corporations are not people, my friend

THIS IS A PERSON

THIS IS A PERSON

THIS IS A PERSON

THIS IS A PERSON

THESE ARE PEOPLE!

THESE ARE PEOPLE TOO!

THIS IS A PERSON

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

beauty

how strong is beauty. it will utterly transport you. it will teach you lessons about being still. sometimes you can even fear its power, its power to turn you into someone else, its power to change you forever. but whatever your fear, you have no choice in the matter. if it is too frightening, you can look away, but the power of beauty to change you is the gift your soul desires.

Emil Orlik & Gustav Mahler:

A MEETING OF MINDS
Born in the Czech Republic (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in the mid-nineteenth century to middle-class, German-speaking Jewish parents, Emil Orlik (1870–1932) shares many biographical details with Gustav Mahler. Even so, these similarities could be overlooked as insignificant if it weren’t for the parallel paths that these artists took in later life, which eventually led to a hasty friendship and a mysterious falling-out. Orlik’s father was a respected tailor and the family lived in Prague near (but significantly not in) the Jewish ghetto. Like Mahler’s family, they were proud of their success and hopeful for the future. Orlik would later, like Mahler, also show a fascination with his Jewish heritage, producing lithographs (1897–1904) of everyday life in the Jewish quarter: crumbling buildings, somber bearded men, and the famous ancient Jewish cemeteries (still a must-see for visitors to Prague), with tombstones jutting from the ground like broken teeth.

Like Mahler, Orlik was confident in his calling as an artist and sure of his ability, but his talent was not immediately realized. In 1889, Orlik obtained permission from his father to study art in Munich; however, he was denied admission to the renowned Academy of Fine Art there, so he enrolled in a private art school. After proving his talent, he was accepted at the Academy, although he soon grew exasperated with the conservatism of the professors and left in 1893 to work in modern, naturalist styles popular at the time. The years at the Academy, however, had sparked an interest in him that would guide his life’s work: printmaking.

During the next few years, he began to develop his career, contributing work to journals such as Jugend (“Youth”) and, in 1897, the prestigious journal Pan, where he published his first woodcuts. The art of the woodcut became a passion for him, and in 1898 he went on his first trip abroad — to England, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Paris — where he had the opportunity to see many Japanese color woodblock prints. Japan had opened to the West in 1854 and there had been a steady stream of artifacts from the East since that time. The Impressionists (e.g., Whistler, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Cassatt) had embraced Japanese art more than two decades before Orlik discovered it, but trends moved slowly and the German/Austrian artistic tradition was only beginning to feel the waves of the Japanese tsunami that hit Western art at the end of the nineteenth century.

What Orlik saw in museums and print shops, particularly in Paris, was new and exciting to him. Along with the other artists who formed the Secession in Vienna, he was looking for an utterly new, uncorrupted form. Internationalism also appealed to Secession artists: “We want an art without xenophobia. The art of other nations should stimulate us and show us what we ourselves are; we shall appreciate it, and admire it if it is worth admiring; but imitate it we shall not.” Orlik’s aesthetic held true to this declaration.

In 1899, Orlik became a member of the Viennese Secession and began showing works in that city, and in February 1900 the Secessionists exhibited a collection of Japanese art, which gave Orlik a “foretaste” of the trip he would soon take. Japanese art had, by this point, been taken up wholeheartedly by Secession artists, as evidenced by Gustav Klimt’s vertical compositions and use of gold leaf and print patterns, Oskar Kokoschka’s interest in Japanese fans, and Carl Moll’s use of woodcut and simplified landscape. ... Given the Mahlers’ place in Viennese high society, it seemed almost inevitable that they should come to know Emil Orlik, but this acquaintance would have to wait, as Orlik was headed off on a two-year trip to Japan (1900–1901).

The purpose of this trip, aside from satisfying a Wanderlust he seemed to retain throughout life, was to learn the actual techniques of Japanese color woodblock printing from the source. Concerned that artists of the Jugendstil may have “gotten it wrong,” he sought an authenticity of style, subject, and technique that other Secession and Impressionist artists seemed to disregard. Known as a friendly extrovert, he seems to have met and studied with many of the Japanese practitioners at the time. In this remarkable period, the Japanese were as avidly interested in the West as Westerners were keen on Japan. Japanese journalists published some of Orlik’s prints in their newspapers at the same time that Orlik was collecting original Japanese artwork to bring back to Europe. After returning from this trip, Orlik published a collection, Aus Japan (1904), and also showed sixteen works at the 13th Viennese Secession Exhibit.

It was after his return from Japan that Orlik first met Mahler. The Czech conductor Josef Stransky remembered a meeting between Mahler and Orlik in a cafe in Prague:

“The Master agreed to be introduced to Orlik and during the lively conversation Orlik sketched a drawing of Mahler’s head on a postcard. Mahler was delighted and sent the card to his sister right away and invited Orlik to visit him in Vienna. So that evening was the inception of Orlik's widely admired etching."

Stransky assumed that this encounter in 1904 was the first meeting between the two, but now it appears, according to Henry-Louis de La Grange, that Mahler and Orlik already knew each other. The famous charcoal drawing and the etching date from 1902 and 1903, respectively. Orlik also encountered Mahler at an April 14, 1902, gala for the Secession’s Beethoven Exhibition, where Mahler conducted a choral passage from Beethoven’s Ninth (“Ihr sturzt nieder, Millionen?”), transcribed for six trombones. Like Klinger’s sculpture and Klimt’s frieze, Mahler’s refashioning of Beethoven was a liberal interpretation; however much traditionalists may have winced to behold this spectacle, the artists were upholding their motto: “Down with borrowed styles,” which resonates with Mahler’s own epithet “Tradition is slovenly.” At a banquet in honor of Max Klinger that night, “There were numerous speeches, and Emil Orlik, recently returned from Japan, gave a toast in spoof Japanese.”

Orlik’s portraits of Mahler are the finest that exist of the composer, and are really exemplary by any standard. Although Orlik never used a “true” Japanese style (he retained central perspective, for instance), he effectively chose aspects of Japanese design to incorporate in his work. One critic remarked of Orlik’s exhibit, “He is today the most Japanese European. But he is still European.” Orlik’s skillful use of Eastern techniques is evidenced by the simple, elegant lines indicating Mahler’s upper body in the etching. The graceful linear motion complements the meticulous detail of the face. In addition, in the charcoal drawing Orlik uses a calligraphic pen-and-ink style to lend the portrait a fluidity that evokes the momentum and force of Mahler’s personality.

For some reason that I have been unable to discover, relations soon soured between Mahler and Orlik. One year after their meeting in the Prague cafe, Mahler wrote a letter to Alma indicating that his enthusiasm for Orlik had waned. Alma picked up on the shift in emotion, as in this letter to Mahler:

“Yesterday evening I went alone into the 'Blue Star' and I met the unavoidable Orlik (whom I always meet, whereever I go). Naturally I sat beside him and let him speak his mind. What he had to say about Japan and China ‘I acknowledged.’ He is however a confused fellow and described the whole thing not from his own perspective, but rather from some reports he got somewhere . . . Then he talked about his trip to Provence and what he had learned artistically there. He painted very differently since then—landscapes and the sun became his teachers, and it was so uplifting to wander in new artistic territory. I suspect that he took photographs there and traced pictures of Cezanne and Van Gogh. Besides that, I have the impression of him as a good-natured and honest (in the bourgeois sense) man.”

It will take more research to discover or even speculate about the reason for this sudden and drastic shift in relations between Orlik and the Mahlers. Certainly they ran in similar circuits in society and shared similar interests: the theater (Orlik later designed costumes and sets in Berlin) and the Far East. Mahler’s own fascination with Eastern philosophy and music, which produced Das Lied von der Erde, are rooted firmly in this period around 1900–1902, in which the influence of Asian art and music was flourishing in the trend-setting circles of Viennese artistic elites. Orlik, one of the first Western artists to actually visit Japan, was very important in contributing to the dialogue about Japanese art and how it could and should be incorporated into the “new style” that was being born in the salons and coffeehouses of Vienna.

Emil Orlik moved to Berlin in 1904 and took a post as head of the graphic art and book illustration department at the Academy of the Museum of Applied Arts. He remained there until his retirement in 1930, teaching such artists as George Grosz. In 1917, Orlik was chosen to be the only artist to document the peace talks at Brest-Litovsk. His last overseas trip in 1923 was, like Mahler’s, to New York City, which he said was harder to get used to than China. Orlik died of a heart attack in 1932, just as the Nazis were intensifying their murderous campaign against the Jews in Europe. All but one member of Orlik’s extended family perished. Despite this tragedy, however, his art remains to tell the extraordinary story — often overshadowed by the dark clouds that soon would oppress the twentieth century — of a time when “xenophobia in art” was denounced, exciting information about the world was becoming available, and a new century was unfolding in a spirit of curiosity and creativity, exploration and experimentation.

Jan Hoeper
from the Mahler Archives

for more about Emil Orlik

also thanks to anonymous for the inspiration!

disagree with awe

In our narrow-minded fuss over progress -- while displaying an artistic hubris that only listens to its own voice -- we would have already reached complete bankruptcy, despite the short duration of the modern movement, if Japanese art had not served it as a pillar. With few exceptions, every innovation we wanted to achieve in the realm of natural forms here in Europe had already been done as well, or often much better in Japan -- imparted to us with a certain deviation from its national style.

In Japan all the preconditions were at hand for a tendency toward this quasi-naturalistic sort of art: not organically-arranged forms in the manner of Greek art, but rather effects with completely smooth surfaces; instead of monumental structures, playful, simple forms whose only function is to be held in the hand and to be tenderly observed by an individual.

A rich technique, and nonetheless one which at times rests in the quality of handwork. A loving examination of nature, a measured stylization, one that has been practiced for centuries. A sensitivity for color, taken to its extreme, besides a good deal of plain childlikeness, a joy in the bizarre, in the wonderful ways of nature. It is an art from which one can learn an infinite amount and which could just as easily lead one astray.

Whoever is used to see art forms as something not coincidental -- as we should all be, the devotees of Winkelmann's art history -- who ever sees them instead as the necessary historical result of the general development of art, will find it unlikely that our century, which experienced a complete crisis of all views and lifestyles as a result of the appearance of the natural sciences, would be able to create its artistic expression purely from the reserve of the past.

A period that sets itself so strongly apart from the past, must, and will create for itself a new sphere of shapes, which one day will be recognized as the style of the natural scientific age.

Julius Lessing, "What's Modern in Art?" Berlin, 1898

here i offer a few more images from the book/exhibition in my last post, and some extrapolations. we've seen before the design inspirations that were the triangle of glasgow, vienna, and poiret with japan but more is offered: the hoffmann at the bottom left, the moser in the middle, and the japanese on top. was the comb made for expert? we'll never know, but if it was, it might lessen its inspirational value. we'll never answer these questions. as we've seen, people constantly disagreed at the time as well. but nobody can disagree with awe.

see the whole year of 1898 of "ver sacrum" from which many of the images these two posts were taken.

Verborgene Impressionen : Hidden Impressions

these images and the comments below are from the exhibition and catalogue of the same name as this post, held in vienna in the spring of 1990. again, we can see how the perspective and the artwork itself changes from country to country.

[commercial trade between austria and japan did not begin until 1869, as no treaties had yet been signed. at last the ships from austria were in japanese waters, and mercantile interests were being pursued.]

Art was included in their planning only to a minor extent -- at first. Export, import, commercial profits in the account-books, that was the motto. However, through its industrial products and handicrafts, Japan, only just linked to world trade connections, provided this very thing -- art, and did so in a fascinating way. In massive numbers and for prices that were as unprecedented as they were horrendous, china, lacquered works, bronzes, silk, all sorts of dyed textiles and other handicrafts were leaving the country en masse.

In a remarkably short time discriminating connoisseurs and artists in the west discovered in an art which up until now had been practically inaccessible, an expression of bourgeois culture that was comparable to theirs, highly cultivated, and refined, one that would maintain the search for new means of artistic expression, and, even more important, enrich it. "In every field", summarised the preface to the catalogue of the great Japanese exhibition in the Vienna Secession in the year 1900 "new experiments were taking place, a searching and feeling for new means of expression, which nature was not going to render simply by a naive enjoyment of the world of appearances.

The intention to simplify, to find the quintessence of things became the criterion. The pioneers of art were searching for models they could build on, that they could develop within themselves. They found what they were looking for in the age-old culture of the East, in the art of the Japanese." "Japonisme", as it was called, meaning the sum total of all the very varied influences of Japanese style, moved in to conquer western creativity and sensibility.

First of all it overtook western Europe and then, after a certain lapse of time, moved from there to central and eastern Europe as well. In its more narrow sense Japonisme is a phenomenon that can be explained according to its own aesthetic principles; indeed, taking an example from the graphic arts or painting, this can be seen most clearly wherever the accustomed, almost mathematical exactness of perspective is sacrificed in favour of an emphasis on decorative surface. As well as this, the fact that the ornamentation can be repeated arbitrarily may well diminish individuality but the elements of timelessness and universality this adds are equally valid.

Europe discovered these principles most of all in the woodcuts and engravings, which were cheap and easy to get hold of. In spite of strict decorative composition and an equal emphasis on line, form and colour in these works the whole area of the page, whether painted on or left free was endowed with the utmost vitality. Exterior characteristics, such as the choice of extremely wide or high formats or fan-forms, which would have been incomprehensible without the Japanese were eagerly exploited by our artists as well.

This art, which had spread all over Europe, which had been welcomed mostly with exultation but also with occasional biting criticism, had become a special stylistic medium enabling it to satisfy not only the expressive needs of many artists, but also to correspond to a certain "Zeitgeist" in public taste. For Japonisme was more than just the transference of aesthetic feeling into works of art; above all it was a phenomenon in the history of intellectual development and taste.

In its broadest sense Japonisme was encountered in almost every livingroom, an exotic spice which had become an integral part of almost every area of domestic and social life, whether in the sugar and tea tins decorated with Geishas, or mocca-cups from Karlsbad and Schlak-kenwerth, who set themselves up in competition with Imari and Satsuma; from ball-dresses a la kimono to postcards with blond "musumes"; from travelogues and novels, written by more authors than one Loti, to the first collections of Japanese art in our museums; from Viennese and Budapest educated classes, the Bildungsbiirger, citizens hungry for culture, who became Japan-connoisseurs and fanatics; from artists between Bleiberg and Prague, who wanted to see Nikko and Kyoto with their own eyes, to the dozens of manufacturers who produced Nippon knick-knacks for mantlepieces and glass-cabinets.

"Japonisme" was a motley if pretty miscellany, where understanding and imagination, art and kitsch, the genuine and the pretended were often uneasy bedfellows; out of this emerged, in its own radical and independent potency, the art of the Viennese Secession, or of a Gustav Klimt, and went on to attain an overriding significance; all this came from the same soil and humus, the intensive cultivation of the fashion for things Japanese.

Peter Pantzer, Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst - 1990

the music of wallpaper

while actually reading the text in my copy of 'hidden impressions,' the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at the MAK in vienna, of instances where the japanese influenced the austrian arts. we'll get back to that catalogue in a future post, but for now, let's follow this little adventure.

i was wildly taken with the two images of japanese endpapers, the cranes on the salmon background and the puppies. sure i had seen a western equivilent, i searched for days to no avail. all of the western endpapers, even those from childrens' books, were, to my eyes anyway, far more rigid by design.

refusing to give up, i started perusing some others of my books. i double-checked the catalogue and all of my other books about design in vienna at that time: nothing. why, i asked myself, and still do, have japanese endpapers in the catalogue with no japonisme version for comparison?

i started on my other books about paper, wallpaper, and had myself an aha moment. i recalled having noticed so many times how actually un-equivalent these matches-up usually are. rarely does a japanese design form get re-interpreted in some into something comparable back and forth. usually, it, like some inherited traits, skips a generation.

but once i found these, not only didn't they surprise me, but they gave me deeper understanding in both sides of the equation. first, we've discussed the lesson that the west learned that caused them to question the validity of any differences between art, decoration, and craft.

no one embraced this concept more strongly than the nabis, for whom there was no less a creative act in creating wallpaper than in painting a painting. much of what we know as paintings are actually bits of a wall-hanging or a screen (see here), but even when the item was a painting itself, it was covered with wallpaper, and, or, the sort of design that hangs in an invisible balance between subject and surround.

in fact, the more one looks at the work of the nabis (here represented by maurice denis, pierre bonnard, and vuillard), the more one sees rhythm, pulse. these pieces do not make a statement, they make a song.

and the songs have continued out in ever widening circles. whistler sued over it; the right to see a surface as something other than flat, the right to name a painting a symphony, a rhapsody, a song.