guilding the lily

dorothy markert is a roycroft printmaker. the arts and crafts movement with its various names: mackintosh-style, liberty-style, and werkstatte-style among them, needs to have roycroft-style added to it.

to look at a clock designed by archibald knox, or mackintosh, or josef hoffmann, is to immediately recognize the single river running through the artisan guilds of the world; it is also to recognize the influence of japan on them all.

"Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the USA. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895 in the village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, near Buffalo. Participants were known as Roycrofters. The work and philosophy of the group, often referred to as the Roycroft movement, had a strong influence on the development of American architecture and design in the early 20th century.

The name Roycroft was chosen after the printers, Samuel and Thomas Roycroft, who made books in London from about 1650-1690. And beyond this, the word roycroft had a special significance to Elbert Hubbard, meaning King's Craft. King's craftsmen being a term used in the Guilds of the olden times for men who had achieved a high degree of skill -- men who made things for the King.

Elbert Hubbard's championing of the Arts and Crafts approach attracted a number of visiting craftspeople to East Aurora, and they formed a community of printers, furniture makers, metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders."1

wonderfully for us all, guilds are reforming all over the world, including at roycroft. over the last several decades, the original roycroft buildings have been restored, and well, if you build it they will come. a community of craftspeople, artisans, have come together again, with a commitment to quality -- a commitment backed up with a peer review before one may use the roycroft mark on their work, and teach master classes on the campus.

and this is where we find dorothy markert. to browse her work, one instantly recalls margaret jordan patterson, edna boies hopkins, mable royds... but these are dorothy's alone. she brings what any artist brings: work that speaks from that place where hand and eye and heart meet.

there are many "craftspeople" in these days when we again appreciate the work of human hands over machines, but there are many of them from whom little original emerges. when they produce direct copies of the work of others and try to pass it off as their own, and a surprising number of people actually do this, the work may be charming, but is somehow hollow and leaden at the same time. perhaps dorothy took a master class of her own from the great legacy of the last century, but what she creates now, along with the other artisans on the roycroft campus, is art.

a happy interdependence day to us all

  Stars, still pond —
all night the white geese cry out
in your hand.

Coming, my eyes open.
How suddenly black
the tree trunks look in the rain.

Night quiets, cools.
Even now,
two boats on a single mooring,
we rise and fall on one breath, going on.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Because Tokugawa-period Japanese tended to regard the overall body shapes of men and women as nearly the same, the only significant physical marker of difference were the organs themselves.

By the 1660s, the first mass- produced woodblock prints began to appear, often in the form of pages illustrating of handbooks on .... We should bear in mind that these illustrated manuals were perfectly legitimate books in their day.

As has been pointed out, "these spring painting must be regarded in the light of seventeenth-century Japanese life and mores. --was considered a very natural function, and ways of increasing enjoyment of this function were felt to be more commendable than censurable."

Unlike the case in Europe, Japanese artists did not celebrate the figure in their work in any medium until the late Meiji period. Japanese popular art of the eighteenth century, detailed polychrome prints of famous beautiful women -- usually courtesans -- were much in demand. These prints emphasized the subtle, often elaborate facial features, gestures, long hair, and richly decorated clothing of these women to convey a sense of  beauty and power.

Its beak caught firmly
in the clam's shell
The snipe cannot fly away
On an autumn eveningUNKNOWN JAPANESE POET

"Few peoples," says Lane, "have ever pursued the cult of artistic spring painting as assiduously as the Japanese." (Images from the Floating World)

Tokugawa-period woodblock prints are generally called ukiyo-e 浮世絵, meaning "images of the floating world." Many people incorrectly think that the term ukiyo-e means spring painting images, probably because so many ukiyo-e were spring painting. But ukiyo-e encompass landscape scenes and a wide variety of non-spring painting themes.

Spring painting woodblock prints were most commonly known as spring painting春画, meaning "spring pictures." The word "spring" often means "youthful beauty" or "youthful vigor" in Japanese usage then or now. The sale of services, for example, is baishun 売春, "selling spring," which has a different emotive sense than the English term "prostitution." Similarly, the word "color" (iro 色 by itself, -shoku -色 in many compound words) often means spring painting or spring painting. (more)

the japonisme timeline

AN EVOLVING, SUBJECTIVE TIMELINE of JAPONISME

1788
utamaro produces his series on insects in the garden;

1803
issa writes haiku about plovers

1831

hokusai paints 'the great wave' as part of '36 views of mt fuji';

1853
U.S. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sails into Tokyo Bay, opening Japan to the West.;

1855
walt whitman's 'leaves of grass' is published;

1856
felix bracquemond discovers hokusai's manga at his printer's shop.;

1857
hiroshige produces plum tree print.;

1859
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, published.;

1863
whistler discovers japanese prints in london and becomes an emissary for japonisme in europe;

1864
whistler paints a friend in a kimono looking at japanese prints

1867
paris universal exposition introduces japanese art more widely to the west

1868
manet paints zola with japanese prints on his wall

1870
monet discovers japanese prints in holland;

1874
first impressionist exhibition in paris

1875
Morris & Co. established, promoting arts and crafts movement.

1876 monet paints his wife in a red kimono

1877 morse goes to japan and discovers japanese pottery

1878 whistler sues ruskin

1879 Thomas Edison demonstrates the electric light.;

1883monet moves to giverny and begins to create the japanese garden he will paint for the rest of his life.

1885
gilbert and sullivan produce the mikado;
yoshitoshi begins moon series;

1886 sargent paints 'carnation, lily, lily, rose';
john la farge visits japan;
van gogh first sees japanese prints.

1887 van gogh paints hiroshige's plum tree print;
pierre loti writes 'madame chrysantheme'

1888 s. bing starts magazine 'artistic japan' to foster interest in japanese arts and crafts.;Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society founded in London.
1890 van gogh dies;
lafcadio hearn moves to japan.

1891arthur wesley dow establishes his art school; first lautrec music-hall posters;
mary cassatt completes her mother & child prints, inspired by those of utamaro;

1892 Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company established.;

1893 munch paints 'the scream';
Aubrey Beardsley design published in the first issue of the magazine The Studio.;

1894
mucha's first art nouveau poster, gismonda with sarah bernhardt;

1895
S. Bing opens his gallery/shop L'Art Nouveau.

1898 john luther long writes short story 'madam butterfly' based on loti's 1887 novel;

mackintosh begins his school in glasgow;

1899 René Lalique designs Dragonfly woman corsage ornament;

1900 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, published.;

1901 lautrec dies; gauguin dies;
Queen Victoria dies;
stickley starts the craftsman magazine.
1902riviere produces set of prints '36 views of the eiffel tower' based on hokusai's '36 views' series; note that the tower is almost always shown with no top, so it resembles fuji.
1903 whistler dies;
the wiener werkstatte is founded.

(i'll continue to work on this, only re-publishing after significant changes. it seems, i'm noticing how the year 1900 really did seem an important marking point. i'm going to start part II of this timeline when i feel satisfied enough -- for the moment -- with part I. I'll reproduce the items from 1900 on in that topic.

in the beginning .1

as we've discussed, "The Japanese government let Perry come ashore to avoid a naval bombardment. Perry landed at Kurihama (in modern-day Yokosuka) on July 14, 1853 presented the letter to delegates present, and left for the Chinese coast, promising to return for a reply.

Perry returned in February 1854 with twice as many ships, finding that the delegates had prepared a treaty embodying virtually all the demands in Fill- more's letter. Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854." 1

by at least 1861, the flood of western visitors seemed unavoidable (great website about all of this). japanese artists portrayed what they saw through the filters of their own culture and art.

a few of the western visitors, painters, were powerfully drawn to what they saw not only as beautiful but also as as a counteractive to the industrial revolution; they decided to stay. these western artists portrayed what they saw through the filters of their own culture and art.

these were the early 1860s, the years of the very beginning, in france, of impressionism (a part of japonisme). the impressionists had to show independently because the academy felt they did not quality to be shown as fine art. their work just wasn't as classic, even as photo- graphic, as it had been during the victorian age, even the pre-raphaelite period, and as they felt it must be to be "fine art."

so it was still this academic style that these painters were bringing with them when they landed in japan, and with which they continued to display their new loves: the land and the people of japan. had they stayed in the west, they might still have continued to paint this way as did whistler and tissot, and others, many of whom began featuring japanese items in their work.

the painters in japan included robert blum, frank dillon, armand lachaise, charles wirgman, and more. in the victorian academic style of painting their contemporaries who'd stayed in the west, painted the shops, and the people, and the daily lives in japan.

next: we'll begin to watch as the intermingling really began. we've already looked some at how the west began to incorporate much of the style of the japanese artwork up to this time. now we'll also look at what started happening with the japanese artists, and learn a little more about the westerners who stayed.

as in

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Special Installation: Pictorial Vision:
American and European Photography •
April 26, 2008 - August 17, 2008

Like Breath on Glass:
Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly •
June 22, 2008 - October 19, 2008

Library Installation:
summer kimono, the color of blue sky... morning pilgrimage
(Kobayashi Issa, 1822) •
June 22, 2008 - September 8, 2008

Homer and Sargent from the Clark •
June 22, 2008 - October 19, 2008

Clark Art Institute
225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267

what does lola want?

why, i began to wonder, were depictions of sexuality so different, japan, france, new york, et al. so as usual i went to look it up, and there was an interesting variety of answers, some of which i was reminded that i already knew, and some were entirely new to me, and some disagreed with each other, and so what else is new.

we've talked about the censorship that happened and some effects on the ukiyo-e artists, but i hadn't realized the methods used to go behind the backs of the censors. when forbidden to portray kabuki actors they labeled actors' portraits as portraits of "loyal heros," or the "immortal poets"; they even put their faces on turtles, cats, and fish.

courtesans might be portrayed as wait- resses, but were still recognizable to all. instead of explicitly portraying seductive or overtly sexual images, the populace knew exactly what was being said when a maiden became completely wet while holding an umbrella. whereas if she's offering a cup, of tea maybe, or a clam- shell, to a gentleman, one would also know just what was being offered in fact.

but there's another whole perspective as well. "In Japan, a high degree of nudity was common in the daily life of most ordinary people (during the warm months, of course). Skin was no big deal, but splendid silk clothing was rare and expensive. In Tokugawa Japan, prostitutes, especially the elite courtesans, advertised their sexuality not by displaying skin but by parading through the streets in multiple layers of elegant clothing.

To touch and feel such exquisite cloth was something only the rich could do on a regular basis. For most Japanese, the fondling of such cloth might take place only in their fantasies. Thus, elegant, finely-woven, brightly colored cloth, not skin, became sexually charged in Tokugawa-era erotic art."

furthermore, "Because Tokugawa-period Japanese tended to regard the overall body shapes of men and women as nearly the same, the only significant physical marker of difference were the sex organs themselves.

In Europe at this time, by contrast, the bodily shapes resulting from secondary sexual characteristics were thought to be so distinctive in marking gender that no man could pass as a woman or vice versa, and attempts to to so usually took place only within the context of comedy or farce. Indeed, depictions of men, and, especially, women often exaggerated these secondary characteristics unreal- istically. Probably the most common example was exaggerating the width of the pelvic bone and hips."

i think i am beginning to understand my original question. "The main point of con- trast here is that in the Western world, at least by the nineteenth century, gender differences were regarded as hard-wired products of biology first and foremost, and social markers of gender were typically regarded as following "naturally" from these biological differences. In Tokugawa Japan, it was the social markers of gender that were most prominent in people's imaginations." 1

"Prints were a form of commun- ication about current political or social situations, especially in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Although the shogunate would not permit any military incident, military or governmental figure, or current event to be shown in a print, artists circumvented these limits by hiding taboo subject matter under layers of parody. Print designers were constantly subject to government restrictions, the policies of which tried to impede townspeople from spending their time and money on frivolous or salacious entertainments.

Because prints often promoted these types of enter- tainment and because all prints designs had to be approved by government censors prior to manufacture, prints became a focus for these government constraints. Publishers were limited in the quality of paper, the number of color blocks used on a single print, and the types of pigments. At times, they were even forbidden to portray actors or courtesans. As a result, print artists were constantly inventing creative solutions to maintain their customer base." 2

we've already looked at what happened to utamaro (his version is from 1804); is kunisada's 1865 version a tribute, or merely a celebration that the restrictions had by then begin to be released. (oh and you know, i had to put in lola! she walks like an egyptian!)