japonisme: arthur wesley dow

mood indigo

2009-05-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

MOOD INDIGO

From the porch; from the hayrick where her prickled
brothers hid and chortled and slurped into their young pink
lungs the ash-blond dusty air that lay above the bales

like low clouds; and from the squeak and suck
of the well-pump and from the glove of rust it implied
on her hand; from the dress parade of clothes

in her mothproofed closet; from her tiny Philco
with its cracked speaker and Sunday litany
(Nick Carter, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Sky King);

from the loosening bud of her body; from hunger,
as they say, and from reading; from the finger
she used to dial her own number; from the dark

loam of the harrowed fields and from the very sky;
it came from everywhere. Which is to say it was
always there, and that it came from nowhere.

It evaporated with the dew, and at dusk when dark
spread in the sky like water in a blotter, it spread, too,
but it came back and curdled with milk and stung

with nettles. It was in the bleat of the lamb, the way
a clapper is in a bell, and in the raucous, scratchy
gossip of the crows. It walked with her to school and lay

with her to sleep and at last she was pleased.
If she were to sew, she would prick her finger with it.
If she were to bake, it would linger in the kitchen

like an odor snarled in the deepest folds of childhood.
It became her dead pet, her lost love, the baby sister
blue and dead at birth, the chill headwaters of the river

that purled and meandered and ran and ran until
it issued into her, as into a sea, and then she was its
and it was wholly hers. She kept to her room, as we

learned to say, but now and then she'd come down
and pass through the kitchen, and the screen door
would close behind her with no more sound than

an envelope being sealed, and she'd walk for hours
in the fields like a lithe blue rain, and end up
in the barn, and one of us would go and bring her in.

(1970) William Matthews

American illustrator, painter, and printmaker Campbell Grant was born in 1909. After grad- uation from Oakland High School, he entered the California College of Arts and Crafts. In 1930 he received a scholarship to attend the Santa Barbara School of the Arts where he learned the techniques of color woodcut from Frank Morley Fletcher.

Following his studies at Santa Barbara, he spent twelve years in Hollywood at Walt Disney Studios as a story director and animator. Campbell exhibited with the Painters and Sculptors of Los Angeles in 1934 and the Public Works of Art Project that same year. 1 Allen W. Seaby was also a student of Frank Morley Fletcher.

sweetness

2009-04-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

SWEETNESS

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something,
the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size,
and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been,
or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

Stephen Dunn

welcome to brittany

2009-03-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

yann fanch kemener - henri rivière
uploaded by gourmont

well, i should have turned left, going south towards france's west coast, instead of right, which sent me towards the north. brittany, home to gauguin and the nabis, rather than giverny, home of monet and the impressionists.

additional american (and other) artist colonies sprang up on the breton coasts, just as they had in giverny, and though there are conflicting reports as to whether dow and gauguin (who moved further away when so many americans arrived) worked together or never met, dow spent several summers in pont-aven.

while it was easy to see the jap- anese influence on the impres- sionists developing further north, from dressing their models in kimonos with parasols to the frequent diagonal structure, it was the artists in brittany that felt the japanese inspiration on another level.

painters from around the world spent time in the pont-aven region. when dow was there, he hung out with benjamin harrison, arthur hoeber, and charles 'shorty' lazar. the paintings of the breton group of painters "showed an overall simplification, a highly expressive use of colour, and an intensely spiritual subject matter."

the americans, and the other painters in the region, including the nabis, found inspiration for these leanings in the japanese prints then flooding france. dow himself took further inspiration from the nabis, whose style and philosophy involved the stripping away of irrelevent details, the flattening of space, and an indulgence in color.

the spiritual underpinning of all this involved the seeing of the direct thing, its essential nature, the idea of it. and of course once we get into ideas, of anything, we must include the artist himself, for we are now discussing personal perception.

i could begin to list all of the americans who returned to the US from brittany, having imbibed much of the same set of values just as i could list all of the europeans they encountered there, but i'd rather deal with them in an ongoing way when i get past this lengthy chapter.

instead, i want to look at the differences at the hearts of these two communities, the differences between gauguin and monet. in both cases we are talking about light, and about the approach to abstraction, modernism: monet shattered the light while gauguin worked toward sweeping away everything but light and color.

monet's philosophy was this: I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.

gauguin, instead, looked for something more internal; to him, going to brittany represented a return to nature in its purer form, closer to the earth itself, than existed in the rest of france. he wanted truth.

robert hughs, of time magazine, has written of gauguin, If there is an absolute originality in Gau- guin, it lies in his color, for which no amount of reproduction prepares you. It is saturated, infinitely subtle, full of the stateliest assonances and most risky contrasts; its range of emotional suggestion is immense. 1

and, Unlike the Impressionists, Gauguin did not paint what he saw: he chose to see what he wanted to paint. And his ideas on what was paintable grew out of other art—from the broad color patches and rhythmic line of Japanese cloisonne and wood block prints, from rural Breton sculpture and the flattened, monumen- tal figures of a French artist he greatly admired, Puvis de Chavannes. Style absorbed him — the pervasive feedback of art style into nature. Even the fierce colors which scandalized some of his contemporaries were meant to be remote from nature." 2 and still, a man of deep spirituality.

two artists, two schools of artists, both on a search for truth (what else is there?), one by exploding illusion, the other by scraping it away. two paths leading to the same point. i find it unsurprising, given what we've learned about dow, the man, which route he chose.

remembering beauty

2009-02-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

after all is said and done, and after i have considered dozens of different ways to conclude this series, i finally realized that it all comes down to focus. it had come to pass, perhaps as a form of hand-holding to the industrial revolution, that beauty was best seen and reproduced as the result of considered focus.

dow unfocused. and then quantified.

leading up to the close of the 19th century, a confluence of forces brought about widespread changes. the beginning of trade with japan was virtually simul- taneous with what is called the 'second industrial revolution,' which introduced mass- production, electricity, and motors. japan quickly availed itself of these developments, while the west availed itself of what japan represented as an antidote to them.

against the face of precise reproduction, dow, and, as we've seen, others around the world, began to unfocus. to stop seeing the trees. to find a harmony in what one saw. dow taught ways to consciously transfer that harmony to paper.

rather than a study of sunlight and shadows, dow taught seeing light and dark, and holding them in balance. rather than teaching rigidity and repetition, he taught flow.

by using japanese prints as regular references, dow man- aged to communicate the principles he was teaching by sight as much as by word; the learning was imbibed rather than concentrated upon. the asymmetry, the elimination of detail, the looking beyond the surface to reveal the essence: it was all there, as instruction but more, as inspiration.

but what of this explains dow's extraordinary success as a teacher, as a teacher of both students and of teachers as well? it was something more than can be gained by quoting his books or reading his letters. in order to begin to understand, we must unfocus ourselves.

we must let ourselves feel the deep spirituality of the man behind the teachings, the spirituality that can see a derelict boat in a river and understand the nature of all he witnesses. what, after all, is 'seeing' but 'not limiting,' or 'not defining'? is not the only way to see to allow what's in front of you to be?

for john ruskin, william morris, arthur wesley dow, and so many others, design reform was never on a physical level alone. like the japanese, and like so many cultures before them, spirit was seen as integral to nature and to humanity. to impose confinement on either, for whatever reason, is to lose them. to remove spirit from art is like removing air from the breath.

it's to suffocate beauty.... until one remembers.

M O O N R I S E

2009-02-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

AUGUST MOONRISE

The sun was gone,
and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy,
the east was flushed,
And over my head
the swallows rushed
This way and that,
with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up

And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?

And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.

Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.

Sara Teasdale

© Sara Teasdale 1920
from Flame and Shadow; Macmillian, 1920

dow's COMPOSITION part 2

2009-02-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

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.

dow's COMPOSITION part 1

2009-02-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

i will jump right in, giving you a taste of the book that changed art education in america for at least half a century. dow's teaching philosophy involved using examples from other artists, not his own. when i can find it i will show the original on which his example is based.

The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on which he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-idea, and on it hinges the excellence of the whole, for no delicacy of tone, or harmony of color can remedy a bad proportion.

A picture, then, may be said to be in its beginning actually a pattern of lines. Could the art student have this fact in view at the outset, it would save him much time and anxiety. Nature will not teach him composition. The sphinx is not more silent than she on this point.

He must learn the secret as Giotto and della Francesca and Kanawoka and Turner learned it, by the study of art itself in the works of the masters, and by continual creative effort.

If students could have a thorough training in the elements of their profession they would not fall into the error of supposing that such a universal idea as Beauty of Line could be compressed into a few cases like the "triangle," "bird's-wing," "line of beauty," or "scroll ornament," nor would they take these notions as a kind of receipt for composing the lines of pictures.

Insistence upon the placing of Composition above Representation must not be considered as any undervaluation of the latter. The art student must learn to represent nature's forms, colors and effects ; must know the properties of pigments and how to handle brushes and materials. He may have to study the sciences of perspective and anatomy.

More or less of this knowledge and skill will be required in his career, but they are only helps to art, not substitutes for it, and I believe that if he begins with Composition, that is, with a study of art itself, he will acquire these naturally, as he feels the need of them. Returning now to the thought that the picture and the abstract design are much alike in structure, let us see how some of the simple spacings may be illustrated by landscape.

No. 34 is a landscape reduced to its main lines, all detail being omitted. Make an enlarged copy of this, or design a similar one. Then, in the attempt to find the best proportion and the best way of setting the subject upon canvas or paper, arrange this in rectangles of varying shape, some nearly square, others tall, others long and narrow horizontally as in No. 35. To bring the whole landscape into all these will not, of course, be possible, but in each the essential lines must be retained.

The art of landscape painting is a special subject, not to be treated at length here, but I believe that the true way to approach it is through these or similar exer- cises. First study the art, then apply it, whether to landscape or any other kind of expression.

travelling through music and light

2009-02-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

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 roseanne rosannadanna dept.

2009-02-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

check it out

the first hippie

2009-02-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

the more i read about arthur wesley dow, the more i find him reported to be as spiritual and ecumenical about everything, his art, his studies, as he is about his religion. a quiet man without whose presence, an art seminar was considered a failure.

"The prints exude a sense of serenity in keeping with Dow's larger philosophical agenda of educating the public to make choices, in life as in art, that deliver harmonious results." 1

after studying in all of the most upstanding and academic parisian schools, and meeting and learning from the nabis, dow returned home to ipswitch, deflated. he hadn't found what he had sought.

the academie dictated copying antiques, sketching models. "Truth in the form of representa- tional accuracy has no relevance in art, Dow came to feel. Only beauty matters, beauty realized through expression, not imitation.

To unlearn the rules drilled into him in France, Dow immersed himself in private study of art both foreign and ancient--Egyptian, African, Oceanic and Aztec. He found his inspiration in 1891 at the Boston Public Library, in a book of Hokusai prints. 'One evening with Hokusai,' Dow wrote to his wife, 'gave me more light on composition and decorative effect than years of study of pictures.'" 1

when i look at his photography, and then his prints, sometimes his paintings, the photos seem clearly to be 'sketches' for his prints, but his great-grand-daughter says that wasn't the case. at one point his photography became his primary focus -- "just a newer way of printmaking," he said. but since he wished neither to be known as a photographer rather than a painter, nor to compete with kasebier and stieglitz.

sometimes he would go out to attempt to recreate some of his prints and painting with his new tool, the camera.

i have to wonder though, still. really?

An impas- sioned advo- cate of synthesizing lessons from East and West in the teaching and practice of art, Dow proved himself adept at doing just that. Less an originator of ideas than a consolidator and popularizer, he channeled diverse tributaries of influence into one concentrated, easily navigable river.

"A tremendous social force, art had the power to usher in progress, but also to inhibit it, Dow felt. The future depended on a deeper appreciation of beauty in everyday life. Art was hailed as an inner, ethical necessity, primary nourishment for the soul. To Dow, alluding here to Emerson, art was "the expression of the highest form of human energy, the creative power which is nearest to the divine." 1

i promise we'll go into dow's book, composition, soon, but first, there he is sitting overlooking the marshes, in a photo taken by his brother dana, with such a sweet, young, flirtatious tree at the fore.

is it the same as the young cherry in the painting, are they the same as the one in the print? i like to believe so, and to see dow as the first hippie, in the very best, most honorable sense of the word.

dow and the light

2009-02-03T20:42:00.000-08:00

i found myself wanting to know a little more about dow as a person.
i hadn't been able to find a student discussing him as an instructor, but
i found a letter he wrote to his younger brother. it completely surprised me, but it also added understanding to something i was perhaps experiencing in his work.

For Dana only--

I am so glad that you have come out so strongly for the Lord -- i remember you in my prayers every day. Don't take example from anybody but but just look to the One who is perfect. We are all sinners and do not live up to our profession -- that is my trouble and my greatest grief.

If I could see you and talk with you i could tell you many things. Now in the very beginning of your Christian life try to look at all things fairly and calmly. Make up your own mind firmly and stick to it -- at the same time do not be prejudiced against other religions and beliefs. If someone had only told me this I should have been saved much trouble. As you grow older you will find that there are points of good in all beliefs, so look with charity upon all and get all the good you can, even from an infidel if he says what is true.

I am convinced that prayer is the golden chain let down from heaven -- pray night and morning and you will be safe. If one neglects to pray, other influences will get a hold upon him. Now if I can tell you anything just write me and I shall be delighted to help you all I can. My own life has been so imperfect that I shrink from advising anybody, yet I have had some experience which might help you. Write me on any point that troubles you.

I think Reverend Waters is the best advisor for a young man -- he is so fair-minded and sensible in his ideas-- if you do as he advises you will be sure to come out right. Just talk freely with him and make a confidant of him.

I should be glad to know more about your Christian life and that of the other boys, so write me all you can. Commit your way unto the Lord and all will be right. He knows best.

AWD

painting the boats

2009-02-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

Colour variation has always fascinated me. There is a peculiar pleasure in seeing the same design appear in different colours—the design seems to have a soul in each colour-scheme, said Arthur Wesley Dow.

The Ipswich sailors painted their boats in bright hues, using different colours for the inside, outside and streak. They had a limited palette—dark blue, canary yellow, orange, orange-red, several greens, black, and white. They were not content to keep a colour scheme very long, in fact they varied it from year to year, perhaps borrowing one another's paint pots when they freshened up the boats in the spring.

These boats were like colour prints as they lay on the shore in the dark shadow of the willows, or slanted in companies down the heaps of white clam shells—and the tide and the sailors always kept new combinations going.

Under the spell of these, and the old picture books, I tried to make wood engravings to colour by hand, but it was not until I became acquainted with Japanese prints that I found a simple way of creating colour variations. The Boston Museum's vast collection showed me every possibility of this art.

I experimented with the Japanese process, choosing as subjects the shore of Ipswich River with the boats, old houses, bridge and willows, printing many colour variations of each motif.

The special advantages of this art-craft are, first of all, colour quality, then colour variation. In painting, the water-colour settles into the paper, but in a wood-block print it lies upon the tops of the fibres allowing the luminous tone of the paper to shine through.

In this it is like the colour of the best pottery, say Chinese of the Sung dynasty, where the tones lie lightly over a luminous under colour. The old fresco paintings have a similar elusive glowing effect.

Colour variation I have already touched upon. Mr. Fenollosa remarked that this process "utilizes the lost chances." A painting shows forth a single colour-idea that the artist brings out of his mind. There may be many others floating there, but they cannot all be made visible without infinite labour.

With the wood blocks once cut he may seize them all—there is no limit. This is why some wood-block printers will not destroy them. No two prints need ever be exactly alike. The slight variations give a special personal character to each print.

From that day to this I have made wood-block colour prints.

dow's importance, during his lifetime, anyway, included his teaching. we'll look more at that soon, but first: the names of some of his students.

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Rachel Robinson Elmer

May and Frances Gearhart

Edna Boies Hopkins

Gertrude Kasebier

Dorothy Lathrop

Pedro Lemos (later working as Pedro DeLemos)

Georgia O'Keeffe

Mary Frances Overbeck

Margaret Jordan Patterson

Clarence H. White

...and Kate Cameron Simmons and Pamela Colman Smith and M. Louise Stowell and Max Weber (At the Pratt Institute, he studied with Arthur Wesley Dow from whom he learned to see forms as visual relationships rather than objects) and so many many more.

on his methods and influence? that's next....

the principles of design

2008-10-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

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.

library tumbling?

2008-08-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

this was library. for centuries.

WALLACE STEVENS

The great poet came to me in a dream, walking toward me in a house
drenched with August light. It was late afternoon and he was old,

past a hundred, but virile, fit, leonine. I loved that my seducer
had lived more than a century and a quarter. What difference

does age make? We began to talk about the making of poems, how
I craved his green cockatoo when I was young, named my Key West

after his, like a parent naming a child "George Washington." He was
not wearing the business suit I'd expected, nor did he have the bored

Rushmore countenance of the familiar portrait. His white tee shirt
was snug over robust chest and belly, his golden hair long, his beard

full as a biker's. How many great poets ride a motorcycle? We
were discussing the limits of image, how impossible for word

to personate entirely thing: "sea," ocean an August afternoon; "elm,"
heartbreak of American boulevards after the slaughter

of sick old beautiful trees. "I have given up language," he said.
The room was crowded and noisy, so I thought I'd misheard.

"Given up words?" "Yes, but not poems," he said, whereupon
he turned away, walking into darkness. Then it was cooler, and

we were alone in the gold room. "Here is a poem," he said, proffering
a dry precisely formed leaf, on it two dead insects I recognized

as termites, next to them a tiny flag of scarlet silk no larger than
the price sticker on an antique brooch. Dusky red, though once

bright, frayed but vivid. Minute replica of a matador's provocation?
Since he could read my spin of association, he was smiling, the glee

of genius. "Yes," he said, "that is the poem." A dead leaf? His grin was
implacable. Dead, my spinner brain continued, but beautiful. Edge

curling, carp-shaped, color of bronze or verdigris.
Not one, but two
termites—dead. To the pleasures of dining on sill or floor joist, of

eating a house, and I have sold my house.
I think of my friend finding
termites when she reached, shelf suddenly dust on her fingers,

library tumbling, the extermi- nator's bill. Rapacious bugs devour,
a red flag calls up the poem: Blood. Zinnia. Emergency. Blackbird's

vermillion epaulet. Crimson of manicure. Large red man reading,
handkerchief red as a clitoris peeking from his deep tweed pocket—

Suddenly he was gone, gold draining from the walls, but the leaf,
the leaf was in my hand, and in the silence I heard an engine howl,

and through the night that darkened behind the window, I saw
light bolt forward, the tail of a comet smudge black winter sky.

Honor Moore

"Wallace Stevens" is reprinted from Red Shoes by Honor Moore.
Copyright © 2005 Honor Moore.

and then the world changed and the gods invented internet.

when i was a child, the childish things i played with i've never put away; i sat cross-legged against the library window, hidden amongst the stacks, reading poetry books. then over the years, this moment in art history, as you know, took me over.

one day i walked into moe's bookstore, and there in the rare books store-within- a-store was a complete bound set of s. bing's 'artistic japan.' moe traded me ads in my magazine for that set, and i treasure it still.

and i can now give it to you, the last three volumes of six, anyway, and arthur wesley dow's teaching manuals, and copies of 'the studio ,' and dorothy lathrop books, and every gift a library might bestow.

libraries tumbled? no; just transferred, maybe, from paper to bolts of light, a comet smudge across a winter sky.

start here.

let evening come

2008-04-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

'Twas such a little -- little boat
That toddled down the bay!
'Twas such a gallant -- gallant sea
That beckoned it away!

'Twas such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the Coast --
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost!

© 2008 Emily Dickinson

Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?

So Sailors say -- on yester- day --
Just as the dusk was brown
One little boat gave up its strife
And gurgled down and down.

So angels say -- on yesterday --
Just as the dawn was red
One little boat -- o'erspent with gales --
Retrimmed its masts -- redecked its sails --
And shot -- exultant on!

© 2008 Emily Dickinson

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

© 2008 Jane Kenyon

The Long and Winding Road

2008-01-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

The long and winding road
that leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
it always leads me here
Leads me to your door

The wild and windy night
that the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
crying for the day
Why leave me standing here,
let me know the way

Many times I've been alone
and many times I've cried
Anyway you've always known
the many ways I've tried

And still they lead me back
to the long wind- ing road
You left me waiting here
a long, long time ago
Don't keep me standing here,
lead me to you door

But still they lead me back
to the long and winding road
You left me waiting here
a long, long time ago
Don't leave me standing here,
lead me to you door

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

2007-07-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

an element always interesting to consider, but never wholly knowable, is intent. even the person who believes they know their own intent may not. so how to speak of the international flow and flux of art and ideas.

to what extent, and i'm sure it was some, was the west's fascination with japan and all things japanese a search for (the illusion of) the simpler life. the industrial revolution had made cities louder and dirtier; how attractive then the 'peaceful'

(unencumbered by the last two century's innovations) images of that eastern nation, or even the coasts and countrysides of their own.

even the japanese, meiji period on out, designed to that desire in the west, so here we have japanese art from that period, plus several, again, of the pictorialist photographers who, along with their leader stieglitz, were busy making a new branch of art.

how much of this all was 'conscious,' the grasp and re-creation of a more bucolic reality than ever may have existed? and to whom?

2007-07-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

elongated, vertical art was also not seen in the west until japanese scrolls were encount- ered. it is no accident that steichen used this form for his self-portrait (and the poster he made for the whole movement), or stieglitz for one of his most iconic images. (i couldn't find a moon photo, surprisingly! in this particular shape.)

and another important element of the design of the time, learned, again, from the japanese, that i more or less left out yesterday, is asymmetry. (there are numerous other things too, but they more have to do with other arts.)

see for yourself the near- ly ubiquitous occurrence of all of these traits at a wonderful site here. not stieglitz or steichen, or even coburn alone, but an entire era of photography was deeply, and beautifully, grounded across the sea.

towards less obscure....

2007-06-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

a book i took out of the library today (great photographers--a time-life book, published in 1971) says this about the photo to the right:

'[clarence h.] white's preference for unassuming subjects is seen in this view of his home town, newark, ohio. with meticulous care, he creates a still life of geometric patterns, exaggerating the foreground for effect and cropping the width of the print to accentuate the tall, skinny telephone poles.'

ummm....

for some reason, there still seems to be very little recognition of the obvious japonisme in photographs, even when they are readily acknowledged in woodblock prints.

clarence h. white learned his style from arthur wesley dow; while the japanese prints themselves were hitting europe, it was dow who brought the design philosophy to americans.

gertrude kasebier studied with dow as well, and, obviously, in the same place.

as did margaret jordan patterson.

isn't it fascinating to note that what is so obvious to many of us now could have been so obscure as recently as 1971.

there will be a lot more on this, some wonderful photos.

holding the moon

2007-03-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

been thinking a lot today, about the nature of holidays and the holidays of nature. in japan, the blossoming of the cherry trees calls for cherry-viewing parties at the highest levels.

in persia, the first day of the spring
is new year's day.

yes, we have nature-based holidays. our spring holidays are easter and passover. these are really celebrating the equinox as much as chanukah and christmas
celebrate the solstice.

but for the japanese, it's much more conscious. something about us being part of nature, nature being part of us, has not been lost.

van gogh may have been right, writing his brother about the regard with which the japanese hold a single blade of grass. the blossoming of the trees is cause for poetry.
this is ono no komachi writing a poem.
could this sad poem be it?

How invisibly
it changes color
in this world,
the flower
of the human heart.

(Chikanobu Toyohara, Shunzan Katsukawa,
Nobukazu Watanabe, Arthur Wesley Dow,
Gesso Yoshimoto, poem from Ink Dark Moon, tr. Hirshfield/Aratani.)

color

2006-12-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

William Seltzer Rice began his art career as a watercolorist. At the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, in San Francisco, Rice became interested in the art of Japanese prints. From that time on he worked almost exclusively with woodblocks, though he relied on watercolors and pastels for sketching on location. In the studio he would carve the blocks, apply oil based inks with a sable brush, and press the Japanese paper by hand.

He was the author of three books - Block Prints: How to Make Them (1929), Block Printing in the School (1941), and Portfolio of Block Prints (1932). He taught in the public school systems of the Bay area, and he also taught at the many art societies, including the San Francisco Art Association, the California Society of Print Makers, and the Prairie print Makers.

Rice wrote about his philosophy of printmaking and said:

...the viewpoint of the artist differs from that of the commercial printer. In hand printing, each print has a beauty and individuality of its own. The aim is not to produce editions in large quantities, all alike and uniform, but to obtain slight variations which give a personal character to each print. The making of color prints of this type is essentially a painter's performance. There is a great fascination about color experimentation. The real pleasure comes from seeing the same subject appear in different colors, the design gaining in interest with each new color scheme. Wonderful color effects may be obtained by continual experiments. It would almost seem, sometimes, that no block has ever spoken its last word when it comes to its final color scheme.1

rice was clearly not the only one who felt that way, as these charming images by arthur wesley dow, and yoshida hiroshi illustrate.

between the earthquake and the war

2006-12-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

arthur wesley dow created this work several decades before hasui kawase created his, but perhaps both were responding to the onrush of modernity, gatekeepers, both of them, of an imagined past.

or perhaps both just reporting on what they saw. like the impressionist painters, hasui didn't create his images in a studio, but rather on his constants travels in search of beautiful vistas. still preferring a kimono, he wandered the countryside, staying at inns and hunting for "live" views.

by the time he done this image of shichiri beach in soshu, kawase had already lost everything once: in a 1923 earthquake that killed 140,000 people, and that had destroyed everything in watanabe's publishing house (along with the work of many other shin hanga artists as well.)

everything was lost again in the bombing of tokyo in WWII. as they had once before, hasui kawase and watanabe shozaburo rebuilt again.

the coburn and the dow

2006-11-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

it's difficult for our eyes to even see it now, but the transition in art from depicting the literal to depicting the subjective was wildly revolutionary (as we've already seen). and this goes for photography as well as painting. for many years after their introductions both painting and photography were 'required' to reflect reality 'accurately.' at least that was true in the west.

in japan, it was different. it was just understood that the reality the artist produced was what he made of it. when arthur wesley dow suddenly realized this, supposedly while reading a book on japanese prints at the fine arts museum library in boston, it changed his work forever. he felt that this is what he had been looking for, what his work had been needing. dow realized that he did not want to be copying the prints, something he came to criticize whistler for doing, but rather creating his own style using the principles he had learned from viewing the japanese work.

it is our loss that dow spent far more time teaching, from his school in ipswitch to columbia, to the pratt institute in new york, with many stops in-between, than he did making art, and yet he bequeathed us the wonders of the work of his students.
one student, alvin langdon coburn, wasn't a true beginner when he came to ipswitch in 1903. (he would go

on to begin to photograph many of the 'men of mark' in europe the following year). he and dow became more than strictly student and teacher, as they twice went to the grand canyon together to shoot photographs, or paint.

coburn said of dow's ipswich school, "we were taught painting, pottery, and woodblock printing, and i also used my camera, for dow had the vision, even at that time, to recognize the possibilities of photography as a medium of personal artistic expression. i learned many things at his school, not least an appreciation of what the orient has to offer us in terms of simplicity and directness of composition....i think that all of my work has been influenced to a large extent and beneficially by the oriental background, and i am deeply grateful to arthur dow for this early introduction to its mysteries." the world was learning this from the japanese artists who, until being 'taught' otherwise by the westerners they were so enthusiastically trying to emulate, did not make a distinction between 'crafts' and 'art.' in europe the nabis embraced this philosophy (more on this later); additionally part of this was establishing photography's place as a fine art as well.

many thanks to pinholeman for turning me on to coburn!!

picture info: top right: 'salt marsh' dow; top left: 'moon over cherry trees' hiroshige. 2r: 'the blue dragon' dow's painting of the scene out his studio door; 2l: 'the dragon' coburn's photo of the same spot. (here i've stuck in dow's 'ipswitch meadows' because it struck me that this was essentially the same painting as his 'grand canyon'!) 3r: 'grand canyon' dow; 3l: 'grand canyon' coburn. 4l: 'oh-hashi bridge' koho shoda; 4r: 'london bridge' coburn.

dow unto others....

2006-10-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

arthur wesley dow grew up in ipswich, massachusetts, which he ended up memorializing in woodblock prints and paintings.

having gone to paris to continue his art education, and to learn from other painters, dow eventually returned to ipswich somewhat disillusioned. though he had learned something about 'plein air' painting (the essential underpinning of impressionism), he felt dissatisfied.

in france, however, like everyone else at that turn of the century, became aware of the arts and
crafts of japan. when he

returned he continued, and intensified, his interest--so much so in fact that he was made assistant to ernest fenollosa in the asian art department of the mfa boston.

this study, and a long trip to japan revolu- tionized how dow thought about art, design, media.... and not only did it revolutionize his own work, but those of subsequent generations as dow began to teach, and his students began to teach, and so on.

follow- ing precepts he had gath- ered from long study of japanese art, asian concepts of space, balance, clarity, and simplicity became known as what he did, and what he taught.

(left: arthur wesley dow, lilies, and 'the bend';
right: 'bridge at senju' by utagawa hiroshige,
'lily garden' by shoun yamamoto)

continental drift

2006-10-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

"Because people cannot see the color of words, the tints of words, the secret ghostly motion of words;

"Because they cannot hear the whispering of words, the rustling of the procession of letters, the dream-flutes and dream-drums, which are thinly and weirdly played by words;
"Because they cannot perceive the pouting of words, the frowning and fuming of words, the weeping, the raging and racketing and rioting of words;
"Because they are insensible to the phosphorescing of words, the fragrance of words, the noisomeness of words, the tenderness or hardness, the dryness or juiciness of words, the interchange of values in the gold, the silver, the brass and the copper of words;
"Is that any reason why we should not try to make them hear, to make them see, to make them feel?"

these are the words of lafcadio hearn (pictured here with his family), just one of the westerners, mainly americans, who became intrigued with japan and made it a major part of their lives, thus becoming invaluable conduits for this cultural exchange that was going on.

i want to talk in depth about each of them (and of others i'm sure to find along the way), but i wanted to do a short introduction of each first.

"In the late 19th century Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to the Western world. With the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, however, particularly at the Paris World's Fair in 1900, the West had an insatiable appetite for exotic Japan, and Hearn became known to the world through the depth, originality, sincerity and charm of his writings. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but as the man who offered the West some of its first glimpses into pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work still offers valuable insight today." (from wikipedia)

over time, i want to go more fully into the contributions of hearn, as well as those commodore matthew perry, edward morse, ernest fenollosa, ezra pound, bertha lum, helen hyde, arthur wesley dow, and of course, s. bing. it's fascinating to me, how the two cultures became intertwined. but i also don't want to lose track of the questions that keep cropping up: did the westerners "exoticize" japan? was it helpful to the japanese to redefine for them the nature of their own arts?

aggh.... too long a post already.... one step at a time....