my naked lady

my naked lady framed

in twilight is an accident


whose niceness betters easily the intent

of genius—

painting wholly feels ashamed

before this music,and poetry cannot


go near because perfectly fearful.


meanwhile these speak her wonderful

But i(having in my arms caught


the picture)hurry it slowly




to my mouth,taste the accurate demure

ferocious

rhythm of

precise

laziness. Eat the price



of an imaginable gesture



exact warm unholy


e. e. cummings












at the turn of the last century, as we've said, influences went in both directions. as the japanese artists began to emulate western art (some say 'worship it'), learning to represent shadows, reflections, perspective, etc., other more subtle changes were happening as well.

subtle lines and shadows around the eyes made the communication of emotion much more accessible. the presentation of a single woman in a seemingly solitary place also allowed them lit in a more human light. and they were, occasionally, nude.

son of a great samurai, hashiguchi goyo (often simply referred to as goyo) was an artist from a very young age. with support from his family, he began his studies in art -- both western and traditional japanese.

born in 1880, goyo quickly found work as an illustrator; he designed the cover and some illustrations for the first edition of natsume soseki's 'i am a cat.' interestingly, what really jump-started his career as a commercial and fine artist was his winning of a poster contest for a local department store. (as we've seen before!)

this led to his making a connection with the publisher watanabe, which led to his wider exposure as a fine-arts printmaker. his talent and thus his reputation skyrocketed, or would have if he had lived.

after the publication of only 14 woodblock prints during his lifetime (and about that many additional after his death), goyo died in 1921 of meningitis. but his embrace of new forms (even art nouveau!) lives with and inspires us still.

versions of rilke -- from 'the book of hours'

Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen,
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin;
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen
und in den großen giebst du groß dich hin.

Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Kräfte,
dass sie so dienend durch die Dinge gehn:
in Wurzeln wachsend, schwindend in die Schäfte
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn.

(the original german)

I find you in all these things of the world
that I love calmly, like a brother;
in things no one cares for you brood like a seed;
and to powerful things you give an immense power.

Strength plays such a marvelous game --
it moves through the things of the world like a servant,
groping out in roots, tapering in trunks,
and in the treetops like a rising from the dead.

(robert bly translation)

In all these thing I cherish as a brother
still it is you I find; seedlike you wait,
basking serenely in the narrowest compass,

and greatly give yourself in what is great.

This is the marvel of the play of forces,
that they so serve the things where
through they flow: growing in roots, to dwindle in the tree-trunks,
and in the crowns like resurrection show.

(babette deutsch translation)

I find you there
in all these things
I care for like a brother.
A seed, you nestle in the smallest of them,
and in the huge ones spread yourself hugely.

Such is the amazing play
of the powers:
they who give themselves
so willingly,
swelling in the roots, thinning as the trunks rise,
and in the high leaves, resurrection.

(anita barrows, joanna macy translation)

i see you in all
these things
that i love like my own brother:
the lowly, for whom you are the seed,
the grand
whom you crown.

such is the marvel of your power,
freely to each
as she needs:
thickening her roots,
rising through her trunk,
and from her leaves, resurrection.

(my own attempt, as i really hate the one remaining that i could put my hands on, and because i think this really is the song of spring and i don't know that the truest essence is captured yet. care to try?)

the magnolia blossom

MAGNOLIAS

alabama:

the first,

a girl child.


the rocking chair

is cold,

the porch colder,

but i could sit

here for a year,

thinking of my child,

her dwindling.

the magnolias

too are

windswept

graveward.

neither live

oak nor reed

resists the

weather's breath,

but each lets go

its green,

its living part.


spring,

when it comes,

is at first wet,

becoming lush,

giving way

to the darkgreen darkness

where magnolia leaves

hover like wings,

inches off the receding earth.

then the blooms on the tree will open.

they are so clearly flesh of

our flesh.

without the prolonging bone,

so clearly transitory.

when touched --

and i touch them --

the blossoms smudge,

the flesh dying beneath my acid hands,

turning brown in the shape of fingertips.

andrew hudgins

from saints and strangers
c copyright 1985

come spring

COME SPRING

The first warm days of spring, give them to me,
a tepid rain, crocus poking through last year's leaves.

Give me the heart of it, pale yellow, sky blue,
trees bare but for the hard buds, the few birds.

To hear the screen door
slam again.
To shoo the flies
from the house,
the spoiled fruit.

I'll take all of it,
Mother of Summer,
the smell
of manure shoveled
over the potatoes,
diesel fumes

from the refuse truck,
scent of creek bottom,
feral,
lime-laced,
cracked open
effusion of rotting eggs.

Even sinus infections
and rusty rake tines
sunk in rank earth
near the shed,
mushroom spores,

the asthmatic crank of winter-bound bikes,
fevers,
flu,
cold sores,
loose ends.
Even the crows,
hawking

their dull black cloaks
for the shiny wings
of iridescent spring.
Let them ride
the rippled air

over the barren Sunday parking lots,

the farther fields,
where the weeds will grow thorny,
wild and tall.

Dorianne Laux
copyright 2008

(today is exactly forty years to the day since i moved to california. it's my anniversary. and because she has put a spell on me so that i cannot see a rabbit without thinking of her, this is for karla.)

Happiest Vernal Equinox to Each of You.

Thank you for visiting this blog.

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.), fin

so much has been left out of this series. there's been no mention of genocide or theft, though those are surely in the background when we mention national parks, for example.

we haven't talked about the marginalization of nations who were relegated to the position of being 'bad guys' in the 'westerns' which had started filming in 1903.

what we have talked about was beauty, and cultural transference, and best intentions, and, sometimes, best results.

we have talked about many of the similarities between the paintings from the first half of the 20th century done by american indians to those edo era prints from japan: outlines, areas of flat color, image simplification.

we haven't mentioned the effects on their art of giving new art materials to the native tribe members; i missed commenting on the fact that in none of the traditional indian paintings do we see 'close-ups'; like fred astaire the indians would only dance when their whole body showed.

that somehow the grimaces, the revealed faces, that we see in the kabuki actor portraits are there in the work of the indians painting today. that many of them retain some of these elements we've discussed, that they are, in my opinion, some of the most extraordinarily gifted artists working today. that, by and large, the work from the native artists is seen as genre painting, and is ignored in the major international art universe.

oscar howe was a yanktonai indian and student at the santa fe studio school. a letter he wrote in 1958 illustrated, all too clearly, one of the effects this marginalization:

"Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? Are we to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child and only the White Man know what is best for him... but one could easily turn to become a social protest painter. I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains."

see some of rick bartow's gorgeous work here and here. see fritz scholder here or here. there's so much online, in museums around the country, and here.....

i've surely left out much, but i've learned a lot doing this. i hope it's been interesting for you. i guess it's like this whenever you undertake to learn something new: what you end up with are tears of sadness and a heart filled with wonder.

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) VII

(click images to enlarge)

as we've seen over the last two weeks, native americans and native american lands grew in fascination after the completion of the railroad which made them accessible. The artists went first, some with exploitation in mind, and many with inspiration in their hearts; the beauty, the people, the weather: it was as though a new nation have been born in the middle of this one. in fact, it was many nations, and they had been there all along.

with the artistic communities growing, an interchange between painters and indians who wanted to 'learn to paint,' began. classes became frequent, and from them came work which began to be shown around the country. before long the bureau of indian affairs set up indian schools around the country with a strong emphasis on teaching the arts.

In 1932, Dorothy Dunn established The Studio at the Santa Fe Indian school where she nurtured many of the well-known "easel artists" such as Ben Quintana, Harrison Begay, Joe H. Herrara, Quincy Tahoma, Pablita Velarde, Eva Mirabel, Tonita Lujan, Pop-Chalee, Oscar Howe and Geronima Cruz Montoya.1

quincy tahoma (1921-1956) was a navajo painter. he was a shepherd for many years, but then in 1932 decided to go to the santa fe indian school where he learned to paint in dorothy dunn's 'studio' class. he went on to become one of the most prominent pupils.

At the Studio, at the federal government's Santa Fe Indian School, Dunn promoted the "modern flat-art" style featuring clearly outlined, bright forms rhythmically linked in a seemingly dimensionless yet narrative space. 2

the Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School became the centerpiece of the Collier administration's commitment to Indian arts and a model for other Indian schools across the country. 3

The studio attracted student artists from tribes all over the United States and was so influential that it is possible to speak of the "Studio style" that dominated American Indian painting through the 1950s and reverberates among the work of many artists today. 4

(sources: 2. "Modern By Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style." Publishers Weekly (Nov 27, 1995); 3. Journal of the Southwest (Summer 1998); 4. DISCovering Multicultural America. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) VI

(click images to enlarge)

For a decade or more Winold Reiss dedicated his talents to creating a pictorial epic of the North American Indian which shall preserve the distinctive characteristics of these fast vanishing tribes. The Indians of the Northwest were his favorite subject for research and the large number of portraits and figure compositions in color and in line which he made of the Blackfeet Indians constitutes a veritable saga of the tribe.

Mr. Reiss brought to his task an unusual and paradoxical combination of talents...his interest in racial type and character and his unfailing eye for the decorative aspects of his subjects. Indianologists commended Mr. Reiss's studies of the aborigines for their ethnological accuracy and the knowledge of custom and folklore which they display; and those in search of decorative art which shall also have an authentic American note were very apt to commission Mr. Reiss for the carrying out of their ideas.

It is perhaps another paradox that a painter of German birth should have been a pathfinder in discovering the decorative possibilities of the North American Indian. Mr. Reiss was born in the Black Forest and received his training as an artist with his father, Fritz Reiss, well known genre painter specializing in the peasant types of the Black Forest, and with Franz von Stuck at the Royal Academy in Munich. 1

this story is not without debate nor without sadness, but there's another chapter or two to go through before we get to that.

for now let us just point out clouds and how they had become seen. winold reiss opened an art school in glacier natonal park where he taught tourists and some of the blackfoot indians who were most often their subjects. blue eagle studied with him privately. what the world had begun to incorporate into their design awareness was 'art deco,' and current awareness is the only thing that one can teach.

we can see it above in winold's magazine cover and fred's buffalo hunt, in nc's book cover and in my photo. clouds have always had linings upon occasion, but they were never painted quite like that until they saw the styles of the japanese.

(for some fascinating background, and perspective, check this out.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) V

(click images to enlarge)

"Where are the blossoms of those summers!
-- fallen, one by one;
so all of my family departed,
each in his turn,
to the land of spirits.
I am on the hilltop and
must go down into the valley;
and when Uncas follows
in my footsteps there will
no longer be any of the
blood of the Sagamores,
for my boy is
the last of the Mohicans,"
Chingachgook spoke to Hawkeye.

winold reiss grew up in germany poring over the tales of james fennimore cooper.


While Hawkeye and the Indians lighted their fire and took their evening's repast, a frugal meal of dried bear's meat, the young man paid a visit to that curtain of the dilapidated fort which looked out on the sheet of the Horican. The wind had fallen, and the waves were already rolling on the sandy beach beneath him, in a more regular and tempered succession. The clouds, as if tired of their furious chase, were breaking asunder; the heavier volumes, gathering in black masses about the horizon, while the lighter scud still hurried above the water, or eddied among the tops of the mountains, like broken flights of birds, hovering around their roosts. Here and there, a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.

(from the last of the mohicans)


winold reiss's young heart was captivated, and he decided very early on that he would go to america to see the indians for himself, and to paint them.

and he did, but not before he developed a monumental career for himself in the arts. this cover which he did for a magazine which he helped found places him directly in the japonisme moment.

we see all of the familiar signs of the times as we have seen in the german posters we've looked at in the last few weeks, and at the american ones they inspired, and the japanese portraits of actors which had in turn inspired the germans.

the outlines, the bold patterns, the flatness and outlines, the blocks of color; the diagonal structure is not utilized, but had that moment of japonisme not happened, winold reiss would not have designed this cover the way he did.

In common with many other German boys whose imagination had been stirred by Fennimore Cooper's novels, Mr. Reiss had a romantic interest in the North American aborigines. He wanted above all else to paint them. But his romantic imaginings were tempered by an artistic training which demanded accurate observation of character.

And so he decided to come to America in 1913 for the express purpose of studying the North American Indian in his native habitat and also to introduce modern decorative art, which, although a flourishing and accepted style in Munich and Vienna, where it had its origin, was practically unknown in the United States. The Crillon Restaurant, which Mr. Reiss decorated in 1920, was the first demonstration of the decorative possibilities of the new style. Since that time Mr. Reiss has been one of the outstanding pioneers in introducing a modern decor which should harmonize with American architecture and express American taste. 1

The career of Winold Reiss was congruent with the seeds of the Arts and Crafts and Applied Arts movements. Both employ bold lettering and simplified forms, large expanses of flat and contrasting colors, and strong lines: the distinctive attributes of the German Poster Style.

While the first M.A.C. cover was self-consciously sophisticated and represented a tour-de-force of the lithographic art, the tenth (ca. 1917) shows us another, quite different, side of his artistic personality, the love of primitive natural motifs and the ability to reduce and simplify them to essential patterns of form, line, and color. The bird and flower motif becomes a signature in much of Reiss's later work small design sketch whose strong lines, squarish grids, and punctuation of broad flat surfaces with simplified decorations recall the work of Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Secession. 2

(sounds like japonisme to me....)

cont. on page later

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) IV

(click images to enlarge)

(cont.) at first i figured it probably was more evidence that the american indians were descended from travellers from asia. well, the dna does uphold this evidence, but does that explain the art?

this migration was something like 50000 years ago 1; does that explain in any way the relationship between this fritz scholder, whose grandmother was luiseno, but who considered himself an american from missouri, from around 1979, and the utagawa toyokuni from about 1779. and anyway, those migrations covered most of the planet, but there is no other culture whose art so resembles one the other.

i also wondered abut the idea of 'primative cultures' creating similar arts. well, as tonto would have said, 'who you calling primitive, white woman?'

what i was to learn was, as my old friend artie rausch used to say, 'neither that simple nor that complex.'

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) III

(click images to enlarge)

about 30 years ago i took a book out of the library about american indian paintings. (and please, let me say here, that though it makes absolutely no sense to me that after hundreds of years of realizing that north america was in fact not india, we still call them that -- except for in wee pockets like berkeley, where i live, in which on october 14th, when many of the rest of you in the states are 'celebrating' columbus day, we're observing indigenous peoples day -- the native americans in fact call themselves indians, which is easier than naming all the nations every time one wishes to refer to them... but still -- that's why i use that word).

i loved the images in that book (which i haven't yet been able to find again. but i'll keep trying). what i loved about them, i came to learn as i learned more about japanese art and japonisme, were the same things i loved in those: simplicity with a direct freshness: art stripped to essentials, with absolute grace. and that line.

now to be truth- ful, i'm not altogether sure any of these images are the ones i saw; funny what decades can do to memory. those, in the past, were more lustrous and fluid, like music on paper, and all that. yeah sure -- i'll report back when i find the book.

but still, the relationships between the ancient japanese through to the present-day indian images are striking. How could this have happened?

(andy tsihnajinnie is navajo, chikanobu is japanese, simon bussy is french, allan houser is navajo, quincy tahoma is navajo, rick bartow is Wiyot, toshi yoshida is japanese, robert bonfils is french, and c. szwedzicki is the french publisher of works by american indians. a compilation is here.)

japonisme in the land of the pueblo (etc.) II

(click to enlarge)

look at these four images. immediately we see some similarities: of course the red blanket and the white hat, the horses or implied horses.

looking further we might notice that, compared to, say, vermeer or renoir, the images are simplified. we also see outlines and flat plains of color.

we have winold reiss (vee-nold rice), he's german. stanley c. mitchell is navaho. maynard dixon was born in fresno, california, and hokusai is, well, hokusai.

what is there to be learned here? much. installment III tomorrow.