Saturday, April 20, 2013

Flow




I never appreciated the flowing lines of the earliest ukiyo-e prints until I saw them in person. I admit to being seduced by the later multicolor ones. It is rare to see the early prints exhibited and most reproductions tend to highlight their flaws. So, after a lifetime of admiring Japanese prints it is as if I am seeing them for the first time.

In the earlier prints the figures move off the page. I only just grasp their fleeting image. My eyes follow each loving curve, never resting in one place, never taking in the whole. This is the magic: the image constantly reinvents itself, always fresh, always awaiting a new interpretation, a new appreciation.

The lines begin at the top, and flow downward and outward as silken curtains blow in a mid summer breeze. The simple entangling folds of Moronobu’s lovers, Torii Kiyonobu’s gesturing actors and Kaigetsudō Doshin’s determined courtesans move across the page. They reveal the truth of their circumstances despite their naive expressions.

For me, as the prints became more detailed the fluid line diminished. This is not meant as a criticism, the later prints are gorgeous. In One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Fifty-stations on the Tōkaidō rain pours down in torrents, massive waves threaten to engulf ships, mountain villages are buried in snow, and diminutive figures hunker down and are allowed to pass through the landscape by the grace of nature. They are technologically superior to the earlier prints and remarkable in their own right, but sometimes a bit like postcards. I suppose in some respects this is what they were meant to be.

My renewed interest in Japanese prints came after an unforeseen acquisition of a modern print. I noticed it from across the room at a friend’s home. It was obscured by a collection of hibernating bonsai. Interested, I asked about it and the next thing I knew it was hanging on my bedroom wall.

The poster size print is an odd combination of embossed gears and printed wood grain. It is surrounded by loosely woven burlap and set into a dark wood frame outlined with gold. The artist Gen Yamaguchi titled it Encounter. It is the 31st impression in a series of fifty. Its colors are earth tones of ash and pale dried earth with a smudge of black grease around the interlocking gears. This print has no flowing lines; it is without movement, it is a statement rather than a poem.

I searched for information about the artist on Google without much success, so I went to the library. There on 8th floor of the Chicago Public Library’s main branch I found a shelf and a half of books on Japanese prints. As I looked through their tattered pages the chronology of the Japanese print was revealed.

I had thought these prints were timeless but it turns out they began in the mid to late 17th century. Their lineage stems from the Buddhist prints of the Heian (794-1185) period. As with most things in the East the earliest images are from India, then into China and Korea, and finally Japan. Many of the artists were trained in the Kano and Tosa schools of painting. Their art rose to a crescendo through the entire Edo Art Period (1615-1868).

It was a time of peace and consolidation ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns. Daimyo and their samurai were held at bay, while a merchant class, though of lower rank, flourished. There were restrictions in place for most members of society and this was true of the merchants. Their outward lives needed to be subdued, but their inner lives were flamboyant. This extravagance played out behind the closed doors of the floating-world quarter inhabited by courtesans and kabuki actors, and the ukiyo-e artists documented it.

The technology moved on from the single color prints (sumizuri-e) of Masanobu to the full colors prints (nishiki-e) of Hiroshige. The first images are presented on a flat plane. Perspective is only added later.

The portraits are intimate. It feels impolite to stare, but we are distant enough that the characters are not aware of our presence. They do not beckon us into their world. We share in it as outsiders. But if we empty the mind and allow our eyes to flow through the 17th, 18th and 19th century we may just be able to capture their essence.

April 2013