Extra Credit -- Japanesque at the Legion of Honor

Recently I took my mom to see one of the most beautiful art exhibits I've ever seen.  It's titled Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism, and its at the Palace of  the Legion of Honor in San Francisco until Jan. 9, 2011.

 

The whole exhibit is really in three parts, along with an accompanying smaller exhibit of Japanese print books from the museum's collections.   The first part of the main gallery looks at the Ukiyo-e themselves and examines the art form from its inception through the late 1800s.  Included in this part of the exhibit is all of the series by Katsushika Hokusai, which is most famous for its "The Great Wave off Kanagawa":

from http://famouswonders.com/

For me, it is always exciting to finally view a painting or print that you've seen a million times in books or copied or spoofed a million times in popular culture (in fact, there are several homages to it in the exhibit by other Ukiyo-e artists).  The original print did not disappoint; its colors are gorgeous and vibrant, and you are able to stand close enough to it to see all the details: the men in the boats coursing through the wave, Mt. Fuji in the background, the white spray coming off the waves.  Several of the other people viewing the exhibit were amazed to see that it contained more than a wave!

 

Throughout the exhibit, the color and vibrancy of the Ukiyo-e were easy to see.  There is a translucency to the way they layed the ink onto the rice paper; the rich color seems to shimmer.  The exhibit notation also did a great job of explaining various transitions or techniques in the art form, such as how Ukiyo-e artists would allow the woodgrain to show if there were large areas of color, to have another pattern so it was not a flat, vast expanse of flat color.

 



The Japanese influence is easy to see
in this print by Mary Cassatt
from http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/articles



The second part of the exhibit shows how the impressionists were highly influenced by the Japanese woodcuts, and how they incorporated it into their art.  Again, the exhibit notations were excellent in explaining the influence found in each impressionist artwork, and often having a small picture of a specific woodcut they were referring to.  The small pictures also had text telling you which gallery they were displayed in so you could go back and look at them for reference.  The gallery was pretty much a who's who of Impressionists, such as Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

 

Also included in the second part of the exhibit was all of Henri Riviere's "36 Views of the Eiffel Tower."  Directly influenced by Hokusai's Mt. Fuji series, Riviere's work was done while they were building the Eiffel Tower and contain many scenes where it is not complete or the workmen are in the process of building it. The entire series was done in tans and black and is gorgeous.  To be able to directly compare the two series is very rare, and we are lucky the exhibit included both.

 

 

 



from http://www.art.com/



The final part of the exhibit were supplemental mini-exhibits adjacent to the main exhibit or nearby.  To the right of the main exhibit entrance was a room that contained a seating area and flat-screen TV showing a movie about the exhibit; this area was also where the docents begin their lectures and tour.  Across the room from the seating area plates showing how the prints were made.  These show The Great Wave from beginning to end -- all fourteen plates -- so you can look at the original plate then how it prints up and the picture emerges.

In addition, there is a small room on the left before the cafeteria, which contains a selection of books.

Noted photographer Arthur Tress (b. 1940) began collecting Japanese books in the fall of 1965, and has continued to collect books and now has a comprehensive collection numbering several hundred volumes. He has selected a small group from his collection for this first of a two-part exhibition of illustrated books on the subject of Fuji, the iconic mountain that is the enduring symbol of Japan.

The whole exhibit is well presented and spacious, and the day we went, not very crowded.  It is well worth going to!


Field Notes: Guttenburg, Tyler Clementi and Liu Xiaobo

While I was reading this week's assignment, I noticed strong similarities between the information explosions that printing and the internet caused, and society's reactions and assimilations to them. 

Each time a new technology has emerged that has allowed people access to more information faster, there have been similar patterns of public education, public obsession, and governmental regulation and/or attempt to control the technology.  

Both with printing and the internet, it took several decades for the public to be introduced to the new technology, and find ways to use it in their everyday lives.  With printing, people had to learn how to read, purchase or borrow books, figure out that putting up a notice would get you customers, or that one could actually sell a sheet printed with the latest news or your views on religion.  Similarly, the internet was around for several decades before the "World-wide Web" became a sensation; the public had to have access to computers, especially at home, and a modem, and be introduced to surfing the net and how to find things.  Businesses found out they could sell online, use spam to sell things and have websites for product information and public relations.  Similar events took place for both the telegraph and telephone.

Once the public learns about a new medium, and its integration becomes not only acceptable in our daily lives, but useful and generating income, there is this explosion where everyone is trying to use it so that they too can generate income or disseminate information.  From 1424 when Cambridge University had only 122 manuscript books in its library to 1502 when French printer Henri Estienne died with almost that many titles that he had published alone, one can see the sheer volume of books that were published.  And from my own high school graduation in 1979 when a website wasn't even known to the general public to the millions that now exist, one can see the similarities between these two explosions of use.

With use, comes abuse and social issues.  When does one person's marketing become an annoyance to another person, or a society?  It certainly does promote someone's product or cause to have broadsides plastered over every square inch along a public boulevard, or to send multiple emails every day for several weeks to people whose email addresses they've acquired.  Yet, to be on the receiving end of those emails, or to walk along that public boulevard, people may not see them as useful or necessary. Governments and the legal system have created laws to try to define the line between useful and annoying, and then had to enforce those laws.  Other issues may be what secrets are allowed to be kept by a country's government for national security issues, who has access to pornography or adult materials, what is free speech and what is defamation, and other privacy issues.  Certainly, the recent public broadcast of Tyler Clementi's tryst has raised a host of legal and moral issues for our latest technologies, but these issues have been raised before for print media and for most societies in general.

Government constriction of information and free speech is another issue that new media challenges.  From Martin Luther's excommunication and condemnation as an outlaw, to Liu Xiaobo's winning of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the tradition of trying to silence those who challenge the current political, religious or moral regime has been going on since time began.  Each technology, with its ability to get information out to the public, is a threat to the status quo because more people can learn about and discuss what is going on, and then try to change it.  Martin Luther's 95 Theses was widely distributed and demonstrated the power of the printing press to get ideas out and also out quickly.  China's attempt to control of the internet has been widely criticized and publicized (outside of China), and one that will continue to be an issue for many years to come.

Cross-Pollination

Right now the topics in my Typography class overlap with History of Graphic Arts.  It almost feels like cheating -- learning about something in one class that you can apply in another -- but hey, I'll take it!!

In both classes, we are learning about the development of writing and typography.  I really like all the links that are included in my Typography class and thought I'd list them here for others and for future reference:

Paper, Leather, Clay & Stone: The Written Word Materialized

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/Paper-exhibit/intro.html

A Brief History of Typefaces

http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/teachers/type_lecture/Type_Lecture.pdf

Short Video: Typography is What Language Looks Like

http://bigbert.vfs.com/~dd07marcos/mograph/typographics_h264.mov

Aspect of the Victorian Book

http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/intro.html

In addition, I thought I'd add Kevin Steele's wonderful pop-up book on typography here.  It was part of the gallery show for the Moveable Book Society's conference that I went to last month.  Most of the people at the conference were graphic artists of some kind and we all agree that Kevin should have this book mass-produced -- its that good -- but right now it is a handmade one-of-a-kind.  The YouTube video shows the book in action and is very well produced and clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4eaD-gh_NE

The write-up for this book and the rest of the show can be found at:

http://www.23sandy.com/popup/artists/steele.html

Shakespeare's First Folio

In 2001, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchased Shakespeare's First Folio at auction for over $6 million dollars.   He has graciously loaned it to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland for viewings, three days a week, with all proceeds going to benefit the Festival.  For $5, I was able to view the Folio with a docent who happened to be a scholar on Jacobean Printing Techniques.

Besides seeing such a historic book, the history of its printing was absolutely fascinating, and I wanted to cover the highlights here:

1) The English language was not considered a formal language during the time of Shakespeare; it was spoken by the commoner.  Educated people typically spoke or wrote Latin, Greek, one of the Romantic languages (French, Italian or Spanish) or German; English was for every-day use.  This meant that spellings were not set, nor would they be until about 300 years later.   It is also what gives us the variety and richness (and sometimes confusion) of English.  The three men and two boys who typeset the Folio used their personal preferences when it came to spelling words -- this is how scholars can tell who typeset what pages of the Folio.

2) The printers would set and print a sheet of the Folio, then hang it to dry.  The next day, they would proof the dry sheet, making any changes and continuing its run.  Sometimes they would proof and correct half of the sheet, then go back and proof the rest and finish making corrections - all the while printing more sheets.  However, they would not throw out the previous un-proofed or erroneous sheets.  Those would be included in the run.   The end result was that no two First Folios are the same, and there are differences in all of them.  Paul Allen's is considered one of the cleanest and most perfect First Folios we have.

3) We aren't really sure how many First Folios were printed.  The estimate is as low as 600 and as high as 1200, but the standard guess is about 750.  This also would depend on what you count as a First Folio.  They were sold three ways:  (1) Bound by the publisher - the most expensive option and the one least taken; (2) as a complete block of pages and then the purchaser hired his own binder and specified how the book was to look; and (3) piecemeal -- you could buy, say, pages 1-10 this week then come back next week for pgs. 10-20 and so on until you had the whole set.  This was very common for the times it was printed in.  This First Folio was purchased under (2) and then bound privately.  So most of the First Folios look as differently on the outside as they are varied on the inside.

4) We aren't sure how many exist today.  The guess is about 250.  They have been trying to get an accurate inventory since the 1970s (back then the estimate was closer to 200), but there are private libraries and things in attics that we don't know about and occasionally find.  Also, it depends on what you count as a First Folio.  Many libraries have pieces of the Folio, not the whole thing.  The Folger Library has 79 copies in various states.  Given the way it was sold, the length of time and its rarity to begin with, its amazing we have any left.

5) Besides having different spellings, the words have different ligatures.  Sometimes they used what we would consider an f for the letter s; sometimes they used combined letters, other times not.  The f for an s was very common in Jacobean times; it differed from the true f because the crossbar of a true f went all the way through while if it was an s it was only half-way.  This has led to many scholarly arguements, such as the one about Prospero's wife.

In The Tempest, Ferdinand says "So rare a wondred Father, and a wife" -- or does he?  Wife has been wise in many translation and the debate rages on with scholars claiming that the lead type broke down during printing and the crossbar eroded, or that it was a piece of lint that only looked like a crossbar...



Ultimately, what directors and actors have decided from all the varied First Folios with their errors, different spellings, and mystical crossbars is that Shakespeare is open for a lot of interpretation, and that there is not just one way that is correct.

It was great to spend some time viewing this book and hearing how it was printed and how different it was than today.

PS: Pictures were not allowed and the one I have posted was from a Sotheby's Auction earlier this year.