Views of The Kamakura Print Collection

Titles

Friday 4 May 2012 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Cultural commons Tags: Discovery, image search

Graphic arts can bypass verbal understanding and reach the heart directly. Instead of abandoning words entirely, however, I prefer titles that initiate the viewer into the non-verbal world of the print. Like poetry, they use words to go beyond words. Often the title once arrived at, through inspiration or thought-association, appears obvious, as if pre-destined.

Leaf-whispers started as a search for poetic associations of ‘leaves’. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself contain numerous leaf-references involving communication between himself and vegetation, but none short enough for a print title. Spring festivals feature various characters covered in leaves, and there is the Millais painting of Ophelia

Ophelia

covered in leaves, but these suggest burial or death, not what I had in mind for an image of living leaves. Then there is the role of leaves in divination and prophecy, such as the Sibylline leaves of ancient Greece and Persia. This seemed closer to the mark, as I wanted to suggest some sort of message to be divined from the rustling of the leaves in the wind, some confidence being confided to the listener. I thought of ‘Whispering Leaves’, but this sounded like the name of a down-at-heels B&B. It took me a while to to think of the singular ‘leaf’ and to couple that with ‘whispers’ — that sounds exactly right.

Leaf-whispers, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

With Mind the Gap, at first, descriptive terms like ‘rocks and trees’, such as are used in Chinese ink-brush painting, occurred to me. One of the Chinese ink-brush paintings I looked at was entitled Rivers and Mountains Without End, and that idea seemed to resonate with the islands disappearing into the mist, and the suggestion of a limitless, though ethereal expanse. But what would ‘islands without end’ mean? Perhaps instead of highlighting the islands themselves, the image is about the spaces around them — the gap. The apparently empty space embodies form and gives shape to what it surrounds. But just ‘the gap’ seemed too abrupt, not to mention redolent of a clothing store. What is the significance of the gap? How are we to think of it? Think of it, consider it, of course! — Mind the Gap. That’s what the conductor tells you when getting on or off the train. It’s also a reminder of the void that awaits us, awareness of which makes the present more vital.

Mind the Gap, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

In May 2002 I held an exhibit in Kamakura where visitors were asked to write haikus. They could be about the show, the season, their momentary feeling — often all three. One of these is:

波音を

抱き寄せて知る

春の夢

nami oto wo / dakiyoseteshiru / haru no yume

In rough translation: the sound of the surf / reminds me of its embrace / a dream of spring.

The author of this haiku, the late Shinpei Ishii, was a writer of great style and sensitivity, and the host of a popular radio program.

In 2003, Charnwood Arts in England arranged for a world-wide group to write haikus in English on the Seascape photogravures. One of these, by Hazel Witherspoon, goes: Your love / in all its fury / storming my senses. Both of these haikus stayed with me, contributing to the titles of my most recent Seascapes, Wave-Embraced and Furiously Yours. The violence of the ocean’s embrace is akin to that of love, and something of that spirit inhabits both prints. As a tag line, Furiously Yours may be more in synch with the perilous intensity of human relations than the standard ‘Sincerely yours’ or ‘Very truly yours’. These prints recall the intimate association of beauty and danger long considered to be the essence of the sublime.

Wave-Embraced, photogravure etching, Peter Miller (2009)

The persistence of autumn grasses in midwinter suggested the co-existence of seasons in time, encompassing an entire cycle of growth, decay, and rebirth in one scene. The pattern also suggested musical staves, and at the same time, a kind of calligraphy: ‘Notes’, as if Nature had hastily scribbled some messages from seasons past. The notion of recollection inherent in these contemporaneous seasons prompted ‘last time’, as in ‘remember the last time we did such and such a thing?’ or ‘remember when this snow-covered field was green with fresh grass?’ Remembrance of the cycle of seasons implies that the sequence will be repeated, that we will have another and yet another opportunity to revisit the scene anew. All of these meanings coalesce in Notes From Last Time.

Notes From Last Time, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

Vaclav Havel’s Vision

Monday 13 Feb 2012 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Cultural commons, Vision Tags: private experience, Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel, the playwright-statesman and former president of the Czech Republic, who died last Dec 18, understood from the inside out the meaning of the fall of communism. One of the great dramas of our time, its significance for the West is no less than its significance for the lands behind the former Iron Curtain. In a speech to the World Economic Forum in 1992, Havel reminded us:

‘For many years, decades in fact, the West was defined against the background of the communist world. As a common enemy and a common threat, it was this communist world that kept the West united both politically, and in terms of security arrangements. Against its will, it also helped the West strengthen, cultivate and develop its time-tested principles and practices, like civil society, parliamentary democracy, the market economy, and the concept of human and civil rights. Confronted by the gloomy, dangerous and expansionist world of communist totalitarianism, the West was continually required to prove its commitment to freedom, truth, democracy, broader cooperation and growing prosperity. In other words, the communist world was instrumental in the West’s own self-affirmation….

‘As the Eighties became the Nineties, the whole Second World, as it used to be known, exploded and, in a rather frenzied fashion, collapsed in upon itself. In its place, a crater has suddenly opened up before the eyes of an astonished world, one that is now spewing forth a lava of post-communist surprises. Mixed up in this lava, we will find a long-forgotten history coming back to haunt us, a history full of thousands of economic, social, ethical, ethnic, territorial, cultural and political problems that remained latent and unnoticed under the surface of totalitarian boredom.’

The collapse of communism took everyone by surprise, releasing long-suppressed ethnic and other grievances and re-aligning (to use Havel’s metaphor) the geo-tectonic plates of the continent. But Havel focuses on what he regards as the more lasting effects for human thought and freedom everywhere:

‘The end of communism is, first and foremost, a message to the human race. It is a message we have not yet fully deciphered and comprehended.

‘In its deepest sense, the end of communism has, I believe, brought a major era in human history to an end. It has brought an end not just to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but to the modern age as a whole.’

What Havel somewhat wishfully had in mind was the end of the idea that civil society could be engineered. It seemed to Havel that those who overthrew communism understood from their own experience, and all who witnessed it understood sympathetically, that using the State to force-march entire societies into so-called rational organization could never work. But those who seek dominion over others will always find some principles, be they communist, liberal, conservative, relativist, or fiscal to justify their own aggrandizement. Those who bear the hardships imposed on them by Statist intrusions into their lives can, if they will see for themselves, pierce these various guises and rationalizations. Havel’s view of history helps in this endeavor:

‘The modern era has been dominated by the culminating belief, expressed in different forms, that the world — and Being as such — is a wholly knowable system governed by a finite number of universal laws that man can grasp and rationally direct for his own benefit. This era, beginning in the Renaissance and developing from the Enlightenment to socialism, from positivism to scientism, from the industrial revolution to the information revolution, was characterized by rapid advances in rational, cognitive thinking. This, in turn, gave rise to the proud belief that man, as the pinnacle of everything that exists, was capable of objectively describing, explaining and controlling everything that exists, and of possessing the one and only truth about the world. It was an era in which there was a cult of depersonalized objectivity, an era in which objective knowledge was amassed and technologically exploited, an era of belief in automatic progress brokered by the scientific method. It was an era of systems, institutions, mechanisms, and statistical averages. It was an era of freely transferable, existentially ungrounded information. It was an era of ideologies, doctrines, interpretations of reality, an era where the goal was to find a universal theory of the world, and thus a universal key to unlock its prosperity.

‘Communism was the perverse extreme of this trend. It was an attempt, on the basis of a few propositions masquerading as the only scientific truth, to organize all of life according to a single model, and to subject it to central planning and control regardless of whether or not that was what life wanted.

‘The fall of communism can be regarded as a sign that modern thought — based on the premise that the world is objectively knowable, and that the knowledge so obtained can be absolutely generalized — has come to a final crisis. This era has created the first global, or planetary, technical civilization, but it has reached the limit of its potential, the point beyond which the abyss begins. I think the end of communism is a serious warning to all mankind. It is a signal that the era of arrogant, absolutive reason is drawing to a close and that it is high time to draw conclusions from that fact.’

Berlin Wall, 1989 (photo: Sue Ream)

And yet..

‘We are looking for new scientific recipes, new ideologies, new control systems, new institutions, new instruments to eliminate the dreadful consequences of our previous recipes, ideologies, control systems, institutions and instruments. We treat the fatal consequences of technology as though they were a technical defect that could be remedied by technology alone. We are looking for an objective way out of the crisis of objectivism.

‘Everything would seem to suggest that this is not the way to go. We cannot devise, within the traditional modern attitude to reality, a system that will eliminate all the disastrous consequences of previous systems. We cannot discover a law or theory whose technical application will eliminate all the disastrous consequences of the technical application of earlier laws and technologies.

‘What is needed is something different, something larger. Man’s attitude to the world must be radically changed. We have to abandon the arrogant belief that the world is merely a puzzle to be solved, a machine with instructions for use waiting to be discovered, a body of information to be fed into a computer in the hope that, sooner or later, it will spit out a universal solution.’

Instead of which, Havel has the courage to assert that personal, private experiences afford a scope of action that is inaccessible to the rationalist central planners. In the multitude and variety of unique personal experiences lie great untapped energy for self-governance, peace, and prosperity. These are the very qualities that experts find so uncomfortable and therefore dismiss as ‘merely subjective’. Havel’s genius as an artist, statesman, and philosopher, is to restore this experiential wisdom to its proper central place in human affairs. It is an inherently democratic approach, since everyone’s personal experience is of use, and it emboldens the populace to shake off its passivity and seek guidance from their own common sense.

‘It is my profound conviction that we have to release from the sphere of private whim such forces as a natural, unique and unrepeatable experience of the world, an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypal wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Such forces must be rehabilitated. Things must once more be given a chance to present themselves as they are, to be perceived in their individuality. We must see the pluralism of the world, and not bind it by seeking common denominators or reducing everything to a single common equation. We must try harder to understand than to explain. The way forward is not in the mere construction of universal systemic solutions, to be applied to reality from the outside; it is also in seeking to get to the heart of reality through personal experience. Such an approach promotes an atmosphere of tolerant solidarity and unity in diversity based on mutual respect, genuine pluralism and parallelism. In a word, human uniqueness, human action and the human spirit must be rehabilitated.

‘The world, too, has something like a spirit or soul. That, however, is something more than a mere body of information that can be externally grasped and objectified and mechanically assembled. Yet this does not mean that we have no access to it. Figuratively speaking, the human spirit is made from the same material as the spirit of the world. Man is not just an observer, a spectator, an analyst or a manager of the world. Man is a part of the world and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar node of Being, a living atom within it, or rather a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world….

‘In a world of global civilization, only those who are looking for a technical trick to save that civilization need feel despair. But those who believe, in all modesty, in the mysterious power of their own human Being, which mediates between them and the mysterious power of the world’s Being, have no reason to despair at all.

‘Thank you for your kind attention.’

Full text of Vaclav Havel’s speech

Obituary

Vaclav Havel, statesman and playwright, born 5 October 1936; died 18 December 2011

Apocalyptic Visions

Thursday 5 Jan 2012 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Appreciations, Cultural commons, Vision Tags: apocalypse, Medici, Renaissance, Sarah Dunant, Savonarola

Sarah Dunant’s novels of religious and political intrigue bring the 16th-century Medici era to marvelous life. The Birth of Venus sets Medici opulence against Savonarola‘s preachings of imminent damnation, in a story of forbidden love between a novice nun-to-be and a young artist. Sacred Hearts relates the story of another girl unwillingly sent to a convent, delirious with rage at her incarceration, whose saintly devotion to heavenly music eventually brings her and the convent a sort of peace. The world of the Renaissance is strangely familiar to us, and Sarah Dunant knows why.

She writes about the contradictory apocalyptic visions that trouble us today: One version of the contemporary apocalypse tells us that the only way out of the black hole of debt is to spend more, lest eternal stagnation and misery engulf us all. Another version tells us that economic growth itself is destroying the planet, that the oceans will rise, tempests will rage, the very climate and atmosphere of the planet will turn malevolent if we don’t mend our ways. No one except Sarah Dunant seems to have noticed that these two versions of hell are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.

The Medici era which gave rise to modern banking 500 years ago was also, by no coincidence, beset by visions of impending doom, especially for those engaged in the idolatrous pursuit of money for its own sake. The succeeding centuries have witnessed a seemingly endless sequence of apocalyptic visions, heralded by a collision of the sun with the earth (1603), the passage of comets (1719 and 1910), earthquakes (1805), planetary conjunctions (1919), and Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast (1938). And who can forget Y2K, the year when a couple of missing digits would doom everything from banking to air traffic control.

Of the various forms taken by popular fear, Dunant writes:

It is almost Darwinianly protean in the way it changes shape — from the four horsemen, through fears of nuclear destruction after World War II, to the contemporary debate about the raping and over-heating of the planet. For those who passionately believe it, the difference between this scenario and apocalyptic fears of the past is that those were misguided, but this one is correct.

History suggests, though, that each age begets its own sort of anxiety, related more to conditions here on earth than in the heavens. The dates often coincide with times of impending warfare, extreme deprivation, or revolutionary conflict. Every apocalypse features punishment of the wicked amid massive destruction, followed by the reign of the few who are saved. In earthly terms, they may be viewed as implicit threats against the elites of the day, warning them of the limits of their power.

Perhaps hellfire and damnation restrained the avarice of the first bankers. Back when usury was a mortal sin, the Scrovegnis (14th-century) who had

Giotto, Last Judgment

profited from it sought to redeem themselves with the gorgeous art of Giotto. Today’s financiers, lacking the exquisite taste of their predecessors, prefer to flaunt their wealth with guilt-ridden auction-certified dreck. In an odd reversal of the ancient apocalyptic message, the order of the day is opulence for the super-rich and restraint for the rest of us.

Hellfire (detail of Giotto fresco)

Sarah Dunant expresses perfectly the confusion of contemporary mixed apocalyptic messages:

But what has happened this year — which I think goes some way to explaining the confusion and despair that many of us have been feeling — is that we have basically experienced two potential apocalypses colliding. While on the one hand we are being told that if we are to save our planet we simply cannot go on exploiting its resources and must drastically reduce our levels of consumption – we are also being told that in order to pull ourselves out of the nightmare of spiraling recession, we must have growth and that growth depends on continued spending and consuming, i.e. more credit and more debt. I can’t be the only one, who while listening to these two voices simultaneously, has experienced mental vertigo.

She ends by quoting the eminent philosopher Woody Allen:

More than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter helplessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

As the history of apocalypse suggests, it might be wise to seek inspirational visions in everyday life here and now rather than in the hereafter. Depriving oneself indefinitely of the little pleasures of everyday life actually impoverishes that life rather than enriching it. Such things as a glance at a favorite print, the discovery of something new in a familiar image, the caress of the eye across the textured surface of a hand-made object, remind us that all happiness is fleeting, but not on that account to be put off indefinitely.

Real wealth consists in the accumulation of a lifetime of little impressions, chance meetings, journeys through the unexpected, memories, and perspectives developed from art and music, science and engineering, literature and philosophy. Denying oneself the visual resources to do this is simply false economy. Especially in times of distress, bold acts of imagination are required to create a future different from the present. Original artwork presents us with imaginary alternatives contrary to the apocalyptic nightmares we are immersed in, and in so doing helps to realize more benign visions of our future. That is my mission at The Kamakura Print Collection and kamprint.com/xpress/

Renaissance city Urbino

Three Peaks of the Phoenix ・鳳凰三山

Friday 21 Oct 2011 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Seasons Tags: Three Peaks of the Phoenix, unexpected

The Three Peaks of the Phoenix, a range midway between Fuji-san and Japan’s second-highest mountain Kita-dake, offer incomparable views to either side. At sunrise Fuji-san appears red for about 10 minutes, and the early light on Kita-dake opposite warms that formidable mass of rock. The mist on distant peaks gives a sense of unlimited vistas. As the day brightens, Yatsugatake (Eight Peaks) with its distinctive 3000-meter high Aka-dake (Red Peak), and Yarigadake, become visible, bringing memories of other ascents.

Takushi-dake summit

The Asian phoenix and the Arabian-Egyptian phoenix are not really birds of a feather — more like distant cousins. The Arabian-Egyptian phoenix rises every half-millennium from the ashes of its own pyre, a resurrection myth that informs Christian lore and inspires hopes of triumph over adversity. It appears as a double-headed eagle in European heraldry and coinage, and as the Firebird of Russian and Slavic lore involving heroic quests. Stravinsky made wonderful use of the legend in his Firebird Suite.

The Asian phoenix, like its distant cousin, is also associated with the sun and with ascent toward the light, a feeling we can readily appreciate among the brightly lit rock outcroppings of these three peaks. But the Japanese version, having been introduced during the Asuka Period (7th century) from China, is more of a Yin/Yang creature, an embodiment of both harmony and conflict. As such it is both an Imperial and a marital symbol. Its best-known Imperial incarnation in Japan is atop the Byodoin in Uji, between Nara and Kyoto. The kanji 鳳凰 mean male and female phoenix.

Winged Fuji

Each of the Three Peaks of the Phoenix represents an aspect of the Buddha, personified by a deity with specific responsibilities for our welfare. First up (if arriving by train to Kofu) is Yakushi-dake (薬師岳), for health. It has a marvelous natural rock-garden which looks like the artifact of some primordial civilization. Then Kannon-dake (観音岳), the highest of the three at 2840 meters, the Goddess of Mercy. The way its forms fit together seems to have, instead of the usual craggy rock-face, a feminine grace. From there a narrow ridge leads to Jizo-dake (地蔵岳), the god of travelers. This is one of the most distinctive peaks in the entire Japanese Alps, and the one Walter Weston chose for his frist ascent, sparking Japanese interest in mountaineering in the early 20th century. So, there you have it — health, compassion, and safe travels. What more could one wish for.

Museum Without Walls / Musée Imaginaire

Tuesday 5 Apr 2011 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Cultural commons Tags: craft, Discovery, musee imaginaire, unexpected

Explorer of Cambodia, freedom fighter (Spanish Civil War), Resistance leader, and Gestapo prisoner André Malraux emerged from World War II to write a book that prefigured the World Wide Web. Musée Imaginaire, translated as Museum Without Walls, written in 1947, still resonates today. Great art, he wrote, made accessible to all through reproductions in books, is liberated from the time, place, and history in which they are usually confined by museum categories. Removed from historical context, they can be rearranged in the mind according to aesthetic or philosophical qualities. Malraux drew on the thoughts of Henri Focillon, in La Vie des Formes / The Life of Forms in Art, in suggesting a kind of universal consciousness that all great art responds to. In this way it has the power to transcend the bitter partisan divisions that Malraux knew so well.

Malraux recognized that while taking the great works of art outside of museums liberated them from history, it also threatened to homogenize them into reproducible formats. Everything from the gigantic Sphinx to medieval miniatures assumes the same dimensions in art books, obliterating the effects of scale. Despite the great advances in color reproduction made by publishers like Skira (now Skira-Rizzoli), Alinari, and others, the reproductions were inevitably flat and standardized. They could never really substitute for the originals, nor were they meant to. If they served merely as a reminder of the originals, the creative connection would not be lost. The newest form of this cultural commons is the World Wide Web.

With the Google Art Project, the firm turns its mapping skills to the graphic arts, enabling viewers to zoom-in on artwork in the same way Google-Earth lets them zoom-in on the ground. The familiar slider and plus/minus controls reveal a level of detail in paintings far beyond what can be seen in a museum visit.

Van Gogh, Starry Night detail

These controls thoughtfully disappear after a few seconds of inactivity, easily reactivated whenever the cursor is moved. Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Frick Collection, New York, becomes instantly accessible with all its symbolism —

that flock of sheep, or the stork, or myriad other details that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Uffizi in Florence, .. At each museum you can wander around the museum virtually as if you were there, in a simulated walk-through the galleries. To examine a particular artwork more closely, click a particular room in the museum’s floor plan, see a list of the artwork in that room at right, and select any for a detailed look in the ‘View Artwork’ mode. Unobtrusive links at right go to brief notes, history, tags, artist information, more works by this artist, and more works in this museum. The ‘Artist information’ links to a Google map showing the artist’s birthplace. Like the artwork, all the information is viewable in any level of detail that may be desired at the moment — brief notes, expandable to more detailed notes, which in turn link to scholarly treatises. The Viewing Notes are straightforward, well-informed, and thankfully jargon-free. Insights gained there can be instantly explored in closeup views.

This musée imaginaire opens up virtually unlimited democratic vistas of exploration for everyone to ‘see for themselves’. If a viewer interprets a detail in a painting differently from that of the conventional wisdom, or wishes to gather evidence for attributing it to a different artist, or sees something amiss, or uncovers a previously unnoticed marvel of the artist’s composition, the tools to do so are immediately at hand. No special permission needed, no off-days, no waiting in long lines or peering over others’ shoulders.

Just as with art books, homogenization-by-format is a risk. Pixels on a screen are not the same as paint on canvas or ink embedded in etching paper. (My Inklings essay looks into this through the innovations in optics, etching, and light-sensitive materials that led to photogravure in the 19th century.)

Les Andelys, detail of photogravure etching, Peter Miller

The infinitely varied and unique visual nuances of the originals are reduced to the standard colors of a backlit monitor. Texture disappears. Depth is flattened. Subtleties of tone are dithered into the nearest adjoining pixel-values. All of this obscures the creative forces that bring great art into existence, the formal qualities of tone, color, line, texture, depth, and composition that bypass rational analysis and connect directly with our emotions.

The distinguished contemporary landscape artist April Gornik writes movingly, in her essay An Artist’s Perspective on Visual Literacy on the effects of losing touch with the physical and creative basis of artwork:

We are bombarded to the point of being inured with images, and clearly a vast number of people are increasingly unable to perceive the importance of the physicality of images, even when they are declared to be art. People who are looking at and theoretically being seduced by ads are typically receiving them in a flat manner, the manner of video, the computer screen, billboards, magazines, etc. Their medium is chosen to translate into a wide variety of these information-conveyors. The lowest common denominator of this flatness tends to be photography, and its ubiquitous use is helping erode the perception of physicality in both ads and art. In the case of an advertisement, its materiality is subservient to the message it’s meant to convey, and doesn’t reside in its substance (‘Image is Everything’, as the Canon Camera Company unapologetically reminded us in a popular ad campaign). Its strength is its expediency.

I am a painter, drawer and printmaker of unpeopled landscapes. I came to think about what I perceive as this problem of visual literacy while noticing that, during studio visits to see my work, collectors would often look at large charcoal drawings (which to me look like nothing else in the world) and innocently ask, ‘Is this a photograph?’

The innocent question answers itself soon enough, with a moment’s closer inspection. It is merely the ubiquity of mass-media imagery that narrows viewers’ vision into a standard format they are familiar with. From her own experience, April Gornik observes that looking at artwork with a sense of how it is made enhances our ability to relate it to our own lives. In Vermeer’s View of Delft, for example:

Vermeer, View of Delft

the clouds at the top and the gently curving shore open to the middle of the painting, like an eye opening, into the exterior world the painting reveals. Light in the distance draws us towards infinity and a sense of the immensity of space extending limitlessly out from us, but which Vermeer presents with great intimacy.

[I]n the same way that a painting holds within itself the history, time, and the tale of its formation, a person looking at it is informed, enriched, and is subliminally able to experience all of that input. This physicality, the way an art object is ‘built’, speaks to us, and our response is an affirmation of our own sensory abilities, forming a connection and an interface of time and space, intent and emotion, even history.

April Gornik, Halang Bay

A painting in the flesh is, and should be, a somatic experience for the viewer. An image painted by hand, rather than reproduced in a magazine, contains in its painted surface a person, a world, in the manner in which the paint is applied and the object made, be it realistic or abstract.

April Gornik, Shining Sea

The real power of visual art is its capacity as virtual reality to create a complex physical experience. Painting is so specifically powerful, and more powerful than other mediums, because an artist who makes one builds into it their actual experience, including decision-making, intent, corrections, and (importantly) actual time passed. Paintings generate all this experience back to the viewer. The summary that a painting is of all that activity is capable of both holding and regenerating that experience. The object powers the somatic connection that remains between the work of art, the artist who made it, and the person looking at it. That connection is an essential part of the human experience, a verification of humanity, history, and our connectedness itself.

April Gornik, Light through the Forest

I would only add that original printmaking equally embodies the personal experience of the artist, and takes equal part in the connectedness of human experience. April Gornik’s paintings certainly testify to the truth of her observations. The Google Art Project, like Skira’s art book, is only a technology — a fascinating, wonderful bounty that will enable discovery and enjoyment for many years to come, with a creative energy of its own, expanding the territory of the cultural commons. It is a marvelous resource for artists and collectors alike to stay in touch with their senses and with the creative forces of art and the human experience.

Les Andelys, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

Henri Focillon’s La Vie des Formes is available in French at no cost from Project Gutenberg. and from the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (dans le cadre de la collection: ‘Les classiques des sciences sociales’ dirigée et fondée par Jean-Marie Tremblay, professeur de sociologie au Cégep de Chicoutimi).

Pisa and the Charm of the Unexpected

Monday 27 Dec 2010 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Vision Tags: Italy, Pisa, unexpected

The fame of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is due entirely to accident, differential settlement of the swampy ground on which it was built. No one could have planned this monument — yet it is just this accidental quality that makes it so magnetically attractive to all who visit. Resisting the pull of gravity, which it seems could reduce it to a pile of rubble at any time, it stands as a monument to the mysterious forces of nature, and a reminder of how unsteady our foundations are.

The Leaning Tower is only four degrees off the vertical. This doesn’t seem like much, but its 56 meter (184 feet)-high top is displaced 2.5 meters (eight feet) from where it would be if perfectly upright. Stabilized by bracing at its current quirky inclination, the Leaning Tower marks a striking departure from the conventional rectilinear urban skyline.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Freeing one’s perspective from the rectilinear grid opens up new architectural possibilities, as the arches and domes found throughout Italy testify. To climb up to the top of the Leaning Tower generally requires waiting an hour or two, because the number of people admitted is limited for safety reasons. But this is one well-worn monument that is worth the wait. You can hear the Tower bells on the quarter-hour. Or the adjoining Cathedral can easily absorb the waiting time.

Ceiling of Pisa Cathedral

The entire complex is clad in white marble, and gives the impression of a ‘city on a hill’, or a ‘second Rome’ as its builders liked to style it. Visitors may find it surprising the Cathedral and Tower are so far from the center of modern-day Pisa, but archaeological excavations have determined that it was once beside a river (which may account for the instability of the ground) and an active port.

Returning to the Leaning Tower: Having experienced the curious disorientation of seeing it from afar, then seeing it up close, one can nevertheless feel secure that only one element of the landscape is out of kilter. Everything else in the vicinity looks quite stable. But in climbing up the Tower’s nearly 300-step spiral staircase, mostly enclosed by stone walls, the entire environment is tilted. Even while ascending, it seems to dip down on one side, level out, and incline upward on the other side. It is rather like the sensation of riding in a train while the train on the next track is going slightly faster, and feeling like you are moving backwards. A parapet about two-thirds of the way up is also tilted. Continuing up, the spiral narrows, then finally emerges at the top. Here, the previous disorientation is resolved, like a dissonant chord into harmony; with the Dome of the Cathedral beckoning to the orange-tiled houses and the distant mountains.

View from top of Leaning Tower

Another Venice ?

Sunday 5 Dec 2010 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Vision Tags: Discovery, Venice

The Doges of Venice, upon their inauguration, performed a ceremony of marrying the sea, symbolizing extension of their dominion to all the elements. And in few places are land and sea so intimately entwined as in Venice. The Grand Canal and its tributary canals are all arms of the sea, making the voyages of Venetian merchants and adventurers to the Levant and to Byzantium seem no more than local expeditions. From the top of San Giorgio, where the dragon-slaying saint surveys the Lagoon and the passing ships, the dense network of canals and streets invites exploration.

Venice from the top of San Giorgio

On closer inspection, Venice is harder to fathom. On San Marco, or in the maze of streets, on the Ca’ d’Oro or in the Church of Santa Maria de la Salute, there seems to be a reassuring solidity. Yet Venice’s magnificent palazzi are built on pilings that are constantly sinking into the sea. Sea-level surfaces are sometimes underwater, and back-entrances are surprisingly slummy-looking. Viewed from out on the open water, Venice is revealed as a few islands barely above sea level, sparkling and floating, the whole city and all its treasure a mirage.

Venetian architecture, as many have noted, lacks refinement. San Marco is a hodge-podge of precious materials looted from around the Mediterranean.

San Marco

Outside, as Mary McCarthy wrote in her indispensable book Venice Observed, it ‘looks like an Oriental pavilion — half pleasure-house, half war-tent, belonging to some great satrap.’ Many of its details are whimsical and intriguing, such as the childrens’ jacks, and the rain-washed multi-colored marbles look like an abstract painting. Inside, she writes,

‘Inside, glittering with jewels and gold, faced with precious Eastern marbles, Jasper and alabaster, porphyry and verd-antique, sustained by Byzantine columns in the same materials, of varying sizes and epochs, scarcely a pair alike, this dark cruciform cave has the look of a robber’s den.’

How true. In this marvelous mélange of sacred and profane, the spoils of war are transformed into objects of worship. The Venetian Republic pioneered and brought to perfection the mercantile blend of commerce, diplomacy, and war. Holy Wars such as the Fourth Crusade were primarily a business opportunity, which the Venetians exploited with an ecumenical indifference to religious belief. The spoils accumulated by the Venetian merchant marine had to be made respectable, and were thus converted into a glittering fantasy of wealth. The monstrous reception room with the gilded painting on the ceiling, intended perhaps to intimidate visitors, is part of the overall effect. The brilliant marbles and elaborate Byzantine facades, reflected in the shimmering waters, said: ‘There’s always more where that came from’.

Canaletto, Piazza San Marco

There wasn’t, of course. Venice’s mercantile empire eventually crumbled, due to the increasing vulnerability of the Silk Road to attacks enroute to the Orient, the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople, and finally the Suez Canal which bypassed the old trade routes. Later the Dutch and British East India Companies adopted the Venetian mercantile formula and extended it to the New World.

Venetian architecture is designed to display opulence rather than good form; the facade is all that matters, rear views are not to be seen by anyone whom the owner wishes to impress. Whistler, though, found the charm in these neglected precincts.

Whistler, Doorway

Venice is a great stage-set, a place for the rich and wanabe-rich to savor an aristocratic life-style, a city of make-believe, an eternal carnival; a place to be transported in a gondola while the gondolier sings ‘Volare’; to sip cappucino with as much nonchalance as one can muster, or a drink at Florian on the Piazza, dine on Seppe alla Veneziana (squid in its own ink) at a restaurant on the Zattere, surreptitiously consult a map, watch recent arrivals struggle with heavy suitcases up and down gracefully arched bridges (because it’s the servants’ day off), and purchase the candy-colored Murano glass, or a mask to disguise one’s identity. In a strange reversal of reality and reflection, it seems as if the canals exist not only for transport, but to confirm the city’s existence, as if the shimmering watery depths contained the real Venice. Mary McCarthy observes of this curious double-world,

Canal reflections

‘The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists — incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real. In Canaletto and Guardi, the Venetian image is affirmed and documented: the masks and the bobbing gondolas, the Rialto Bridge, the Dogana, and the blue curtain of the Salute blowing in a freshened breeze.’

One of Venice’s attractions is that the practice of pleasure in all its various forms seems to be its main industry. This was not always so (it used to be only a sideline). It takes an effort of imagination to recall that Venice was once the center of a commercial empire, its palazzi doubling as warehouses. Venetian merchants invented double-entry bookkeeping, the foundation of modern accounting, not usually considered a sybaritic pursuit. (They never bothered to codify their accounting — that was done by two visitors from Sansepolcro, the artist Piero della Francesca who obtained Oriental pigments from Venetian merchants, and Luca Pacioli.) The decline of empire left the Venetians with little to account for, so they turned their energies to leisure.

Venetian Carnival, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

This too was a new invention, requiring a very different organization of life from that imposed by agriculture and commerce. The new nobility, in fact, defined itself by its leisure, creating a demand for goods with no utilitarian purpose. ‘Venice’s most wonderful invention’, Mary McCarthy writes,

‘ — that of the easel-painting — was designed solely for pleasure. Painting, up to Giorgione, had a utility basis: the glorification of God and the saints, the glorification of the state (in the pageant picture), the glorification of an individual (the portrait). Giorgione was the first to create canvases that had no purpose beyond sheer enjoyment, the production of agreeable moods, as Berenson puts it. They were canvases for the private gentleman, for the house, both new conceptions that rested on a new premise: the existence of leisure.’

In this too Venice proved prescient: What was once the preoccupation of the few became the mass tourism of the many — Venice now draws 20 million visitors per year. Undaunted by crowds and high prices, they stream in, though rarely venturing outside San Marco and the Rialto. This leaves the Dorsoduro and San Croce surprisingly empty, where unexpected treasures may nevertheless be found at nearly every vaporetto stop. At Ca’ D’oro, for example, only one stop from the Rialto, the little Franchetti museum is a gem; even the tiles in the entrance-way are a delight.

Franchetti tiles

In Venice, such discoveries seem inexhaustible. One returns, regardless of the congestion, for these, and because no two vaporetto rides are the same, and the maze of streets assures even residents that they can follow a different path to their destinations every day. And the light, changing from brilliant sunlight to mist-filtered diffusion to ghostly twilight and back again, presents an ever-changing aspect. There is nothing else like it in the world.

Blue Lagoon, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

And yet other cities have been described as ‘another Venice’, which almost always proves to be misleading. Saint Petersburg, Russia, has been described as ‘the Venice of the North’. Peter the Great may even have had Venice, as well as Paris, in mind when designing the city in 1703 which he hoped would rival those European capitals. Like Venice, it is built at an estuary on the banks of numerous islands, and has a great many bridges (539). A few of them, like this one with gryphons,

Saint Petersburg Gryphons

are on a scale suitable for foot traffic, but most are traversed by cars and trucks, which diminishes any comparison with Venice. The main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt, is not near a canal, and the larger canals do not have that both-sides-of-the-water ambience that gives Venice its intimacy. But St Petersburg has a magnificent night skyline,

St Petersburg, Russia, at night

a world-class museum (the Hermitage),

The Hermitage, St Petersburg

a church (the Resurrection) that is as elaborately ornamented

Resurrection Church, St Petersburg

as any in Christendom, and has certainly fulfilled the ambition of its founder to be a great cultural and maritime center. Not another Venice though.

Livorno, Italy has a district called ‘Venezia’ with canals designed by Venetian architects, and the unusual octagonal-shaped Church of Santa Canterina. But neither the canals nor the churches have Venice’s wealth of Byzantine ornament. Livorno’s harbor has more the aspect of a fort — the Fortezza

Livorno

— than a pleasure-palatial entry into a magical kingdom like that of Venice. But Livorno has a down-at-heels indifference to tourist traffic that is a welcome relief from more popular cities, like Venice or Pisa. Hammer-and-sickle graffiti co-exist with the best-stocked U.S. Army-surplus store in Christendom,

Mercantino Americano

the Mercantino Americano. It was at Livorno that the Medici defeated the Mediterranean pirates in the 17th century, and it was from Livorno that Garibaldi launched his ‘Expedition of One Thousand’ to liberate Sicily and unify northern and southern Italy. A free port with a glorious maritime history, but another Venice — no.

Amsterdam too has been described as another Venice. It has graceful canals which still serve as active waterways, and the bridges across them are of a scale that invites walking. But the Dutch are too neat and orderly for their city to be considered Venetian. The canals form semi-circular loops, like ring roads, around a central core — very efficient and easy to navigate, but lacking the chaos of walking through a maze of alleys in Venice and winding up at a ca’ with no bridge. If one could imagine Venice as a clean well-organized quiet place (I can’t), then the peripheral canals of Amsterdam might be that place.

A Canal in Amsterdam

But Venice without its chaos, its absurdist touches like traffic lights on waterways, its vibrant commerce, its proud decrepitude like that of an aged dowager countess, its Byzantine splendor, would not be Venice.

Then there’s the ‘Venice of the East’, Suzhou, China, depicted in numerous websites. Venice was founded in the fifth century, and Suzhou’s founding occurred sometime between a millennium previously or two hundred years later (that being the range of various sources). It was well-established when Venetian explorer Marco Polo described Suzhou in 1276 as a land of ‘six thousand bridges, clever merchants, cunning men of all crafts, very wise men called Sages and great natural physicians.’ The two cities are comparable in their mingling of maritime and terrestrial life, and in their merchant class which developed the entrepot possibilities of their locations. Both cities grew rich on trade and became centers of inland and maritime empires. Now only about 200 bridges remain, but like Venice’s they are mostly suitable for walking. Suzhou may be the closest thing to ‘another Venice’, or Venice to ‘another Suzhou’. They are official sister cities.

The urge to replicate European models occasionally takes an absurd turn, as in Shanghai, where developers rebuilt an entire English town (‘Thamestown’) in 2006, complete with fish-and-chips shops, a statue of Winston Churchill, and half-timbered Tudor-style houses. It looks dreadful.

Thamestown replica, Shanghai

Not content with only an English town, developers are also building German, Swedish, Italian, Canadian, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Southern Chinese, European Harbor towns on the edges of Shanghai. They look even more dreadful. Very few people want to live in such places. They seem to produce the environmental distress known as ‘disorientation’.

Inauthenticity and fakery in art can do the same thing; that is often the intention. The urge to cause discomfort in viewers has been a well-established trope in certain circles of the Western art establishment since the 1960s. The remedy for this is the watchword of this site: ‘See for yourself’. Learn to spot fakery in all its guises, including those with the highest price tags. In replication there is no spontaneity, no joy, no chance discovery. Authentic artwork — and real life — have all of these. Art lifts the spirits, puts the world in a new perspective, enables visions to be realized, creates the enthusiasm and positive energy needed for other practical tasks. So, whenever tempted to banish art to the realm of the peripheral, banish that thought instead! Because real art releases the imagination to pursue and realize new visions and the means to accomplish them.

Venice sunset, from the Lagoon

Even more than its fabulous sunsets, than the ethereal light of of a thousand reflections in its canals, than its graceful domes, hidden byways, and arched bridges, it is this chaotic lively unexpected Venice that endears itself to artists and visionaries.

Saint Francis and Piero della Francesca

Sunday 7 Nov 2010 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Appreciations, Cultural commons Tags: perspective, Piero della Francesca, Saint Francis

For Saint Francis and his followers, the landscapes of Tuscany and Umbria recalled the Holy Land. At Assisi, the arid clear air that collapses distance was as congenial to visionary thought as in the desert and mountains of Sinai. But Saint Francis returned most often to La Verna, a mountain north of Arezzo, where fantastic, apparently gravity-defying rocks and mists in the trees atop Monte Penna, lent an other-worldly atmosphere. Saint Francis’ sympathy with all living beings and his gospel of the simple life, though articulated early in his ministry, received further sustenance here. In 1213, Count Orlando Cattani, impressed with Saint Francis’ philosophy, donated the mountain to him and his followers, describing it as suitable for contemplation and prayer.

Rocks at Santuario La Verna

Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert (1480)

Giovanni Bellini, Saint Francis in the Desert (1480)

Here the Franciscans lived a simple life in harmony with nature. Here too, near the end of his days, in 1224 Saint Francis is believed to have received the stigmata of Christ which in the eyes of the faithful confirmed his sainthood. The Bellini painting (in the Frick Collection, New York) conveys the spiritual splendor of this event. Saint Francis stands barefoot, as on holy ground, with hands outstretched amid a landscape full of symbolism. The quivering tree at upper left, mysteriously illuminated, recalls the burning bush of Moses, whom the Franciscans regarded as a spiritual ancestor. Water trickling from a spout in the rocks at lower left also recalls Moses’ miraculously bringing forth water from the rocks at Horeb.

Saint Francis did not ‘renounce the world’, nor did he ever become ordained as a priest. He re-defined happiness as something to be experienced in this world, not to be indefinitely postponed until the next, finding it in the simple life around him in nature, in the spiritual vitality of all creatures — even the birds found his ministry enchanting. He taught suppression of desire as the road to happiness, knowing that, beyond the essentials of life, it is not the lack of things, but the mindless grasping for them, that causes suffering.

Prayer

Far from Chiusi La Verna but similar in spirit, around the same time, Zen philosophers were discovering in the conscious suppression of desire, reverence for nature and for all creatures, and the cultivation of simplicity a route to happiness. This is not to suggest that Saint Francis was channeling Zen, only that experience and contemplation in vastly different traditions led to remarkably similar ways of life.

The present-day Santuario La Verna has electricity but no TV, and no heat until Oct 15. It was unusually cold in early October, down to 5 C., but in keeping with the spirit of the place, I didn’t complain, and actually got used to it. But then a ‘miracle’ occurred: The authorities decreed an early start to the room-heating season. Guests are few during the week, more on the weekends. At an investiture ceremony for new priests, the church was full, with people standing in the aisles. I was so accustomed to seeing dark deserted churches that this semi-chaotic scene of families gathered, babies crying, old friends meeting, and the combination of solemnity and joy suddenly seemed the way it was meant to be experienced. The paintings, the finely carved confessional chambers, the candles and everything all ‘fell into place’ amid this throng of celebrants.

Chiesa La Verna

(Click image for photogravure etching of Chiesa La Verna.)

The Franciscans retain their devotion to the simple life, unsentimental and practical, doing what they can by example rather than by admonition. They don’t provide much guidance as to procedure at the convent, leaving each to find his own way. The bells, which have a clear, long-lasting tone, remind you of meal-times and other events. (Hear the bells of Chiesa La Verna.) Meals in the refectory are plain but adequate, with home-made pasta, vegetables, soup, meat (fish on Fridays), bread, and table wine. Well-marked hiking trails in the area lead to Mount Penna and to nearby villages.

Monte Penna, Chiusi La Verna

Santuario La Verna
santuariolaverna@gmail.com
Tel: 0575-5341

Piero della Francesca: Painting, Perspective, and Accounting

Piero della Francesca, St Anthony

In nearby Sansepolcro, Monterchi, and Arezzo, the frescoes of Piero della Francesca (1412 – 1492) express religious devotion together with an uncanny presence in this world. His saints are vulnerable human beings, beset by fear and anxiety. They don’t look like cherubs or sages. He depicted a pregnant Madonna, the Madonna del Parto, using blue pigment made from lapus lazuli imported by a Venetian merchant from Afghanistan. The fresco is in Monterchi, where Piero’s own mother was born.

Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto

His magisterial Legend of the True Cross brings a complex multi-century story to life through a series of realistic incidents. Throughout this narrative, his figures have a ‘wooden’, almost Byzantine quality, as if exposed in a ‘decisive moment’ in mid-motion. Yet they are also very much alive, with a variety of human expression, engaged in a direct way with the viewer. Their equilibrium and their activity are in perfect balance. Each painting is an instant of time, for all time.

Most remarkable of all is Piero’s painting of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection. Given the challenge of depicting a miracle, Piero does so without resort to pyrotechnics, showing Christ rising from his coffin, as if from sleep, above four slumbering Roman soldiers.

Piero della Francesca, Resurrection (1460)

Behind, at left, the trees are barren, while at right, they are flourishing. The painting is thus divided with mathematical precision, itself symbolizing a renaissance in its composition and perspective. Christ’s figure is one of prodigious strength, his expression stunned at this unexpected renewal of life, yet soldiering on, flag in hand. Robed, unusually, in pink, symbolizing the dawn of a new era, he appears determined to carry on right where he left off when interrupted.

In addition to painting, Piero della Francesca also published treatises on geometry, the five platonic solids, perspective, and mathematics, one of which formed the basis for modern accounting! Although another native son of Sansepolcro, Luca Pacioli (1446 – 1517), is generally credited as the ‘father of accounting’, Pacioli actually learned it from Piero della Francesca, who developed the mathematics of double-entry bookkeeping based on the practices of Venetian merchants with which he was familiar. Truly a Renaissance man, from whom Leonardo da Vinci later drew inspiration and guidance, Piero della Francesca clearly exemplifies the art-inspired view of life that is the focus of this blog.

Sources:
Idle Speculations
Rona Goffen, Giovanni Bellini (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
John V. Fleming, From Bonaventure to Bellini: an Essay in Franciscan Exegesis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c l982)
Luca Pacioli

In Praise of Shadows ・陰翳礼賛

Friday 27 Aug 2010 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Appreciations, Design, Exhibitions, Vision Tags: craft, exhibit, shadows

Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼賛) draws our attention to the very different nature of visual experience in an age before electric lights were widespread. Japanese dwellings, alcoves, ink-drawings, and interior spaces framed by tatami mats and shoji panels are best seen in the low light that was once customary. The dark lustre of lacquerware and yokan (a Japanese confection) looming out of a dark background create an appealing presence and warmth. And the stray reflections picked up by gold leaf convey the wonder of that precious metal as if its luminescence came from itself.

Gold reflections

Flooded by bright lights, all these surroundings and objects become garish. Granting that such illumination has its uses, Tanizaki nevertheless notes that Japanese aesthetics developed from the conditions of daily life, where awareness and appreciation of shadows originated.

The plague of excessive illumination has only intensified since In Praise of Shadows was written. Street lights, neon signs, outdoor jumbo-telescreens, office towers have banished all trace of darkness from big cities. The cities themselves are linked by continuous chains of light. These show up clearly in satellite photos of the earth, where the relative brightness is taken for an index of civilization.

Earthlights

Big-city residents on rare journeys to dark country are mystified by our galaxy the Milky Way, a sight so seldom seen they hardly know what it is. Fireflies shun brightly-lit areas, which render their own light-displays invisible to prospective mates. They too are best appreciated in darkness.

Here are some excerpts from Tanizaki’s ‘In Praise of Shadows‘:

‘A light room would no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends. And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows — it has nothing else…. The light from the garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors, and it is precisely this indirect light that makes for us the charm of a room.

Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa, Kyoto

‘We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying rays can sink into absolute repose…. We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them. We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim shadows far surpass any ornament. And so, as we must if we are not to disturb the glow, we finish the walls with sand in a single neutral color.

‘Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and a flower arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the shadows…. A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper-paneled shoji being the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the alcove were it is is darkest…. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness.

Meigetsuin ・明月院

And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway…. This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from the empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.

Katsura Rikyu, Kyoto

‘Surely you have seen how the gold leaf of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast upon the enveloping darkness, like the glow upon the horizon at sunset. In no other setting is gold quite so exquisitely beautiful. You walk past, turning to look again, and yet again, and as you move away the gold surface of the paper flows even more deeply, changing not in a flash, but growing slowly, steadily brighter…

‘And above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite.

Rice

Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam — here is a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness….

‘And I realized then that only in dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed….But in the the still dimmer light of the candle-stand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty that I had not before seen.’

— Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, tr Thomas J Harper and Edward G Seidensticker (Sedgwick, Maine, USA: Leete’s Island Books, 1977; ‘In’ei’ Reisan’, Japanese text originally published in Keizai Orai, 1933 – 34)

Tanizaki’s ‘pale glow’ appears in the shoji screens of this photogravure etching of Katsura Rikyu (also viewable here).

An exhibit inspired by In Praise of Shadows was held in Nov 2010 in Tokyo, Japan. The noir quality of photogravure etching, with its deep blacks, darkly illuminated textures, and shadows within shadows, brings Tanizaki’s observations into another perspective. The darkness of interior spaces, as in Meigetsuin, is brought outdoors in prints such as Beyond the Sunset, Pentagram, and Vanished Stars.

Three Famous Views of Japan ・日本三景

Thursday 22 Jul 2010 by Peter Miller | No Comments
Filed under: Appreciations, Vision Tags: Amano-hashidate, craft, seascape, Sesshu, silk

Matsushima, Miyajima, and Amano-hashidate are known as the Three Famous views of Japan. Such was the fame of Matsushima that Matsuo Basho wrote in 1689 that he was already dreaming of the moon over those pine-clad isles before he had seen them. Miyajima, rising dramatically out of the Inland Sea, links ocean, land, and human artifacts in the most inspiring example of Heian design. The origins of Amano-hashidate go back even further in time, when legend has it that a ladder connecting heaven and earth fell to the ground. This became Amano-hashidate, ‘the bridge to heaven’. From above, the gently curving pine-clad strand does indeed appear to connect heaven and earth.

Again my skepticism about ratings proves unjustified. Viewers will recall that I wondered whether the ‘Most Beautiful Villages in France‘ really live up to their name. They do. And so do the ‘Three Famous Views of Japan’. But who decided? Though these three views were already iconic by the 17th century, Shunsai Hayashi, who served the Tokugawa Shogunate as, in effect, head of the nation’s educational system, made it official. His endorsement has remained authoritative to this day. I don’t know how he selected them, but all three have dramatic interminglings of sea and land, are associated in some way with the divine origins of Japan, and in their enduring placidity symbolize the deepest aspirations of Japanese identity.

From its mountaintop perspective, Sesshu Toyo’s View of Amano-hashidate, in the Kyoto National Museum, presents a sweeping panorama of villages, fishing boats, serrated shoreline, and hills with mist ranging into the infinite distance. Sesshu painted this sometime between 1501, when the two-storied pagoda of Chionji was built, and his death in 1506. He was in his eighties when he climbed the mountain to observe this view, and clearly still at the top of his form.

Sesshu Toyo’s View of Amano-hashidate

Another view of Amano-hashidate is from the charming hilltop ryokan Genmyoan, overlooking Amano-hashidate. Owners Taro and Michiru Ishima and their staff provide a marvelous combination of traditional and original kaiseki cuisine, spacious rooms, and warm hospitality. Only two hours by train or car from Kyoto or Osaka, the calm and gracious ambience of Genmyoan (tel: 0772-22-2171) enables guests to fully appreciate the splendid view, which can be seen from 14 of its 17 rooms, and from its terrace and baths. An aerial perspective like the one Sesshu used to such superb effect, though from a different vantage point, gives unbounded scope to the imagination.

View from Genmyoan

View of Amano-hashidate from Genmyoan

Descending to earth, one can walk the 3.6 km path linking both sides of the bay, with its many pine trees, and enjoy the view from the other side of the bay as well. Chionji Temple, shown in Sesshu’s View and in Waking the Gods, is said to impart wisdom to those who walk around a stone lantern there three times.

The nearby port of Miyazu has earth-bound concerns too. Vessels bring a special sand from New Caledonia that is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, entering the port through a passage made by a unique rotating bridge. Silk-weaving, a traditional Kyoto industry (and this is still Kyoto Prefecture, even though on the Japan Sea), flourishes in the Yamato Textile Factory. The factory store sells furoshiki (for wrapping and carrying goods) woven with twisted threads of silk, giving the impression of rippling waves on the sea.

Yamato Textile Factory shop

A specialty of the northern Kyoto region, they make ideal easy-to-carry gifts. Among the most picturesque nearby fishing villages are Ine and Funaya, with its houses built right on the water. Ine is the location of the first three of my Networks series of photogravure etchings. So, Hayashi-san’s rating Amano-hashidate as one of the ‘Three Famous Views of Japan’ has not led us astray.

Network-2, photogravure etching, Peter Miller

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