here, that though it makes absolutely no sense to me that after hundreds of years of realizing that north america was in fact not india, we still call them that -- except for in wee pockets like berkeley, where i live, in which on october 14th, when many of the rest of you in the states are 'celebrating' columbus day, we're observing indigenous peoples day -- the native americans in fact call themselves indians, which is easier than naming all the nations every time one wishes to refer to them... but still -- that's why i use that word).

i loved the images in that book (which i haven't yet been able to find again. but i'll keep trying). what i loved about them, i came to learn as i learned more about japanese art and japonisme, were the same things i loved in those: simplicity with a direct freshness: art stripped to essentials, with absolute grace. and that line.

now to be truth- ful, i'm not altogether sure any of these images are the ones i saw; funny what decades can do to memory. those, in the past, were more lustrous and fluid, like music on paper, and all that. yeah sure -- i'll report back when i find the book.

but still, the relationships between the ancient japanese through to the present-day indian images are striking. How could this have happened?

(andy tsihnajinnie is navajo, chikanobu is japanese, simon bussy is french, allan houser is navajo, quincy tahoma is navajo, rick bartow is Wiyot, toshi yoshida is japanese, robert bonfils is french, and c. szwedzicki is the french publisher of works by american indians. a compilation is here.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) II

(click to enlarge)

look at these four images. immediately we see some similarities: of course the red blanket and the white hat, the horses or implied horses.

looking further we might notice that, compared to, say, vermeer or renoir, the images are simplified. we also see outlines and flat plains of color.

we have winold reiss (vee-nold rice), he's german. stanley c. mitchell is navaho. maynard dixon was born in fresno, california, and hokusai is, well, hokusai.

what is there to be learned here? much. installment III tomorrow.

Lives of Two Cats (well, one...)

MADAME MOUMOUTTE CHINOISE

Most singular was the destiny which united to me this cat of the yellow race, progeny of obscure parentage and destitute of all beauty.

It was at the close of our last foreign war, one of those evenings of revelry which often occurred at that time. I know not how the little distraught creature, driven from some wrecked junk or sampan, came on board our warship, in great terror, seeking a refuge in my cabin beneath my berth. She was young, not half grown, thin and melancholy, having doubtless, like her relatives and masters, subsisted meanly on fishes' heads with a bit of cooked rice. I pitied her much and bade my servant give her food and drink.

With an unmistakable air of humility and gratitude she accepted my kindness, — and I can see her now, creeping slowly toward the unhoped- for repast, advancing first one foot, then another, her clear eyes fixed on mine to assure herself that she was not deceived, that it was really intended for her.

In the morning I wished to turn her away. After giving her a farewell breakfast, I clapped my hands loudly, and stamping both feet together by way of emphasis, I said in a harsh tone, " Get out, go away, little Kitty ! "

But no, she did not go, the little pagan. Evidently she felt no fear of me, intuitively certain that all this angry noise was a pretense. With an air that seemed to say, "I know very well that you will not harm me," she crouched silently in the corner, lying close to the floor in a supplicating attitude, fixing upon me two dilated eyes, alight with a human look that I have never seen except in hers.

What could I do ? Impossible to domicile a cat in the contracted cabin of a warship. Besides, she was such a distressingly homely little creature, what an encumbrance by and by !

Then I lifted her carefully to my neck, saying to her, " I am very sorry, Kitty " but I carried her resolutely the length of the deck, to the further end of the battery, to the sailors' quarters, who usually are both fond of and kind to cats of whatever age or pedigree.

Flattened close to the deck, her head imploringly turned towards me, she gave me one beseeching look ; then rose and fled with a queer and swift gait in the direction of my cabin, where she arrived first in the race between us ; when I entered I found her crouched obstinately in the corner from which I had taken her, with an expression, a remonstrance in her golden eyes, that deprived me of all courage to again take her away. And this is the way by which Pussy Chinese chose me for her owner and protector.

My servant, evidently on her side from the debut of the contest, completed immediate preparations for her installment in my cabin, by placing beneath my bed a lined basket for her bed, and one of my large Chinese bowls, very practically filled with sand; an arrangement which froze me with fright.

DAY and night she lived for seven months in the dim light and unceasing movement of my cabin, and gradually an intimacy was established between us, simultaneously with a faculty of mutual comprehension very rare between man and animal.

I recall the first day when our relations became truly affectionate. We were far out in the Yellow Sea, in gloomy September weather. The first autumnal fogs had gathered over the suddenly cooled and restless waters. In these latitudes cold and cloud come suddenly, bringing to us European voyagers a sadness whose intensity is proportioned to our distance from home. We were steaming eastward against a long swell which had arisen, and rocked in dismal monotony to the plaintive groans and creakings of the ship. It had become necessary to close my port, and the cabin received its sole light through the thick bull's-eye, past which the crests of the waves swept in green translucency, making intermittent obscurity. I had seated myself to write at the little sliding table, the same in all our cabins on board, — during one of those rare moments, when our service allows a complete freedom and peace, and when the longing comes to be alone as in a cloister.

Pussy Gray had lived under my berth for nearly two weeks. She had behaved with great circum- spection; melan- choly, showing herself seldom, keeping in darkest corners as if suffering from homesickness and pining for the land to which there was no return.

Suddenly she came forth from the shadows, stretched herself leisurely, as if giving time for farther reflection, then moved towards me, still hesitating with abrupt stops; at times affecting a peculiarly Chinese gesture, she raised a fore paw, holding it in the air some seconds before deciding to make another advancing step ; and all this time her eyes were fixed on mine with, infinite solicitude.

What did she want of me ? She was evidently not hungry : suitable food was given her by my servant twice daily. What then could it be?

When she was sufficiently near to touch my leg, she sat down, curled her tail about her, and uttered a very low mew; and still looked directly in my eyes, as if they could communicate with hers, which showed a world of intelligent conception in her little brain. She must first have learned, like other superior animals, that I was not a thing, but a thinking being, capable of pity and influenced by the mute appeal of a look; besides, she felt that my eyes were for her eyes, that they were mirrors, where her little soul sought anxiously to seize a reflection of mine. Truly they are startlingly near us, when we reflect upon it, animals capable of such inferences.

As to myself, I studied for the first time the little visitor who for two weeks had shared my lodging: she was fawn- colored like a wild rabbit, mottled with darker spots like a tiger, her nose and neck were white; homely in effect, mainly consequent on her extremely thin and sickly condition, and really more odd looking than homely to a man freed like myself from all conventional ideas of beauty. Besides, she was quite unlike our French cats : low on the legs, very long bodied, a tail of unusual length, large upright ears, and a triangular face; all her charm was in the eyes, raised at the outer corners like all eyes of the extreme Orient, of a fine golden yellow instead of green, and ever changing, astonishingly expressive.

While examining her, I laid my hand gently upon her queer little head, stroking the brown fur in a first caress.

Whatever she experienced was an emotion beyond mere physical pleasure ; she felt the sentiment of a protection, a pity for her condition of an abandoned foundling. This, then, was why she came out of her retreat, poor Pussy Gray; this was why she resolved, after so much hesitation, to beg from me not food or drink, but, for the solace of her lonely cat soul, a little friendly company and interest.

Where had she learned to know that, this miserable outcast, never stroked by a kind hand, never loved by any one, — if not perhaps in the paternal junk, by some poor Chinese child without playthings, and without caresses, thrown by chance like a useless weed in the immense yellow swarm, miserable and hungry as herself, and whose incomplete soul in departing, left behind no more trace than her own ?

Then a frail paw was laid timidly upon me— oh ! with so much delicacy, so much discretion ! — and after looking at me a long time beseechingly, she decided to venture upon my knee. Jumping there lightly she curled herself in a light, small mass, making herself small as possible and almost without weight, never taking her eyes from me. She lay a long time thus, much in my way, but I had not the heart to dislodge her, which I should doubtless have done had she been a gay pretty kitten in the bloom of kittenhood. As if in fear at my least movement, she watched me incessantly, not fearing that I should harm her — she was too intelligent to think me capable of that — but with an air that seemed to ask: "Is it true that I do not weary you, that I do not trouble you ? " and then, her eyes growing still more tender and expressive, saying to mine very plainly: " On this position cats immediately comprehend, and say to themselves, " Here is a man who understands us; his caresses we can gratefully condescend to receive."

pierre loti, 1900

(he's also the guy who went to japan and was inspired to write a book called madam chrysanthemum, which was the seed to everything madam butterfly that was to follow.)

translated by mary b richards