woman as decoration (so what else is new?)

i have been trying to find the portfolio from which these images are taken for years, and, you guessed it: they're at the Wolf- sonian! all of the images are by our old friend, julius klinger, and one we've featured before. that's now two, with the hoytema calendars, searches laid to rest. but now that i see them all i'm somewhat troubled; do we duplicate too easily? do we grimace and prance as our natural practices?

i'm starting to wonder if my values aren't keeping up with the times. i'm also wondering if i'm a hypocrite. i have a google alert set up for the word japonisme, so whenever it's used online i get pointed in its direction.

for some time now, images from this blog have shown up on tumbler, but that site seems assiduously, somehow, to make sure every images is linked, one way or another, back to its source. enter pinterest, and the whole system falls apart. users link to tumbler rather than here, for one thing, or they just download images from here and assign themselves as the source.

i seem to have gotten myself really all tangled up with myself over this. then the pinterest users repin each other's pins, and soon any hint of source is non-existent. and i ask myself, given that there's nothing that can be done about it, 'should i care?'.

i know that it bothers me in part because i see things that i know required hours of work to make them appear effortlessly beautiful. but i also begin to wonder if that kind of 'ownership' in this kind of context has any meaning anymore.

add to that, i haven't always been perfect at attributing sources, so does that make me no different? i get email occasionally asking why don't i just use tumbler, as if it's getting to be that context, even any text, grows more meaningless every day as the image increas- ingly becomes all that matters.

once, back in the day, in the hippie commune where i was living in the haight-ashbury, some guy off the street (friend of a friend?) walked into my room, went through my drawers, found my little water-painting set, and began to paint. when i found him and objected, he told me i was too attached to ownership of physical things. was i a bad hippie? this is like that.

though am i any different? i spend all this time writing this stuff, and rarely read the text on other blogs. sure, i want my blog to be read, as does every blogger who puts in time, sometimes quite a bit, to write copy and context. and yet, how often do i just look at the pictures? heck, i have a whole wall of books on this subject, and how many of those have i read? i've looked at the pictures.

and isn't it a good thing, that so many people know about japonisme now (bunches of boards on pinterest! -- lots with my images)? i remember not so long ago when nobody had ever heard of gustave baumann or arthur wesley dow, let alone mabel royds ... or julius klinger. and yet i simmer and stew, as though the pixels were still part of my fingertips, and now dispersing into the ether.

Jellicle Cats come out tonight

THE SONG OF THE JELLICLES

Jellicle Cats come out tonight
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright—
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats are rather small;
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practise their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.

Jellicle Cats develop slowly,
Jellicle Cats are not too big;
Jellicle Cats are roly-poly,
They know how to dance a gavotte
and a jig.
Until the Jellicle Moon appears
They make their toilette and take their repose:
Jellicles wash behind their ears,
Jellicles dry between their toes.

Jellicle Cats are white and black,
Jellicle Cats are of
moderate size;
Jellicles jump like a jumping-jack,
Jellicle Cats have moonlit eyes.
They're quiet enough in the morning hours,
They're quiet enough
in the afternoon,
Reserving their
terpsichorean powers
To dance by the light of
the Jellicle Moon.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats (as I said) are small;
If it happens to be a stormy night
They will practise a caper or two in the hall.
If it happens the sun is shining bright
You would say they had nothing to do at all:
They are resting and saving themselves to be right
For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball.

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot

endless wonders

today (or very soon) i'll add an
"endless wonders" column in the
sidebar. (speaks for itself, no?)

these are from a source that has
outdone my best efforts,
& i couldn't be happier.

i once said that this blog was the
only place on the internet where
one might find the complete
calendars of theo v. hoytema.
i now am wrong.

at the Wolfsonian, late publishers
of the astonishing journal DAPA,
have done something wonderful
to their website collections:
they've made them very accessible.

i've left out the months we've already passed in this first calendar,
but with a reminder that you can find the whole thing
at the wolf's site,
not to mention that there are a number of other calendars for 1928
(of which 2012 is a repeat): just enter -- calendar 1928 --
as your search terms.


yes, there's a lot more
(-- calendar hoytema -- gets you that entire set),
and other treasures that take you beyond the calendar world...
and there are other sites of endless wonders....
to be explored....

she ate the whole thing

but i get ahead of myself. like these women pictured here, i am likely older and fatter than you, though i never wear a full, long skirt, nor a cap nor a shawl -- and rarely an apron. i do however, upon occasion, wear an apron, but i only have blue ones. my hair is not black nor white, and neither is my cat. she's not green either.

but a truism emerges nonetheless: a portly older woman has a cat. what could be truer than that? in the five and a half years we've spent together we've not always seen eye-to-eye, but we have a policy by which we stand: we always make up before we go to bed.

something has happened this weekend, though, that threatens every bit of the simpatico wavelength we have forged: ruby caught and ate a tree-rat right in front of me. (we were outside.) (though tree-rats look like big mice with a long rat-like tail, i've gotten to know them pretty well over the years; they love the bird-feeder late at night, and they'll peel and sample lemons on the tree, placing the bits of rind carefully on a nearby leaf. though there are those who shudder at the mere thought of them, they're pretty harmless.)

now ruby, like previous cats with whom i've shared a bed, has learned that birds are out-of-bounds. i understand the magnitude of sacrifice she makes for me in this, so i tread carefully with regards other possible prey. spare the butterfly, if possible, but allow the dragonfly, like that. and if she catches a mouse she's not allowed to bring it into the house. but a rat? i'm afraid we didn't have any rule for that.

the first sign that something was about to happen was her uncharacteristically rushed and clumsy leap toward the side fence and into the morning glory vines which thicken towards the ground and back she came with the rat in her mouth, as it kicked and kicked, in its wholly ineffectual attempt to run away. she didn't seem sure where to drop it, and in case that had anything to do with me, sitting there, i half-heartedly congratulated her on her catch.

she shook it several times in what appeared to be clearly an attempt to kill it, then dropped it on the cardboard port in front of my swing. it lay on its back, still kicking, and breathing hard. i could see its belly fill and deflate, fill and deflate. ruby played with it, but seemed more interested in dining than diddling.
and thus she began, taking the head first.

she was quite masterly and efficient, and utterly serious. soon the head was only half there, bloody and fresh. the rest went down a bite at a time, though she had to work the gristle, or the intestines -- not sure what -- till they tore. very slightly, i could hear the crackle of the bones. it didn't take much time, as i sat there unclear of my role, if there was one. ruby neither rushed nor dawdled. i wondered if she would eat the tail, which was last, but she did.

then all that was left was a very small puffy pile of swollen entrails, and one hand, er, paw, though it looked like a gloved hand that might reach for one's monocle. ruby, full and tired, crawled right into her bed and slept, even before she cleaned herself, though truthfully she had been very neat.

so who am i now? she is clearly no longer my "baby." or is she? i don't know how to treat her, though i'm struggling to stop myself from getting down on my knees and bowing down, we're not worthy, we're not worthy. my charming companion has shown her true face, and she has asked me, what does anyone really know?

painting in a minor key

this whole rather stream-of-con- sciousness meandered from one inspiration to another (i'll get to that), and since much of this travel was through the nabis' neighborhood, i tried to find that tune in my head. forgive my synaesthesia, but i realised that the only way i could describe it was through sound.

this adventure began when i when i saw the elmes poster at the (below right). i knew it reminded me of something,
and it was clearly indebted to nabi music.
(see more at this amazing blog!)

i looked through my nabi books, and i think that this vallotton (above left) comes the closest, and that perhaps the ones i was seeing in my mind's eye were conflations of a few of the other ones.

the next two are just echos, the synapses skipping.

while bernard was the only one of these two who were part of the pont-aven crowd, you can surely see the route. but all this made me want to grasp what message i was getting from their work.

and i found that for me, it is non-verbal. it like the minor- key in the key- strokes of symphony, like a rotation that leaves every- thing rotated, not quite in

free-fall...........

three of these bottom images are from another won- derful site, i added the fourth, from ernest batch- elder, but its original artist is not attributed. personally, i think the bonnard more matches the batchelder.

there is something terribly attractive about that skewing, that minor key; it can be almost unbearable to come right-side up again. yes, the artists were heavily influenced by japanese prints, their flatness, their blocks of color, and their their knowledge of the importance of the non-linear line, and symbolism, and a response to the impressionists. but i believe that the goal, probably unconscious, was to play by the music that they heard, not anyone elses.

which is like so many of us today.

something in my eyes

many years ago i was read- ing a short story, follow the eagle, by william kotzwinkle, for about the 400th time. this is a story about a young native-american motorcycle rider and here it was, the middle-of-the-night, when i noticed for the very first time that the story was increasingly in the cadence of hiawatha! why had i never noticed before? well, this same phenomenon has happened again, but i'm going to string this out for a little longer as i wait to see if you can guess.

in his charming and perceptive essay seeing eye-to-eye with japan, taras a saks provides some fascinating differences he's observed between american and japanese cultures. for example, "In the book The Inscrutable Japanese, by Kagawa Hiroshi, the author notes that if Japanese children, when scolded, look their parents in the eye, they will be further reproached, “Why are you looking at me that way?” In contrast, if an American child looks down or away when chastised, he or she will most likely be ordered to “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

he continues, "Though in the US, for example, direct eye contact is seen in a positive light — denoting honesty, sincerity, self-confidence, and trustworthiness — in Japan it can be taken as proof of vanity, hubris, overconfidence, and rudeness"

in another column, selling dog training services successfully, the author instructs, "It’s important to take charge at the initial consult. Don’t be content to be left standing in the entryway while the client’s life swirls around you, politely waiting to be acknowledged. You’re a professional there to do professional work. They’re paying for your time and there’s a limited amount of it—it’s important to get right to work and set a tone of productivity. When the door opens, introduce yourself and shake hands while making good, solid eye contact. If the dog is present, compliment her and, if safe and appropriate, pet her. But then straighten back up, smile, and suggest, “Shall we sit at the kitchen table and get started?” Clients will feel more comfortable if you take the lead, and are much more likely to hire you if you seem competent and in control."

whether it's dog-training or vacuum cleaners, the rules are the same, as well as for for everything from laundry detergent to breakfast cereal: behave the way you would if you wanted to strike terror in the hearts in japan! in fact, can that be the underlying message in both cultures? i wonder if bullying is as much a problem in japan as it is here, where basic to our culture is the positive effect in a nation of salesmen turns us also into a nation of bullies.

and yes, surely you've noticed by now: after six years of doing this blog; after thirty years of being a student of japanese art, yesterday i noticed something for the very first time: they are never, ever, looking you in the eyes.