FIRST OF ALL – OOPS!!
A Japanese quote:
猿も木から落ちる。 (Saru mo ki kara ochiru) Literally: Even monkeys fall from trees.
This means: Everyone makes mistakes. / Nobody’s perfect.
Hmmm…I guess that’s me. You’ll have received a blog from me yesterday but an older blog (actually two older blogs). I’m not sure how it happened. My website has been a bit glitchy recently and so I’ll blame it all on that!
JAPANESE WOODCUT PORTRAITS
In an earlier blog, I showed some work from a portrait exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) entitled Beyond Likeness. In another room at the same gallery is a wonderful exhibition – Capturing the Inner Essence: Chinese and Japanese Portraits. At first I was, well, not really that interested, but it was there – I was there, so I went in. And was swept up in the exquisiteness of many of the pieces.
According to the exhibition notes, Japanese and Chinese artists were more interested in capturing the essence, the soul, of a person rather than a physical likeness. Apparently, they would study their subject then go back to “the stillness of their studios” and work from memory. Their aim was to portray an “inner poetic reality”. I sure think these masters have achieved this goal!
I took a number of photos with my iphone in low light and through glass. Luckily, I found many of the images I chose to focus on in the online collection of the AGGV. Even so, a few of the images were unavailable (either because of copyright protection or they came from a private collection) but I liked them so much, I have included my rather unspectacular photos anyway.
The first image is from around 1900-1910. It looks surprisingly western!
The next few images are from the 1920s. There was a tradition of painting actors in their Kabuki roles. When you watch Kabuki theatre, you can see how beautifully the faces have been captured by the artists. Although the exhibition notes say, “Their technical approach to portraiture was simplicity which was in sharp contrast to the photo-likeness of some western paintings with their problems of volume, light, shadow and texture,” I must disagree. Certainly the western device of using shadow to create volume is missing as is the photo-likeness but we still have a believable portrait full of life and character, texture, and colour, and hardly simple or simplicity. Definitely with soul! See what you think.
The artist Natori Shunsen (1886-1960) worked on a series of 36 actor portraits and contain some of his finest pieces. The above two prints are part of that series. Natori’s actor portraits were mainly in the okubi-e (large head) format which allowed him to focus on the expression and emotions of the character’s face. Most Kabuki actors were (and are) men and #4 is of Onoe Baiko (1915-1995) who was revered as Japan’s leading postwar Kabuki actor taking female roles and designated a living National Treasure in 1968.
Next is a delicate yet powerful black and white piece from the same time period.
And for something completely different! And we’re still in the 1920s.
From 1932 comes one of my favourite pieces. I kept going back to it again and again. It’s by the artist Shima Seien (1892-1970), a woman by jove! who according to what notes I could find, painted mainly bijin-ga – pictures of beautiful women – in a mixture of traditional Japanese and modern style.
And now we have three pieces done around the 1950’s by Masamitsu Ota. All are taken through the glass as seen in the exhibition. Although there is much reflection, I thought they were still worthy of inclusion.
From 1981, another Kabuki portrait:
All of the portraits I have shown are woodblock prints. That means a piece of wood has been carved for each colour. A HUGE amount of work!!
I’d love to know if you have further information on any of these artists or anything related. And of course I’d like to know what you think of these prints. How do you think they compare with Western portraits? I hope you receive as much enjoyment from them as I have. As you know, there’s nothing like seeing the real thing so if you are in Victoria, I recommend you take in the show. It runs until 20th January.
Thanks so much for reading 🙂
~ Gail
PS. As you know from previous blog, my Dad’s birthday was on the 20th of October and I had a fine time visiting him and my Mum on Salt Spring (hence my rather delayed blog!). My brother Brett came over that weekend for a surprise visit. Here’s a couple of photos of us goofing around over Dad’s birthday cake!
