dow's COMPOSITION part 2

PICTURES COMPOSED ON RECTANG- ULAR LINES

Great architects and designers were not the only ones to use this simple line- idea; mere doing of the work recommended here will be of little value if the only thought is to get over the ground, or if the mind is intent upon names rather than principles. The doing of it well, with an artistic purpose in mind, is the true way to develop the creative faculties.

These tracings from a variety of compositions, old and new (No. 36), show that this combination was chosen either to express certain qualities and emotions, -- majesty, solemnity, peace, repose, (Puvis de Chavannes) or be- cause such a space division was suited to tone-effects (Whistler's Battersea Bridge), cut a space finely by landscape shapes; or to color schemes (Hiro- shige). These should be copied exactly in pencil, then drawn enlarged. Find other examples in museums, illustrated books, or photographs, and draw in the same way.

puvis de chavannes himself played an interesting side-bar role in dow's life. according to dow's biographer johnson, puvis was seen by both dow and fenollosa as "the fusion of occident and orient. they discovered him for america and had much to do with his obtaining the commission to paint a series of murals in the boston public library.

"puvis came to america and to boston where he was received with cool and unintelligent criticism." dow even wrote a letter to the boston evening transcript, on jan. 2o, 1893, protesting that reaction. i am trying to find that letter....

all well and good... but... i could find no record of puvis coming to america (please feel free to correct me!), and i found this, written on the occasion of weir's death: Mr. Hassam's intimate remini- scences of Weir bring to notice many interesting traits and incidents. One of his anecdotes seems to amount to a claim that Weir was the first man to suggest the commissioning of Puvis de Chavannes to paint the mural decorations for the Boston Public Library. It appears that Weir, being in Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery, one day, met Stanford White there. "McKim's doing a library for Boston," said White. "Who's the man to make a big mural painting?" "Why, Puvis, of course," exclaimed Weir. They went from there to the Place Pigalle, found Puvis de Chavannes, "and we know the rest. He painted for Boston one of the most beautiful decorations in the world.'' 1

and this: Puvis was first approached with a request to paint murals for the staircase of the newly built Boston Public Library in 1891 Despite the generous terms offered ... complete freedom in the choice of subject matter, as much time as he wished and a vast fee of 250,000 francs ($50,000 far in excess of any other commission he received ... it took two years of patient negotiations to overcome Puvis misgivings about painting murals for a building he would never see. A plaster model of the staircase was made for him and samples of the stone used sent so that he could establish a colour harmony. In Puvis own words he chose to represent in emblematic form, the ensemble of intellectual riches, united in this beautiful monument .

The first and most impor- tant of the panels Les Muses Inspiratrices, was exhi- bited at the Salon du Champ-de- Mars in 1895 before being shipped to Boston. Over the next year or so it was followed by eight smaller panels depicting La Poesie des Champs (Virgil), la Poesie dramatique (Aeschylus), la Poesie Unique (Homer), L Histoire, L Astronomie la Philosophie, La Chimie and la Physique. As the last of them crossed the Atlantic, Puvis remarked that he felt like a father whose daughters had entered a convent. 2

did puvis visit boston? who were more important in getting his work there? just think -- in 110 years, when we try to figure out who said what to who, given that we have immediate 24-hour reporting and commentary, we still will be no better in learning who was right.

EXERCISE: To discover the best arrangement, and to get the utmost experience in line and space composition, the landscape should be set into several boundaries of differing proportions, as shown in the examples, keeping the essential lines of the subject, but varying them to fit the boundary. For instance, a tree may be made taller in a high vertical space than in a low horizontal space, (No. 37). After working out this exercise the pupil may draw a landscape from nature and treat it in the same way. Let him rigorously exclude detail, drawing only the outlines of objects.
arthurwesleydow

The Book of Tea : 茶の本

THE CUP OF HUMANITY

Tea began as a medi- cine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism — Teaism.

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentiallya worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.


The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste. 1

thus begins 'the book of tea,' written by Kakuzo Okakura in 1906. known to many as a scholar, particularly when it came to japanese art, it is perhaps not surprising that he wound up in boston.

as okakura was also a scholar of english, his life took some very interesting turns in the early years of the explorartion of japan by americans (usually from boston!): "Kakuzo Okakura, the connoisseur, curator and cultural historian mentored by Ernest Fenollosa, the Tokyo philosophy professor instrumental in shaping Japanese fine arts policy, mentors in turn John La Farge, the painter most responsible for bringing Japanese aesthetic ideas and methods to American art.

La Farge makes a pivotal trip to Japan in the company of Henry Adams, whose lifelong friend John Hay was later responsible for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Fenollosa's own obsession with Japan had been inspired by Edward Sylvester Morse, a principal Western figure at Tokyo Imperial University, who in 1881 delivered a seminal set of lectures in Boston on Japanese folkways.

Also fired by Morse's lectures were Isabella Stewart Gardner, who founded a museum of her own, and the astronomer Percival Lowell. Gardner became Okakura's intimate friend and probable lover during his years as curator of the Japanese collection at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Lowell's writings on Japan became a major source for his sister Amy's Japanese-inflected poetry. Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound, who disputed control of the Imagist movement in poetry, met in Paris in 1913, the same year that Mary Fenollosa, Ernest's wife, altered the course of Pound's career -- and of 20th-century poetry -- by giving him the notes her late husband had made while studying Chinese poetry with Kakuzo Okakura."

The story of Okakura, who emerges as something like the book's hero, embodies still other ideas. Having had a thorough education in both the new Western learning and the traditions of old Japan, he became his country's leading cultural ambassador -- but not before La Farge had taught him how to ''be Japanese'' for American audiences, how to suggest, through a certain sad charm, the wisdom of the East.

And after learning to perform an identity he already possessed, he went on to write a series of books -- most famously, ''The Book of Tea,'' whose explication of the principles of the tea ceremony had a pro- found impact on, among many others, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger -- in which he explained Japanese culture to the West, and in so doing explained it to himself, discarding received ideas about the imitativeness and femininity of Japanese traditions in favor of notions of creativity and vigor. 2

(from a review of the wonderful book,
THE GREAT WAVE: Gilded Age Misfits,
Japanese Eccentrics,
and the Opening of Old Japan,
by Christopher Benfey.

(with thanks for inspiration
to the floating bridge)

travelling through music and light

in some cases i've found, dow did take the photo before making the print (or painting) of the same place. but nine years before! did the places stay that identical? did he use the photos as guides. you know what? we will never know (unless i dig up something from his diaries).

thanks to the smithsonian, some dow stuff is making it onto the internet, but there's so much i just can't find. that's part of the reason i feel compelled to put up some of this stuff myself. like a timeline (you know i like those).

1857 born, ipswich, massachusetts.

1880 studys art with anna k freeland, who was an historical and portrait painter in worcester.

1882 studys art with james m stone, also an historical painter, in boston.

1884 goes to paris to study at the academie julian under boulanger and lefebvre

1885 summers in pont-aven.

1889 returns permanently to ipswich.

1891 meets ernest fenollosa and 'discovers' japanese woodblock prints. teaches art in boston, then opens school in ipswich.

1893 marries minnie pearson; becomes assistant curator of japanese arts at the museum of fine arts in boston.

1895 first exhibition of his own woodblock prints, in the japanese area of the mfa; begins teaching at the new pratt institute in new york city.

1899 publishes composition.

1903 travels around the world. lectures in kyoto.

1904 becomes the director of the art department at the teacher's college of columbia university.

1908 publishes theory and practice of teaching art; publishes by salt marshes in collaboration with his friend everett stanley hubbard, who writes the poetry.

1911 travels to the grand canyon and to california with alvin langdon coburn.

dow's publications are online. (some things aren't. i'm still hunting for the words of a speech or two.) i've had a tough time trying figure out how to present the teachings, but that's what i'd like to try next.

okay, i'll admit it. that last painting is not by dow. it's by robert henri. maybe he was channeling dow. but i love finding these rest, watching the same artist expressing the same things with different 'voices,' a composer listening to his music on all number of different instruments.

the panama-pacific, that is! • part 3

Aside from the construction of the $50,000 pipe organ, which, after the Exposition, will be placed permanently in the Civic Auditorium, the two most important musical items found on the schedule of Exposition enterprises are the engagements of Camille Saint-Saens and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The former, who maintained that "Beethoven is the greatest, the only real, artist, because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood," is perhaps better fitted than any living composer to write special music for the Exposition.

This he has done, -- writing two compositions in fact; and their presentation has been an outstanding feature. "Hail, California," was dedicated to the Exposition. Scored for an orchestra of eighty, a military band of sixty, a chorus of 300 voices, pipe organ and piano, its first presentation was an event.

The Saint-Saens Symphony in C minor (No. 3) Opus 78, composed many years ago, has become a classic during the life-time of its creator. It was one of the wonders of the Boston Symphony programmes played in Festival Hall. Its yield of immediate pleasure and its reassurance for the works of Saint-Saens to be heard later, grew from the fact that it was scored for orchestra and pipe organ, and in this massive tonal web the genius of the composer to write in magnificent size was overwhelm- ingly evident, thus forecasting the splendors of "Hail, California."

The French Pavilion is a dignified and impressive structure, as those who recall the Legion of Honor Palace in Paris will understand. The entrance to the court is a triumphal arch flanked by double rows of Ionic columns on either side, with figures of Fame as spandrels. The arch is connected by lateral peristyles with the wings of the pavilion, the attics of which are adorned with has reliefs.

Ionic colonnades extend along the sides of the court to the principal front of the building, which is decorated with six Corinthian columns, forming a portico for the main entrance. The portal opens on a stage, above which a great central hall, flanked by lesser halls, extends back through the palace.

More notable than the building itself, or its priceless contents, is the fact that these are here. That, in the midst of war and its demands, France should still find time for the ideal, and for this beautiful tribute to the long-standing friendship between the two countries, is a demonstration of French spirit and of French culture that will not escape the attention of any thoughtful American. For France herself, as it has well been said, her appearance here means as much as a victory on the battlefield.

But the glory of the building is in its exhibits. France poured out the treasures of the Louvre, the Luxembourg and the National Museum to adorn this pavilion. Fine as is the exhibit in the French section of the Palace of Fine Arts, the best pictures and Sculptures are shown here. In the Court of Honor stands the masterpiece of the master sculptor of modern times, "The Thinker," by Auguste Rodin. (p. 158.) In the galleries are his "John the Baptist" and other important bronzes.

Vast, unique and of the greatest interest is Theodore Riviere's wonderful group in bronze representing a triumphant band of desert soldiers dragging captive the Moroccan pretender, secured in an iron cage. There, too, are splendid paintings by Monet, Meissonier, Detaille, de Neuvilie, and many other French artists approved by time. **

(these all are actual pieces shown in that exhibit, accompanied by the music played there, described by someone who visited there. and this is just the teensiest fraction of just one country's offerings, just france. and the world was there. bibliography to follow.)

the principles of design

what you probably don't know is that a great many houses in my neighborhood, built as a working-class neighborhood in the early 20s, have a 'batchelder fireplace.' as i said, these were not built for rich folk, and they don't look like they were, but the variety and beauty of the decorative tiles on mantles around here make as least the hearths priceless.

this was all i knew or ever even thought of batchelder, ernest batchelder. until yesterday. i was browsing around as i am wont to do and i came across a design instruction book he wrote, where i found this page.

since he had been kind enough to give us a hint, i was quickly able to find the image to which he referred .

it didn't look anything like the style in his tiles, but it certainly did look like the nicholson (look in the background).

a little more poking around under the name of batchelder, coming across additional samples of his tiles, when i made a connection that made my jaw drop and a giggle come up my throat. as i further perused his book i came across this illustration which, since i had just been dealing with this stuff a couple of days earlier, looked very familiar.

i was amazed at the coin- cidence. at the same time, there was one other of the shunboku images that looked familiar.

i went poking through my back files and found the dow image i was looking for.

(i turned the japanese image sideways and flopped to make it even more obvious, but in any case i think it's clear.)

it turns out, i learn, that batchelder went to study art in boston when he was a young man. there he studied with denman waldo ross, who was a trustee at the MFA in boston dealing with the new and rapidly growing japanese art collection. at his side, though rather his competitor, but also a 'keeper of the japanese art' there at that time was arthur wesley dow. and there in their hands was the treasure from the 1730s: shunboku's book.

there are many sites which feature original or reproduction batchelder tiles; most of them can be found through the links page at the batchelder site. what began as a sort of 'sears catalogue' of fireplace tiles has, as interest in the design from this era grows, become a treasured commodity.

museum monday

This exhibition includes about 120 works by the leading designers and fabricators of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Art Nouveau jewelry. Although many of these artists acquired their skills in traditional, high-style jewelry houses, they found inspiration in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, the philosophy of John Ruskin (1819–1900), the paintings and poetry of the symbolists, and the arts of Japan.

For motifs, they looked to the flora (orchids, lilies) and fauna (dragonflies, butterflies) of the natural world and the sensuality of the female form.

This new aes- the- tic was, in large measure, a reaction against nineteenth century historicism, industrialization, and the “tyranny of the diamond,” and these Art Nouveau artists chose to interpret nature rather than imitate it. 1

MFA Boston • Avenue of the Arts • 465 Huntington Avenue • Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523 • 617-267-9300

a couple of exciting exhibitions at the MOMA almost worth flying to new york for (also remember):

Batiste Madalena: Hand-Painted Film Posters for the Eastman Theatre, 1924–1928 October 15, 2008–April 6, 2009
and

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night
September 21, 2008–January 5, 2009

check out the wonderful site

MOMA • 11 West 53 Street • between Fifth and Sixth avenues • New York NY 10019-5497 • 212- 708-9400