A humbling experience

I believe that amazing, serendipitous things are around us all the time, & they'll happen to you if your mind is open to them.

   Proof #1: John Decastro & I were doing the whirlwind tour of Manhattan on Monday, & we stopped into Kinokuniya books, which has relocated from Rockefeller Center over to Bryant Park. (Which is a gorgeous, serene park loaded with trees, as well as the home of New York Fashion Week.) I was thrilled that John was willing to indulge my Japanophilism. As I was at the register I noticed a postcard advertising a show of Kuniyoshi's prints at the Japan Society. My jaw about hit the floor. I own one of his prints, which I purchased at the Kyoto Handicraft Center in 2006! And given that it's the most stunning piece of art I own (and one of the most stunning that I've ever laid eyes on), I knew I had to get to the show.
   So on Tuesday following the Stationery Show, the shuttle dropped me off in Times Square & I proceeded to hail a cab. Yeah right. It was POURING rain, & all were full. I might as well blow my life savings on lottery tickets. The show was pretty far away. What to do? Call it a loss or go all-out & try to make it. My answer to that type of question is always the same. And so I started walking east as briskly as possible. If I hurried I might get 45 minutes to view the show before they closed for the day. I took a couple of wrong turns. But I pressed on.
   The rain was so heavy & the wind so hard that I was soaked despite my umbrella, which I had to carry in front of me like a shield to deflect the rain & which turned inside-out more than once. Near the UN I passed a gorgeous meditation park. And spotted a woman with a shiba walking toward me! We chatted for a minute & I pressed on. Soon I walked into what I thought was the building, only to find that I was on the wrong street: 42nd instead of 47th. Crap. The sidewalks were full but people could tell I was on a mission: they got out of my way! I finally arrived at the beautiful Japan Society, with a running stream & slender, elegant bamboo growing throughout the lobby. The attendant informed me that the show was free today. So I shed my wet jacket & umbrella & marched up the stairs...

   And my jaw hit the floor again. I expected maybe two dozen prints. There had to have been one hundred, mostly dating from the 1830s-50s. I haven't seen a show of such presence & magnitude in years-- not since I saw Gajin Fujita's large-scale graffiti art at the Kemper Museum. And to think these prints were all from one artist!
   Kuniyoshi's prints are crafted with a delicacy that has become a lost art. Each of the galleries had a theme, from samurai warriors battling giant beastly animals or spirits, beautiful women, landscapes, and Kyouga or "crazy pictures."

My observations:
   Related to my upcoming JAS presentation about the proliferation of character design in Japanese society, I was struck that the geishas were wearing sticks in their hair w/hanging decorations that resembled modern cell phone straps. Between this & the kyouga prints, the roots of modern character design were obvious.

   The kyouga room was full of exquisitely bizarre imagery: animals impersonating people (cats dressed as men), people impersonating animals (men dressed as turtles) and people posed strategically so that when you step back the small bodies come together to form a large face, referencing portraits of kabuki actors, geisha & samurai. The triptych of cats was among my favorites. The "octopus games" (tako no asobi) made me laugh out loud, as the octopi with giant eyes & gaping mouths paraded around in men's robes & headbands, wrestling & strutting about.
   Best name ever: Shouki the demon-queller. (I should be called "Jen the demon-queller" for the shenanigans my shibas get into!) Watashi no shiba inu ha oni da to omotteimasu!

   I saw my triptych from 1851, "The Rescue of Tametomo by Tengu." Mine isn't yet framed (a crime I hope to remedy soon), so it was nice to see the museum treatment. The three pieces were aligned with no gap between them, with a 1/4" border between the prints & the mat, with a white background and a 1/2" warm brown wood frame. Simplicity that highlights the piece.
   Overall, what I admire about Kuniyoshi's work is that every piece is teeming w/life, full of force & motion in both the characters & the backgrounds, as in the warriors fighting tigers or the man kneeling below a waterfall, with the water hitting his body & spraying in all directions. Unity is achieved through repetition of form, such as the undulating rope through the vertical composistion in which the warrior uses immense power to haul a giant bell up a mountainside; or in the intertwined arms & legs of people and animals struggling to survive. The delicacy of the linework was nothing short of miraculous. And the vibrant, rich colors and contrast of flat or gradiated color & inticate patterns were masterfully used.

   Of course, my favorite pieces were invariably the men fighting giant animals personified as fierce demons, with smoking mouths, razor-sharp claws and teeth and ultimate determination to survive. Who knows who won the battles? The beasts included tigers, cats, rats, a toad, "Earth spiders," crocodile-fish hybrids, octopi, tengu, dragons, snakes, a lobster fighting a phoenix, and an imposing skeleton hovering menacingly over men and anatomically accurate. It is thought to have been drawn from European art specimens, but is unmistakably Kuniyoshi. His skill in drawing form is remarkable. His sketchbook blew me away. When I studied the prints up close it brought tears to my eyes. It was a humbling & moving experience!

Full review of the show

Japan Society Blog
Examiner article
"As elegantly sumptuous as they are imaginatively extravagant, Kuniyoshi’s greatest prints represent turbulent, epic visions of human protagonists battling supernatural beings on three-page spreads two and a half feet across, a format he invented." —Ken Johnson, New York Times(April 2010)
"The seeds of manga and anime can be seen everywhere in the ukiyo-e prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), whose eye for the fantastic and the ghoulish remains unmatched." —The New Yorker (April 2010)


Continues with next post...