the alternate shaping of reality

while some 60s poster artists looked to french art nouveau, others looked to vienna. particularly when it came to lettering, alfred roller's font was nearly ubiquitous.

"The lettering by Alfred Roller in this poster he designed for a Secessionist exhibition in 1903 was the major source of inspiration for Wes Wilson and the other San Francisco poster artists of the 1960s period." 1

other designers of that moment included kolomon moser, but even on his own posters, he used variations of roller's fonts.

david goines borrowed from wiener werkstatte fonts (along with many others) in his posters as well.

when i was living in the haight-ashbury district of san francisco in the late 60s, my favorite poster artist was mari tepper. her work was so different from the rest, but now i see echos of vienna here as well.

why, you might ask, should there be such a strong influence from secession vienna on bay area artists? patience, grasshopper. all will be shown in the end.

beyond the letter- ing, we saw the alternate shaping of reality which may easily explain the way the fonts look different in the hands of wilson versus their originator. what do you think?

more at funnyordie.com.

the temporary aberration

roxy reminded me in her comment after yesterday's post that many of you probably never thought about that moment in US history when everything changed: the first baby- boomers graduated from high school, everyone started smoking dope, and you could buy posters everywhere. posters were such a big new thing that life magazine devoted a whole cover story to the subject.

i was aware of this, and wondered if there had been some technological advancement had occurred which allowed the manufacture and price of big beautiful four-color posters to be within nearly anyone's reach; i recalled that part of what began the first poster craze was, in part, just this kind of thing.

i asked the brilliant poster designer and printer, david goines, about this and i'll quote you some of his response. One thing that may have had an influence was that while most printing was done by letterpress (newspapers, magazines & books), printing of large images, especially complex ones, such as maps, and cheap ones, such as boxing posters, was done by offset lithography, which was the poor cousin of the much more expensive letterpress process.

The intermediate process of Mimeograph was used for text-only (sometimes with minimal illustration) such as school newspapers, leaflets, class handouts, but wasn't really useful for images. Ditto (spirit duplication) was useful for very small quantities of illustrated class- room handouts (grade-school teachers used it a lot).

In the early 1960s technological innovations began to make offset lithography not only competitive with mimeograph, but actually replaced it by around 1966. (more from david to come....)

Interest in Art Nouveau underwent a revival in the Seventies when reproductions of posters of Sarah Bernhardt by the Czech designer Alphonse Mucha became popular. The Art Nouveau revival is understandable in the context of the magpie approach of Pop graphic designers. Spurred on by museum exhibitions of the work of Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley, British designers took up the style to the extent that Queen magazine was describing an ‘Art Nouveau fever’ in 1964. 1

In its brief heyday around the turn of the century, the tendrilous international style of art nouveau swept over Europe, dominating the design of everything from the Paris Metro stations to ordinary knives and forks. The inevitable reaction against it was particularly violent, and the whole movement was dismissed as a rather ludicrous, if temporary, aberration. Artists like Alphonse Mucha, if remembered at all, seemed as dated as gaslight and their work as decadent as Oscar Wilde's sun flower. But lately art nouveau has been getting a new look. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art had a big show of it three years ago, and in London last week Alphonse Mucha was once again a big name with simultaneous shows at the Grosvenor and Jeffress Galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 2

i'll be examining further these mentioned exhibitions, and the particular effects they had depending on where they were held. and there were many other regional happenstances that bear mentioning. to come. we'll look also at the wider picture of art nouveau, as well as more on posters.

david byrd is a brilliant poster artist who has worked in many media and in many styles. as we've seen, mucha's style was a prototype for many of the artists, and for some even more than that. david's web site says this one was inspired by a muybridge series, but i don't know.

check out another mucha piece, some preliminary drawings 4, and let me know what you think. even if you agree with me and find it irredeemably mucha-ish, the hand that made it is clearly also a master.

you also may be beginning to understand how many questions are involved in this one. not just the return of mucha himself, but of his many shadows too.

temporary aberration? uh... no. i just don't think so.

inna gadda da vida, baby

i've begun to wonder about the resurgence of interest in art nouveau in the 1960s; there aren't easy answers because, as it turns out, the questions aren't easy!

i had read somewhere that a collector with a huge collection of art nouveau treasures which had become all but worthless arranged for a museum exhibition, thus reviving value in what he owned. but even if i could find that reference again, which i have not, i am beginning to think it's apocryphal anyway: it's a story with as many roots as did the original movement itself, and i hope i can untangle some of them.

to give you an idea of what i mean, let's take rock posters, for a start. seeing them juxtaposed like this with those from 60 years earlier, it's almost hard to tell which are more "psychedelic," but the influence is obvious. but! what do we mean when we say influence? style? lettering? direct theft?

over the next number of posts we'll look at all of these, as well as the many others that arise. as usual, i'm learning as i go along, hoping to assimilate. i have books coming from the library, letters i've written to the artists themselves, etc. and of course rock posters is just the beginning. what about that mucha poster you had on your wall in 1969?

i think this is going to be fun.

the tokyo bibliophile

A largely unknown side of Frank Lloyd Wright emerged when he visited Japan: He developed into one of America's foremost ukiyo-e woodblock print collectors and dealers.

"When I first saw a fine print it was an intox- icating thing. At that time Ernest Fenollosa was doing his best to persuade the Japanese people not to wantonly destroy their works of art," Wright said. 1

japanese prints were to become a lifelong passion, inspiration, and source of income for him, but how did he learn so much about the prints in such a short time? the answer is shugio hiromichi. "Shugio Hiromichi (b. c. 1853) arrived in New York City in 1880. The Oxford-educated aristocrat moved easily in the city's artistic circles." 2

suggestions as to how the two men met vary from in japan, while wright worked on the im- perial hotel, chicago when shugio deli- vered a speech, at the cos cob colony where many japanists often gathered, or the tile club, or in boston, or, possibly, at the grolier club in new york. with both the advice and the connections of shugio, wright became one of the major purchas- ers of the woodblock prints in america.

New Yorkers were introduced to Japanese wood-block prints by Shugio Hiromichi, the director of the First Japan Manufacturing and Trading Company, a Japanese importer of porcelain and parasols. In 1889, Shugio curated the first significant show of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world"), colorful wood-block prints and posters representing urban and natural pleasures, such as geisha in outdoor revelry or theater actors in costume.

These lyrical, contemplative prints inspired a host of turn-of-the-century painters. James Whistler, in particular, borrowed from the ukiyo-e abstract sensibility in his work, saying, “If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.” 3

the exhibitions at the grolier club, in 1889 and in 1896 (for which shugio wrote the catalogue and its introduction) were major influences on art in the u.s. "American impressionists derived their understanding of Japan not only from books and prints but also from Japanese friends." american impressionists met shugio at the cos cob colony, and at the aesthetic movement's tile club.

"The Tile Club was created as an informal fraternal order that met regularly to paint ceramic tiles and enjoy social camaraderie and the stimulation of their fellow artists. Over the years, The Tile Club expanded to include painters, sculptors, illustrators, architects, and even a few authors and journalists. Artists include Winslow Homer, J. Alden Weir, William Merritt Chase, Arthur Quartley, Twachtman, Weir, Robinson, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The art colonists patronized Shugio's emporium as well as those of his rivals (like Vantine's)." 4

no discussion of shugio hiromichi would be complete without mentioning the catalogue he prepared of the collection of convicted criminal t. e. waggaman. in his position of treasurer of washington d.c.'s catholic college, waggaman embezzled a million dollars -- 1905 dollars, then indulged his absolute obsession for asian arts. fortunately shugio was able to value and describe his collection, once waggaman was in jail, and therefor sell enough of his bounty to pay back much of what he owed.

the last midnight

during this same period, quickly approaching the last midnight of the edo era, while france was growing ever more "refined," and "classical," some very different things were happening in england, and, not unrelated, i don't think, in japan as well.

i didn't have any idea when i began this series that it would end with such elegance, such synchronicity, and probably to say 'end' is wrong anyway.

"When I am asked, 'Who was the greatest artist of all?', I reply that I can never quite decide whether to pick Turner or Hokusai. These two men were near contemporaries: born in 1760, Hokusai was 15 years older than Turner and died in 1849, just two years before him. Both men were hard at it as full-time pupils flora about seven and devoted themselves entirely to art for the whole of their long lives. Their output was prodigious: Hokusai finished more than 30,000 drawings plus more than 500 illustrated books. Turner's drawings and watercolours number more than 20,000, in addition to 900 oil paintings, many of them very large.

"Both started as urchins in huge cities, London and Edo (Tokyo), but expanded their universe to take in the whole of nature. This process of observing and recording was never-ceasing. Turner was trying to find new ways to paint mist, vapour, water eddies and wind-flung distances in his late seventies. Hokusai wrote at the age of 74, 'I produced nothing of much value before I was 70. But I am now really beginning to learn. By the time I am 110, each individual dot or line I draw will possess its own life.'" *

but there are wondrous other coincidences. take for example turner. now, remember john cozens, son of andrew? well, john was ill, and he began to see a doctor named dr. monro. monro was a great fan of cozens' paintings, and was an amateur painter himself. he soon had collected a great collection of the work of the younger cozens.

now we have already suggested, quite convincingly, i believe, that cozens the elder had gotten his hands on some of the japanese work arriving into the netherlands; dutch painting was popular in britian at that time, and we know the dutch also had japanese scrolls. it is not a far leap to assume that john had seen them as well.

dr. munro also took art students, occasionally. when he did, a major practice he'd lead them through was to copy, over and over, the cozens paintings. one of his two leading students you may not have heard of -- his name was thomas girtin. but the other, his friend and schoolmate you have. it was jmw turner.

about 6000 miles to the west, the imported artwork from holland was having a major impact. shiba kokan was a japanese painter who had gotten ahold of a dutch book on 'how to draw.' being one to tend to the rational, even scientific, he was quickly convinced that european painting was superior to that in japan and quickly sought to learn all he could. he could not read the dutch, but he could grasp the principals, such as perspective and modeling, from the book's illustrations.

"Many of the masters of ukiyo-e showed their enthusiasm for this Europeanizing trend, including the young Katsushika Hokusai, a student in Shiba Kokan's workshop."1 hokusai completed a series of "prints in the western style" just as the century turned to the 19th; with framing, perspective, and some shading/shaping, hokusai was helping to usher in the changes that would immediately follow his death.

hokusai died in 1849 and turner died in 1851. admiral perry arrived in 1853.

two men, half-a-world apart, on such similar paths, as though meeting each other in spirit just before their cultures met again in the world.

in the hokusai prints it is easy to see, once one is told, how much he has borrowed from the western styles, becoming organized, scientific, and sound. just as turner abandoning himself to the moment, losing everything, losing perspective, losing even shading, and in losing these, gaining finally his freedom to paint.

*Johnson, Paul. Spectator. (March 27, 2004)

of spice boxes and kings

remember back when reagan was in office and they were saying that he was responsible for tv shows like dallas because of using gold-rimmed china and being just generally high-falutin'?

and king edward in england -- he liked his women full of figure and so this became the trend? and ruskin thought raphael was the bomb, so we went all classical again?

well the same thing happened in france around the same time (which means it had nothing to do with what anyone said or thought were their reasons, but rather some collective unconscious uber-reason which i am not going to guess at at the moment) because napolean thought it should.

nor can i guess why classicism reminds me of nothing more than, well you see. certainly not because of napolean's famous instruction to josephine: i'm back from the war tonight--don't wash! he called them her spice boxes. really!

all i know is that this impression is inescapable when one begins to research just what art was going on in france just before the fateful franco-japaneseo meeting, the work that was allowed to be shown in the salon, the work that revealed man's (and woman's, apparently, and still an issue) perfectibility, noblest callings (read 'politically correct'), and beauty of form.

"At the middle of the 19th century in France, the art world was officially dominated by the Academy of Fine Arts. They set the standards for French painting and held an annual art show, 'the Salon.' Artists could only get their work into the Salon if it was approved by the Academy's 'jury,' and the jury had very set ideas about what should, and should not, be called art. "

and another thing: "Nudes were okay in historical and allegorical paintings, according to the jury, but to show them in daily life was strictly forbidden." 1

so why did all these classicists show so many armpits? why did the pre-raphaelites show everyone with their elbows tucked in tight? don't you just want to go out and do a thesis on just this very subject?

next time a further look at that moment in art history, the end of the edo years, the end of classicism, and the beginnings of a whole new world.