Japanese Prints: Hokusai at the Los Angeles County Museum

 Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is an ukiyo-e series of large, color woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). The series depicts Mount Fuji in differing seasons and weather conditions from a variety of different places and distances. It actually consists of 46 prints created between 1826 and 1833. The first 36 were included in the original publication and, due to their popularity, ten more were added after the original publication.

While Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is the most famous ukiyo-e series to focus on Mount Fuji, there are several other series with the same subject, including Hiroshige's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Hokusai's own later series One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji.

Mount Fuji is a popular subject for Japanese art due to its cultural and religious significance. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As Henry Smith explains, "Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain."

And this is what he wrote about himself in his autobiography. It is the quintessence of his art philosophy:

"From the age of five I have had a mania for sketching the forms of things. From about the age of fifty I produced a number of designs, yet of all I drew prior to the age of seventy there is truly nothing of great note. At the age of seventy-two I finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fish and of the vital nature of grasses and trees. Therefore, at eighty I shall have made some progress, at ninety I shall have penetrated even further the deeper meaning of things, at one hundred I shall have become truly marvelous, and at one hundred and ten, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own. I only beg that gentlemen of sufficiently long life take care to note the truth of my words."

Constantly seeking to produce better work, he apparently exclaimed on his deathbed, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter." He died on May 10, 1849 and was buried in Tokyo. (images from Wikipedia as the LACMA site only had one image up).

http://www.examiner.com/article/japanese-prints-hokusai-at-the-los-angeles-museum-of-art

San Francisco Zine Fest

I visited the San Francisco ZineFest today to check out a couple of my favorite art forms: comics and artist books. The show didn't disappoint. All together it had a very indie, DIY vibe. Lots of good work here, but I'll just mention two artists I'll be following. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from these guys:



Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Portland, Oregon.
He writes and draws comics, makes art zines, draws constantly, and on occasion, teaches workshops. He's a quiet, serene guy and he was sitting alone at his corner booth with lots of killer prints and luscious books. His work is intricate, visionary ink and watercolor drawings, somewhere between Maurice Sendak and Charles Ware. (Interview with Ellsworth HERE.)

His most recent book, "Capacity" (336 pages. Softcover. ISBN: 978-0-9799609-2-5, Price: $15.00) is available on the publisher's web site and on Amazon.



Paul Barron was chatting at a crowded table in front of a wall of posters & prints - mostly wood and linoleum block prints, including some two color/two layer prints. Very nice work, with delicate hatching, clean design, and classic social justice themes. He lives in Oakland and recently collaborated with Roberto Miguel on a piece that showed at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

He was sharing a booth with two other artists. They all jumped up and bolted when I pulled out my camera and asked if I could take their photo for this blog. (What? Do I look like the FBI or something?)

Deep Calling to Deep

I'm in love with Bridget Henry and her work, and I don't care who knows it. If you're looking for objectivity here, well, wrong tree, is all I have to say.

That disclaimer having been made, let us consider dreams. Truly there is nothing more tedious than hearing strangers' painfully minute accounts of their dreams--it was my house, but it wasn't really my house, and the windows were made of pink and turquoise Play-doh. Who among us has not prayed for early death to release us from similar recitals of meaningless detail? Your dream, however, or the dream of a loved one, well, that be a horse of a different color. Those details are gems that bespeak a rich inner life. (Heheheheheheheh.)
I think about dreams a lot. I remember my dreams and keep a dream dictionary by my bed. (Sometimes I am horrified by the obviousness and sheer banality rolling around in my subconscious, e.g., all those roller coaster dreams when I was in that one relationship. That's just plain embarrassing.) The times I am crankily bemoaning all what gone wrong in my childhood, I would do well to remember that what went so very right was the cleaving to the subconscious, and the resulting understanding that we humans carry this beautiful, terrifying inner universe furnished with symbols.

That came from a daily family ritual of describing dreams, and also, from being steeped in religious tradition, which is nothing but symbols--the blood of the Lamb, the loaves and the fishes, water-into-wine, the Bride of Christ. The Gates of Heaven and the Pits of Hell. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (who, by the way, spent an inordinate amount of time persecuting me in adolescence. We all have our demons).

So my sudden and intense response to Bridget Henry's work is a kind of soul-to-soul (in the immortal words of Stevie Ray Vaughn) recognition, rather than just an accident of appreciating the pretty. Deep calling to deep.

Every morning of Henry's childhood, her mother would ask, "What did you dream about?" Which question put Henry in the habit of traveling the landscape of the subconscious, what she calls the unexplored territory of human existence, and which can only be explored accidentally, through uncontrolled acts--like dreaming. And so of course this part of her life became a big part of who she is and how she sees and interprets what happens around her. She carries symbols around with her, thinks in images, sees language in pictures: "When I hear language, I see it. Sometimes listening to music, a picture will flash into my head."

A Catholic upbringing meant that Henry's first experience with art was religious--the stained glass, robes, incense, statues, and candles, all those accoutrements that the Catholics get to flash in the face of Low Church envy. For Henry, the sacramental aesthetic was moving, and its influence lasting. Even after leaving the Church and spending some time being angry about what she'd never known about as a child, what you might call the dark side of Catholicism--the history of persecution, the anti-Semitism, the Inquisition--the iconography remained, not as the focus, but as a structure for the storytelling.
When she went to college, Henry wanted to study psychology, thinking that psychology meant the subconscious. If she had read Jung in those days, the archetypes would have probably kept her interested. But instead she became disillusioned, and turned her attention to art, "which gives immediate access to the subconscious." In her art, she salvages elements from Catholicism and uses the religious style and iconography as a pedestal to elevate the common experience to myth and symbol. And not just Catholicism, but the characters and motifs of folktales, fables, legend, and mythology, whatever symbols can be pressed into service to tell of suffering, struggle, perseverance, grace, awakening, transformation, redemption.

Henry identifies herself as more of a symbolist than an artist. She tells a funny bit about multi-artist shows, that she can stand back and predict which art will draw which people as the attendees stream in the door. Henry's woodcuts attract the teachers and students. Readers all, I bet. Anyone who likes a good story. Her works tell us the stories of our lives. Who has not experienced love and suffering and heartbreak and separation and longing? Who is not grateful for art that helps you interpret and make meaning out of your own experiences?

Watching the news or hearing some account, Henry finds herself thinking, "I want to reject that version," and then rewriting and telling the story a new way, giving a new ending, maybe an ending that leads to grace or redemption or transformation, or maybe just one that is comprehensible.

Or nearly comprehensible--and this is the part that is so difficult to articulate when talking of one's response to any kind of art, that one might feel an intuitive connection and even understanding that seems impossible to express in words. There are the layers of meaning, and even if you have an idea of the artist's intention and her thoughts, and the images give you some superficial understanding, the layers of meaning bring you back to look at pieces over and over, because you know there is more that you missed, and more to understand. Not that I can say I fully understand it. As with dreams and poetry, the mystery is part of the draw.
I asked Henry if she ever fell in love with her art. She thought about it for a second, and said that her relationship to everything in her art has changed. She used to fall in love with it more. Now, the work she falls in love with tends to be work that is most personal, that is less for public view, maybe work with new media, the work she suspects would probably get the least positive response from others.

Bridget Henry lives, works, and teaches in Santa Cruz, California. You can see more of her work here and here.