tis a gift

When the Japanese ports were opened to Europe in the nineteenth century, the Ukiyo-e prints gave the western world "a glimpse of Japanese life" and became, with their “simplicity of line and large flat areas of colour, a major influence on the more innovative European painters.” 1

The influence of Japanese art on western painters is known as ‘Japonisme’. This is not to be confused with ‘Japonaiserie’ which is the western interest in the exotic, decorative, or fantastic qualities of Japanese art for their novelty value. 2

Japonisme is not a style. According to Wichmann, “it does not lend itself to being used as a concept in place of a style; and it cannot be pinned down to a specific period.” It is rather, the influence of the (then) new ways of seeing the world that the Ukiyo-e prints, and then the Japanese paintings provided.

It caused a “decisive re-evaluation” in the ways western painters had been looking at the world. 3

The influence of Japanese art was not restricted to just ‘simplicity of line and large flat areas of colour’ but was also manifest in the other artistic ‘devices’ that provided unfamiliar solutions to ways of seeing and representing space and forms and how they relate to the apparent world.

(As Chisaburo cautions: “it is often very difficult to determine in what respect and how far Japanese influence extended”, and…“it is sometimes difficult to be persuaded of a Japanese source when an equally good and more accessible European one is at hand.”

However, as Henry Moore says, “I suppose everything which one appreciates must have some influence even though one isn’t (always) aware of it.” 2

Shore W. Ukiyo-e, Castle, New Jersey, 1980. 1
Chisaburo, Y. Japonisme in Art - An International Symposium,
Committee for the Year 2000, Tokyo, 1980. 2
Wichmann S. Japonisme, Harmony Books, New York, 1981. 3

from Virginia Hodgkinson's master's thesis (pdfs).

here's my process as a hunter gatherer, spending all day searching for images, then squirreling them away into intimately labeled folders. these were in the 'simplies' folder. the west entered the wonderful stage of extraordinarily simple images as part of their enchantment with the un-victorian, un-rococo, un-ungepatched japanese work. when i saw the blue bicycle, i knew it was time for the simplies folder.

The Greatest Grandeur

Some say it’s in
the reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued
sand goanna,
for there the
magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.



And some declare it to be an expansive
desert — solid rust- orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone —
simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.

Some claim the harmonics of shifting
electron rings to be most rare and some
the complex motion of seven sandpipers
bisecting the arcs and pitches
of come and retreat over the mounting
hayfield.

Others, for gran- deur, choose the terror
of lightning peals on prairies or the tall
collapsing cathedrals of stormy seas,
because there they feel dwarfed
and appropriately helpless; others select
the serenity of that ceiling/cellar
of stars they see at night on placid lakes,
because there they feel assured
and universally magnanimous.



But it is the dark emptiness contained
in every next moment that seems to me
the most singularly glorious gift,
that void which one is free to fill
with processions of men bearing burning
cedar knots or with
parades of blue horses,
belled and ribboned and
stepping sideways,
with tumbling
white-faced mimes or companies
of black-robed choristers; to fill simply
with hammered silver teapots
or kiln-dried
crockery, tangerine and almond custards,
polonaises, polkas, whittling sticks, wailing
walls; that space large enough to hold all
invented blasphemies and pieties, 10,000
definitions of god and more, never fully
filled, never.

© 1994 by Pattiann Rogers

from Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems (1994).

here i stand hat in hand....

you might notice a difference between the posters on the right and the posters on the left. these are three of the very few examples of the wonderful german posters from its historical museum for which i could find whole (though somewhat 'edited') versions. these versions are not to be found for the vast majority of them.

there is, however, a cd available with over 1000 images from the collection. it's listed on amazon.de. there are even copies that sell for half-price: 15 euros vs. 30.


only trouble is, i haven't been able to find anyone who is willing to sell to someone in the US.

so i come ask- ing for a favor: is there anyone in europe who can buy one of these and mail it to me? i can reimburse you immediately through paypal, or however else we can work it out.

danke.

a solitude of space

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea










A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be








Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy






A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.

Emily Dickinson

turning japanese

I've got your picture of me and you
You wrote "I love you" I wrote "me too"
I sit there staring and there's
nothing else to do
Oh it's in color Your hair is brown
Your eyes are hazel And soft as clouds
I often kiss you when there's
no one else around

I've got your picture, I've got your picture
I'd like a million of you
all round my cell
I want a doctor to take your picture
So I can look at you
from inside as well
You've got me turning up
and turning down
And turning in and turning 'round

I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

I've got your picture, I've got your picture
I'd like a million of them all round my cell
I want the doctor to take a picture
So I can look at you from inside as well
You've got me turning up and turning down and turning in and turning 'round





I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger
That's why I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
(think so think so think so)
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

© 2008 The Vapors

(and no, i don't know what it means either. but it's not what the american rumors said it was, and i hope it's not offensive!)

colette's breast

The 'modern' corset is attributed to Catherine de Médicis, wife of King Henri II of France. She enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550s and had a questionable effect on women for the next 350 years. 1

''Ten years ago, so many department stores wouldn't even consider carrying larger sizes because they didn't want larger-size

women in their stores,'' said Kurt Barnard, the president of Barnard Retail Trend Report. 2

In order to survive, female movie stars had to be constantly wary of excess fat. "Eternal vigilance in the diet is the price of liberty from the ogre, obesity," declared Corliss Palmer, the winner of Motion Picture Magazine's Fame and Fortune Contest for 1920.

Throughout the 1920s, fan magazines were liberally sprinkled with dramatic tales of stars' battles with weight as well as their "helpful advice" for readers who might wish to reduce.

When "Bar- bara" made her first hit, she was a slim young gift.... When the money came rolling in, "Barbara" became a victim of luxury. She grew plump and prosperous; naturally, because she was carefree and happy. But the public didn't like it. Her "fans" complained; the exhibitors
kicked; the critics laughed at her. "Barbara's" admirers wanted to see her slim and big-eyed. "Barbara," alas, looked too healthy for a "vamp."

Yet all reducing articles, even those that highlighted particularly painful or foolhardy methods of weight loss, operated under the tacit assumption that no one, regular folks included, would wish to "let herself/himself go." 3

so despite the fact that madeleine vionnet, when a fat woman walked into her shop, would ask her to turn around and go, many a woman, obese by today's standards, was considered a paragon of beauty, a muse and inspiration.

lillian russell, misia sert, loie fuller and others had more paintings done of them than any other women of the time. they were on more maga- zine covers, and they were names in dedications in every- thing from music to novels.

colette satirized the whole "flapper situation" in a number of her non-fiction essays:

Colette makes us laugh at the fact that fashion affects not only clothes, but bodies; style fashions the body and hence the self. Breasts were to be dieted into oblivion for last season, Now we witness the return of the repressed in, what is more, a fashion industry bonanza: if you do not have any breasts left, we can do something about it.

Designed in rubber and painted a delightful skin colour, you may find them lifeless: why not try this little tulle number, with an accommodating hole for the nipple? Moreover, for women who failed to fashion their bodies for last year, there is also a solution: any breast can be changed, filled out if it is too flat, rounded and lifted if it is pendulous, the whole body encased in a rubber tube to give you no more hip than a 'bouteille à vin du Rhin.'

There are fashions in bodies: a woman's body is infinitely 'malleable' — if you are required to be a sausage, then a sausage you will be. We are taught by Colette to see that dress reaches very deep into the flesh, that style fashions the body and hence the self.

Rubber tubing and the extraordinary inventiveness of corsetry ensured that where diet and patent medicines failed, the female form could still be disciplined into the tubular shape required by the waistless tunic. But where 'too fat' required constraint and compression, 'too thin' was simply reinterpreted.

No longer referring to a woman ageing before her time, the 'thin' body becomes 'slim', acquiring an erect posture and youthful vitality; it is captured as it were eternally at the threshold of sexual maturity before the deposit of womanly fats on the hips and the breasts. 4

(i hope this makes some sense to you. it's a long essay, with all of colette's words in untranslated french -- too complex for the online translators or for my old rusty skills. but to tell the truth, i didn't perfectly understand the english, either. in any case, it becomes clear that colette was hip to the game: when imitation -- even of the bodies of the women of japan -- goes below the surface to effect self-esteem, it becomes just another power game. women, yet again, are pawns in that game of fame. no wonder clara bow looks so sad.)

'colette's breast' is from sisters of salome.