don't tell me it isn't happening

NEW

The long path sap sludges up
through an iris, is it new

each spring? And what would
an iris care for novelty?

Urgent in tatters, it wants
to wrest what routine it can

from the ceaseless shifts
of weather, from the scrounge

it feeds on to grow beautiful
and bigger: last week the space

about to be rumpled
by iris petals was only air

through which a rabbit leapt,
a volley of heartbeats hardly
contained by fur, and then the clay-
colored spaniel in pursuit

and the effortless air
rejoining itself whole.

William Matthews

these are the sixteen kinds of irises that grow in my garden.
the ones with their names attached DID NOT BLOOM this year.
profuse iris, with, at most, one bloom.

i called the local experts,
and they said that they're hearing this from a lot of people;
i said that in 20 years this has never happened,
and they said that they're hearing about things
that haven't happened in as long as 100 years.

Don't Tweet That

People! It's a penis! Get over it!

behind 'the poster'

i had seen covers of this magazine, the poster, frequently around the web, and in my books, but no amount of searching seemed to turn up much of anything besides these hints. slowly but surely, i would collect one here, one there, whenever i'd come across them; suddenly, what did i know but that i had collected the cover images of most of them! much to my surprise! but not only that, i was taught once again, google something today, you don't find it, google it again tomorrow: one can now find the entire text of every article in the magazine's history (and all the visuals with paid services)!

so here, straight from the november 1898 issue of the poster:

JAPAN & POSTERS by CHARLES HIATT

IF imitation be the sincerest form of flattery, Japan, in matters of art, is now the most flattered nation in the islands, seen from this distance, seems world. Not so long ago, the appreciation of Japanese art was confined to a handful exquisitely informed amateurs such as the De Goncourts, and to a few artists, amongst whom Whistler was incomparably the most distinguished. Nowadays the cult of things Japanese has spread not only to Kensington, but even to Clapham and Brixton, and one would find it difficult to discover any self-respecting villa residence in London in the decoration of which nothing suggested the adorably graceful land of Hokusai and Outamaro.

It will be news to many people, even to some who are interested in the pictorial placard, that there are such things as Japanese posters. The life of those favoured Asiatic islands, seen from this distance, seems too idyllic to allow of the clamour of advertisement. And yet the picture-poster of is no new thing even in Japan : the idea of it, at all events, has existed there for ages, just as it existed in ancient Greece and Rome. To come to more recent times, we find that the first elephant ever introduced into Japan was advertised much as Barnum might advertise a new addition to his menagerie. The year in which the Japanese first saw the biggest of all beasts was 1729, and its arrival was heralded by a placard illustrated with a wood-cut coloured by hand. In addition to this, pilgrims to Japanese shrines were in the habit of leaving a memorial of their visit in the shape of little illustrated bills bearing their names posted on the wall of the temple, on much the same principle as the modern European cad cuts his name in the bark of a tree, or scribbles it on the wood-work of a railway carriage. Again, the Japanese theatres have for a long time been in the habit of exhibiting large panels on which are depicted the incidents of the plays performed and the counterfeit presentments of the chief actors engaged.

It is not, however, with the poster in Japan, but with the influence of Japanese art on the poster in Europe that this article is concerned. It is scarcely too sweeping to say that in some degree all the best modern illustrated placards including even those of Cheret, Grasset, and Mucha have been influenced by the Japanese colour print. In the work of some of the mâitres de affiche the influence is much more marked than in that of others. Amongst modern French poster artists none is more mordantly original than Toulouse-Lautrec : to accuse him of imitation would be merely absurd, and yet nearly all his great wall pictures show clearly that he has been a careful and ingenious student of Japanese work. At the first blush it would seem as if he owed his inspiration solely to a particular aspect of the life of modern Paris, but a closer observation reveals the fact that his best designs have much in common with those wonderful prints which are at once the delight and the despair of Occidental draughtsmen. His "Jane Avril," that delightful design which combines the hues of the crocus, the primrose, and the crimson tulip, is conceived in manner essentially Japanese.

In H. G. Ibels we have another Parisian who has drunk deeply at the well of Oriental inspiration, with results altogether charming and distinguished. Without sacrificing his individuality, he has learned not a little of his technique from the study of Japanese models. The same, in a less degree, may be said of Henri Riviere, if we may judge him by his three designs "L'Enfant Prodigue," "Le Juif Errant," and "Clairs de Lune." I might multiply on account of their subject matter they these examples almost to infinity, but could hardly fail to achieve a certain those which I have quoted are sufficient to illustrate my argument. In this connection, however, it is impossible not to mention Degas, the wonderful master of line, whose work has so much in common with that of the best Japanese artists. So far as I know, Degas has not yet made an essay in the affiche, but if he were to do so, we may be sure that he would produce something new and fascinating.

In this country the attention of the great mass of the people was undoubtedly first drawn to things Japanese by the "Mikado." Mr. Gilbert's amazingly felicitous excursion into the realms of topsey-turveydom did more to popularise the delicate picturesqueness of Japanese art and costume than a library full of learned treatises. The posters which advertised this production, though degree of prettiness, were thoroughly English, and, it must be added, thoroughly bad. Since then, however, the poster movement has taught our artists much, and when a second Japanese musical play was mounted they were able to give a much better account of themselves. They saw their opportunity and made the most of it. The "Geisha" was generously advertised, and much credit is due to Mr. George Edwardes for employing not one, but several of the ablest English designers in the preparation of posters to proclaim far and wide the delights of his new production.

The English theatrical poster a short time ago was one of the most crude, inartistic, and frequently brutal productions which the imagination and hand of man ever devised. The memory of it makes one shudder, and it is altogether pleasant to turn one's thoughts to the agreeably fantastic designs which lured us to Daly's Theatre when the "Jewel of Asia" was there for our amusement. It is almost unnecessary to say that the talent of Mr. Dudley Hardy was enlisted for the "Geisha." Mr. Hardy's versatility and ingenuity are only exceeded by his amazing industry. It is wonderful that he does so little that is bad. This Japanese bill is not amongst his happiest efforts: in manner and execution it is essentially English, and lacks the verve which made the bills for "A Gaiety Girl" so attractive. Mr. Edgar Wilson's poster for the "Geisha" was more fortunately conceived. The Japanese girl with her huge parasol is an excellent piece of work, and the colour-scheme, which includes glowing scarlet, bright yellow, dull green, and red-brown, is a very striking one. Even better is the design by Mr. John Hassall which, in the disposal of the pattern and in the graceful and naive arrangement of the details,recalls the Japanese colour print in the happiest way. In advertising the "Geisha," Mr. Will True proved himself a resourceful artist who possessed a fine sense of colour, and who was, in addition, a capable draughtsman. One of his bills is actually a Japanese print re-drawn and surrounded by a conventional border. It performed its primary business of advertising to admiration, and the wise collector will do well to add a copy of it to his treasures.

The other bill by Mr. True is graceful in line and harmonious in colour. The Japanese lettering, it should be noted, is an accurate translation of one of the songs in the “Geisha," and forms a most interesting detail of the placard. The collector has already seized upon the advertisement which Mr. Mortimer Menpes designed to advertise a recent exhibition of his pictures at Dowdeswell's. Although only in black and white, the spirited drawing of the figure makes a copy of this little poster a very desirable possession. I have before me as I write a window bill advertising a book entitled "A Cycle of Cathay," by Dr. Martin, first President of the Imperial Tungwen College, Peking. It is in black and white, and is adorned by a grotesque and vigorous Chinese figure well calculated to arrest the attention.

The foregoing is merely a rough note on a subject about which a good-sized volume might be written: it professes to be nothing more. If I have not touched upon the Japanese element in the masterly posters of the Beggarstaffs, it is only because I hope, at some future time, to be able to deal with the subject at such length as it deserves. Surely nobody will deny that the artistic invasion of England by Japan has, on the whole, been beneficial to our arts and crafts in general, and to the art of the poster in particular. It may be -I do not say it will be -that when the halcyon days of our admiration have passed, we shall not be inclined to estimate the art of Japan so highly as we do now. In the meantime, there can be no doubt that we are drawing from it much healthy inspiration, and not a few novel and entirely legitimate technical devices.

for more, see reVIEW's list of articles from 'the poster' here,
and here, for even more options.
and here, from the same people, a whole list of wonders.

the moon in the stone

who, after all, is the artist? or has the concept of the individual artist always been a myth? even the most solitary of the arts, writing, is probably only solitary in a small percentage of the time; as an editor, i have seen unedited manuscripts. editors, like trans- lators, are the silent hand in the process of creating art in literature.

what about painting? there, i will admit, it's hard to imagine paintings to be group endeavors. but let's look at it from another perspective: beyond even the time when students collaborated on the master's pieces, the history of art is crammed with stories of agents and galleries telling the painters what the public wants, what they can sell.

who is the artist in these little birds, the carver of the form, or the maker of the color? for me, the color in the work of almeric walter is the revelation. turns out, though, that the two ele- ments were contributed by two different people. henri berge carved the creature, walter himself developed, or rather refined, a method of calling the most from his production of pate-de-verre.

which is just like what it sounds like, mashed then made malleable glass, poured into moulds (of the little statues) which have been painted on the inside, and then with various powders and chemicals to insist on the color to go where the artist wants. who is the artist?

pate-de-verre, marqueterie-de-verre, pate-de-cristal.... numerous glass artists were avid to employ these revived methods which had been originally popular in ancient greece and rome. to my mind, of the first, walter and berge were the undisputed mas- ters, but there were other artists who offered some wonderful pieces.

one of these was gabriel argy-rousseau, who, as far as i can determine, designed his own pieces (and is a very early user of a hyphenated last name, borrowing the 'argy' from his wife's name). i really like this piece, and some of his other work is mesmerizing, but in the end the limited pallet of both color and style, loses my interest.

francois-emile decorchment produced some spectacular pieces, his experimentation drew some fabulous results, but his output of this style was limited to far fewer than the 100 or so pieces walter and berge produced.

when i was in paris, the one item in the museum of decorative arts that most aston- ished me was a simple string of glass flowers, a necklace by lalique in which every little flower seemed to contain the light of the moon. i can't tell you how that moonlight is inserted into these pieces, nor why i am so profoundly touched by it, but it is, and i am, and for this i am grateful.

the maestro, without a doubt, despite the grand trickery of decorchement, the cool brilliant elegance of lalique, the constant charm of argy-rousseau, or the radiance of walter and berge, was, of course, emile galle.

there was no technique with which he did not experiment and excel. there was nothing in the range of art nouveau styles and techniques which he did not only make his own, but take the form to an incandescent new level.

the saddest case is that of daum, the entire clan, who were the ones to bring glassmaking to nancy. galle came to nancy a bit later, establishing his own firm, a companion and competitor to the daums. sad because while they were the first, while walter and berge started off working for him. though walter sold him the rights (non-exclusively) to his methods, to my eye, the daums were never able to quite pull it off.

daum was salieri to galle's mozart; while some of his (their) work is beautiful, as a whole it is just not a revelation of genius. but i can't presume sadness from this distance. nor envy. nor pride. what is important is that the daums created an atmosphere in which great miracles could happen, and they continue still.

i must add my gratitude for a wonderful blog
for seeing this amazing, mostly regional, work: HERE

l'œil nouveau

perhaps a little more grounded this evening.... i was confused; somehow i'd thought the aesthetic movement was much earlier than it was, but then it fell into place. i led with some exceptions, and i'll return to them, but for the moment let's look at what i completely forgot to say.

which was to marvel at all the different japonismes and, to some extent, the order in which they took place.

george ward nichols' 1878 book (here) features the shapes, and the contents, that we also see on the japanese print, only on the print the meanings were as either thoughts, titles, sometimes poetry. in the style book they're just shapes and pretty drawings.

yes, the dresser/braquemond/rousseau/etc. pieces we began to look at yesterday preceded them, by 10 - 20 years; many of those, gorgeous though they were, were largely copies of works, often by hokusai or hiroshige, who were nearly contemporaries of the western artisans.

some of these fan-shaped and other patterns did appear on japanese lacquer work, but much of that turns out to appear near to the same dates as did the aesthetic work, leaving us again to blink in wonder at the escher-ish twists of the import and export.

so let us see if we can trace the arrivals of japonisme. at the very beginning, japan's contemporary masters began appearing on the dishware of the french. that, i would say was an honoring, filled with delight.

but then as both sides began to realize that, as wilde pointed out, the japan of our current fashions was was one with no reality, and thus both sides were able to take the emblems of the japanese, strip them of meaning, and sell them hand over fist to the west.

but, interestingly, at the same time, those looking at the incoming woodblock prints with a different eye saw things they translated into their paintings: series of paintings of the same spot in different lights, different perspectives. they saw an unusual balance, and a simplicity of subject choice. these still looked like western paintings (think monet, for example), but they had the changes that the artists had seen.

it wasn't until the next generation came along when the influences we talk about here most often began to appear, and would have the most profound and longest lasting effects. say it with me: outlines, asymmetry, large flat blocks of color, areas of pattern, and as, again, wilde said, 'I feel an irresistible desire to wander, and go to Japan, where I will pass my youth, sitting under an almond tree, drinking amber tea out of a blue cup, and looking at a landscape without perspective.'

but too, as we have also often seen, and despite the teasing, something profound had happened; people in the west were seeing with new eyes. nature was now something to which we paid our greatest attention, and we saw the shapes there and around us as far more permeable than we had ever let ourselves recognize. despite our best efforts, impermanence was all there really was.

was the aesthetic movement ever more than a style, a fad, an intoxication? if not, then people then were just like people now -- no surprise. and we could guess forever the cultural effects this all had, if any. or we can merely look back and thrill again what treasures the combining of cultures will produce.

these are only two of many many cartoons, often from punch, that satirize the thrall in which this china held its owners.

check out the victorian web for a wealth of information on the era.

the style that dare not speak its name

one studies in order to learn new things but, as any researcher will tell you, you are more likely to come away far more aware of how much you don't know. what i thought i knew: 1. what items from the aesthetic movement looked like; 2. when the aesthetic movement was; and 3. who were its biggest names. i was right about the names.

as for the rest, i currently have over a foot of books, piled on top of each other, on my desk, about twenty-five windows open in my browser (don't you love it?), and if i'm getting a clue, it's only the sweet whisper of one.

what i thought aesthetic movement china looked like (in their japonisme) was almost like collages, little overlapping stamps on an international letter, with extraneous flowery or fan-shaped decorations, and probably a couple of birds. you could find it all, in fewer colors, in the lacquers from japan which were their inspiration.

okay, but there's the rub, and it gets complicated. yes, i could, i have, show you perfect examples. so let's see if i can say this in a comprehensible manner. well, first let's say that the images on the right are by christopher dresser, and on the left are examples from one of the series in the lambert-rousseau dinner- wear (see more here).

the images of japanese goods with which i could illustrate the correspondences may very well have been made after the works they were supposed to have inspired. seems i have not paid close enough attention to dates. even more convoluted are the facts that many of these very designers began visiting japan, not only to study, but to set up with artisans in japan to produce for export good which looked like they might have inspired the japonisme wares being sold in the west! bing insisted on it.

now, christopher dresser is definitely one of those names. and yes, his designs, particularly as seen in the plate to the right, match the image i had in my head for 'aesthetic.' so, though, do the images on the left, but those designers do not appear on my lists. but here's another problem. the chronology i've always understood of all this was that the aesthetic movement followed very quickly on the tails of the arrival of japanese goods in the west, the 1850s to the 1860s, yet all of these are from the late 1880s! why do you people keep coming here when i clearly know nothing!

granted, dresser was quick out the gate, getting very involved with learning about, and writing about, during the 1860s, but that ends up seeming less germinal to this discussion than to understand what the aesthetic movement really is; hint: those little fans are only an emblem, an honorarium, a fad.

whomever you credit with beginning the era, ruskin, morris, or a number of others competing for primogenitor status, what it boils down to, in my opinion, is yet a number of new faces with the real name of japonisme. (but don't tell the pre-raphaelites.)

i will grant you, it had a different name in every country where it occurred, accompanied by what were very distinguishable national differences. but whether it's the desire for handmade, simple goods, or a cult of nature, or a new understanding of space, line and color, it all began with one catalyst: japan.