women and nature

(and to finish off our series of (mostly) american women printmakers,
i offer you....)

“I am thinking of the communion I felt as a child in the Sierra under trees or in fields of wildflowers. I told no one what I felt. In my small world, no one referred to mystical experience, even in the church I attended.

I had not yet read Emerson, nor had I heard the story of how, as a young man, when John Muir discovered a cluster of rare orchids, called Calypso borealis, growing by the edge of an icy pond, deep in the outback of Ontario, he sat down and wept for joy, feeling that he ‘was in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come.’”

Susan Griffin 1

from HOUSE of STONE and SONG

Because we live in a country where
no one I know
sings to God in the streets,
I’m given to wandering past margins of fern and wild honeysuckle,

following the burr of the tanager, that lazy, drowsy
dozy buzz of triple notes
tied close together. I’m tethered and led, legato,

deeper in, beyond cedar field and hardscrabble, through
grapevine, bullbrier,
gloves of rhododendron and laurel lamp-lighting my way

over Indian graves and wetland, hellebore and hummock,
into the tall trees where
that flash of pure fire finds its high-branch summer niche.

Perhaps I want to be the crazy woman
who lives on roots and berries
in the only woods abandoned to her....

— Margaret Gibson 2

GENESIS

Far from the sea, the lilies grow
and listen for the sea.

Long ago, they bloomed near the shore,
and the small crustaceans,
red-backed crabs,
scurried under the pale exotic plants
that rocked on thin stems
half-flower, half-shell.

It’s a long way from the beginning.

The heavenly beasts appear in the sky,
unchanged
since the first seeds fell on the fields
in a green rain,
and men climbed from the water
on two legs,
unsteady as baby goats.

In the wind now
the white flowers rise and bend
in the grass, like the heads of sheep.
Behind the mountains
the waves rise and fall. The stars open.

No one has left the garden.

— Barbara Jordan 3

when the child was a child

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging.
It wanted the stream to be a river
the river a torrent
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child
It didn't know it was a child.
Everything was full of life, and all life was one.

When the child was a child
It had no opinions about anything.
It had no habits.
It sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair
and didn't make a face when photographed.

When the child was a child
it was the time of these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here,
and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Isn't life under the sun just a dream?
Isn't what I see, hear and smell
only the illusion of a world before the world?
Does evil actually exist,
and are there people who are really evil?
How can it be that I, who am I,
didn't exist before I came to be
and that someday
the one who I am
will no longer be the one I am?

When the child was a child
it choked on spinach, peas,
rice pudding
and on steamed cauliflower.
Not it eats all of those
and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child
it once woke up in a strange bed
and now it does so time and
time again.
Many people seemed beautiful then
and now only a few, if it's lucky.
It had a precise picture
of Paradise
and now it can only guess at it.
It could not conceive of nothingness
and today it shudders at the idea.

When the child was a child
it played with enthusiasm
and now
it gets equally excited
but only when it concerns
its work.

When the child was a child
berries fell into its hand as only berries do
and they still do now.
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw
and they still do now.
On every mountaintop it had a longing
for yet a higher mountain.
And in each city it had a longing
for yet a bigger city.
And it is still that way.
It reached for the cherries in the treetop
with the elation it still feels today.
It was shy with all strangers
and it still is.
It awaited the first snow
and it still waits that way.

When the child was a child
it threw a stick into a tree like a lance,
and it still quivers there today.

Peter Handke

seeing red by moonlight

okay so after yesterday's excursion into the universe of american printmakers, i found myself awed and engaged by this, and learned things i never knew. so beautiful, and she's one of my favorite printmakers.

but i found myself also thinking about the other thing i mentioned, and so i decided to go check out what old stinky-pants was up to.

i was again shocked and saddened by these crimes. if you want to see frances h gearhart, who, i ashamedly admit, i only just recently learned was not a man!, and the extraordinary beauty of her work, check this out.

listen to what this pretender says: " The American Arts & Crafts movement placed a significant emphasis on the home, and particularly on the quality and the individuality of the decorative elements placed in it. Equally important was the fundamental philosophical principle that equated living well with living simply and honestly. For this reason, the artists and craftsmen of the period sought to express these values in their designs while achieving the highest quality in their craftsmanship. . .ideals that were at odds with the developing mass production of the machine-driven Industrial Revolution. It is these artists’ commitment to quality and hand craftsmanship that has inspired me to create the works of art that I offer.

Each of my Arts & Crafts Collection images is based on extensive historic research of the styles of noted artists of the period, such as graphic designer Dard Hunter, potter Hannah Borger Overbeck, the California Plein Air painters and woodblock artists Bertha Lum, Frances Gearhart and Gustave Baumann. My artistic goal is to create images that incorporate the styles of these noted artists, while recalling the pictorial flatness and color intensity of the Japanese prints that were so popular and influential during the period. And my ultimate goal in creating this collection of period-inspired paintings and lithographs for the Arts & Crafts interior is to achieve the same high quality of craftsmanship that characterized the Craftsman ideal and to do so at an affordable price.

[My work] celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of the California woodblock print artists, ca. 1900-1940. At the core of their artistic expression lay hand craftsmanship, from the carving of the printing blocks to the hand printing process on hand made paper. It is this level of hand craftsmanship that is the purest expression of the Arts & Crafts period as a whole. Hand craftsmanship is implicit in everything that the Arts & Crafts movement stood for at its genesis and still stands for today."

i wonder if tracing is a hand craftsmanship skill.

lastly, she goes on to say, "Also included with this work of art is an official Certificate of Authenticity, which is signed personally by A____ M______ on the date your work of art is produced. For your reference, a complimentary copy of the artist's biography is also included."

i'm telling you, i'll put up with quite many things, but you fuck with arthur wesley dow and i lose it.

guilding the lily

dorothy markert is a roycroft printmaker. the arts and crafts movement with its various names: mackintosh-style, liberty-style, and werkstatte-style among them, needs to have roycroft-style added to it.

to look at a clock designed by archibald knox, or mackintosh, or josef hoffmann, is to immediately recognize the single river running through the artisan guilds of the world; it is also to recognize the influence of japan on them all.

"Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the USA. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895 in the village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, near Buffalo. Participants were known as Roycrofters. The work and philosophy of the group, often referred to as the Roycroft movement, had a strong influence on the development of American architecture and design in the early 20th century.

The name Roycroft was chosen after the printers, Samuel and Thomas Roycroft, who made books in London from about 1650-1690. And beyond this, the word roycroft had a special significance to Elbert Hubbard, meaning King's Craft. King's craftsmen being a term used in the Guilds of the olden times for men who had achieved a high degree of skill -- men who made things for the King.

Elbert Hubbard's championing of the Arts and Crafts approach attracted a number of visiting craftspeople to East Aurora, and they formed a community of printers, furniture makers, metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders."1

wonderfully for us all, guilds are reforming all over the world, including at roycroft. over the last several decades, the original roycroft buildings have been restored, and well, if you build it they will come. a community of craftspeople, artisans, have come together again, with a commitment to quality -- a commitment backed up with a peer review before one may use the roycroft mark on their work, and teach master classes on the campus.

and this is where we find dorothy markert. to browse her work, one instantly recalls margaret jordan patterson, edna boies hopkins, mable royds... but these are dorothy's alone. she brings what any artist brings: work that speaks from that place where hand and eye and heart meet.

there are many "craftspeople" in these days when we again appreciate the work of human hands over machines, but there are many of them from whom little original emerges. when they produce direct copies of the work of others and try to pass it off as their own, and a surprising number of people actually do this, the work may be charming, but is somehow hollow and leaden at the same time. perhaps dorothy took a master class of her own from the great legacy of the last century, but what she creates now, along with the other artisans on the roycroft campus, is art.

a happy interdependence day to us all

  Stars, still pond —
all night the white geese cry out
in your hand.

Coming, my eyes open.
How suddenly black
the tree trunks look in the rain.

Night quiets, cools.
Even now,
two boats on a single mooring,
we rise and fall on one breath, going on.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Because Tokugawa-period Japanese tended to regard the overall body shapes of men and women as nearly the same, the only significant physical marker of difference were the organs themselves.

By the 1660s, the first mass- produced woodblock prints began to appear, often in the form of pages illustrating of handbooks on .... We should bear in mind that these illustrated manuals were perfectly legitimate books in their day.

As has been pointed out, "these spring painting must be regarded in the light of seventeenth-century Japanese life and mores. --was considered a very natural function, and ways of increasing enjoyment of this function were felt to be more commendable than censurable."

Unlike the case in Europe, Japanese artists did not celebrate the figure in their work in any medium until the late Meiji period. Japanese popular art of the eighteenth century, detailed polychrome prints of famous beautiful women -- usually courtesans -- were much in demand. These prints emphasized the subtle, often elaborate facial features, gestures, long hair, and richly decorated clothing of these women to convey a sense of  beauty and power.

Its beak caught firmly
in the clam's shell
The snipe cannot fly away
On an autumn eveningUNKNOWN JAPANESE POET

"Few peoples," says Lane, "have ever pursued the cult of artistic spring painting as assiduously as the Japanese." (Images from the Floating World)

Tokugawa-period woodblock prints are generally called ukiyo-e 浮世絵, meaning "images of the floating world." Many people incorrectly think that the term ukiyo-e means spring painting images, probably because so many ukiyo-e were spring painting. But ukiyo-e encompass landscape scenes and a wide variety of non-spring painting themes.

Spring painting woodblock prints were most commonly known as spring painting春画, meaning "spring pictures." The word "spring" often means "youthful beauty" or "youthful vigor" in Japanese usage then or now. The sale of services, for example, is baishun 売春, "selling spring," which has a different emotive sense than the English term "prostitution." Similarly, the word "color" (iro 色 by itself, -shoku -色 in many compound words) often means spring painting or spring painting. (more)

the japonisme timeline

AN EVOLVING, SUBJECTIVE TIMELINE of JAPONISME

1788
utamaro produces his series on insects in the garden;

1803
issa writes haiku about plovers

1831

hokusai paints 'the great wave' as part of '36 views of mt fuji';

1853
U.S. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sails into Tokyo Bay, opening Japan to the West.;

1855
walt whitman's 'leaves of grass' is published;

1856
felix bracquemond discovers hokusai's manga at his printer's shop.;

1857
hiroshige produces plum tree print.;

1859
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, published.;

1863
whistler discovers japanese prints in london and becomes an emissary for japonisme in europe;

1864
whistler paints a friend in a kimono looking at japanese prints

1867
paris universal exposition introduces japanese art more widely to the west

1868
manet paints zola with japanese prints on his wall

1870
monet discovers japanese prints in holland;

1874
first impressionist exhibition in paris

1875
Morris & Co. established, promoting arts and crafts movement.

1876 monet paints his wife in a red kimono

1877 morse goes to japan and discovers japanese pottery

1878 whistler sues ruskin

1879 Thomas Edison demonstrates the electric light.;

1883monet moves to giverny and begins to create the japanese garden he will paint for the rest of his life.

1885
gilbert and sullivan produce the mikado;
yoshitoshi begins moon series;

1886 sargent paints 'carnation, lily, lily, rose';
john la farge visits japan;
van gogh first sees japanese prints.

1887 van gogh paints hiroshige's plum tree print;
pierre loti writes 'madame chrysantheme'

1888 s. bing starts magazine 'artistic japan' to foster interest in japanese arts and crafts.;Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society founded in London.
1890 van gogh dies;
lafcadio hearn moves to japan.

1891arthur wesley dow establishes his art school; first lautrec music-hall posters;
mary cassatt completes her mother & child prints, inspired by those of utamaro;

1892 Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company established.;

1893 munch paints 'the scream';
Aubrey Beardsley design published in the first issue of the magazine The Studio.;

1894
mucha's first art nouveau poster, gismonda with sarah bernhardt;

1895
S. Bing opens his gallery/shop L'Art Nouveau.

1898 john luther long writes short story 'madam butterfly' based on loti's 1887 novel;

mackintosh begins his school in glasgow;

1899 René Lalique designs Dragonfly woman corsage ornament;

1900 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, published.;

1901 lautrec dies; gauguin dies;
Queen Victoria dies;
stickley starts the craftsman magazine.
1902riviere produces set of prints '36 views of the eiffel tower' based on hokusai's '36 views' series; note that the tower is almost always shown with no top, so it resembles fuji.
1903 whistler dies;
the wiener werkstatte is founded.

(i'll continue to work on this, only re-publishing after significant changes. it seems, i'm noticing how the year 1900 really did seem an important marking point. i'm going to start part II of this timeline when i feel satisfied enough -- for the moment -- with part I. I'll reproduce the items from 1900 on in that topic.