Postcards in the Air : PRINTMAKER'S ART

a page from an incomplete book about language by Martha Slavin.
Printing techniques include letterpress and wood stamps

Words:
Japanese/nihongo
Learning a new language feels like illiteracy.
Some people have an ear for language
while others flounder & rail
grasping a few words here and there.
Nothing makes sense
but facial expressions & hand gestures.
Even these can mean something
entirely different in different cultures.

When we were living overseas, I sometimes cringed when I saw the invasion of the worst of American culture, instead of its best. McDonalds, KFC, and rock and roll were everywhere while supplanting the goods and culture of the local society. In return, Western culture, especially the art world, has absorbed Eastern influences like yoga, martial arts, and sushi. One artistic endeavor, woodblock printing on cheap paper, helped to create the Impressionist movement when the woodblock prints arrived in Europe as wrapping paper for goods shipped from Japan in the 1800s. The use of black outlines, strong colors, asymmetrical compositions, and exaggerated facial expressions in these Japanese prints appear in the works of one of my favorite artists, Toulouse-Lautrec, who like Degas, Van Gogh, and Manet incorporated the design principles discovered on these humble prints.

At the Circus, Fernando, the Rider by Toulouse-Lautrec

The word "print" can be confusing. Most of us think of a print as a copy of another piece of art. Printers can make copies of an oil painting, which is then called a print of the original and costs less than the original would. Printmakers work in printing media such as woodblock, lithography, silk screens, or etchings to create original art. The difference from a painting is that they can make more than one copy of their work. Each one is numbered so you will know what order the print was produced. The artist can make multiple versions, changing colors, papers, and reworking parts of the design. Each print is an original work of art.

Parrot by Martha Slavin
printed with green ink on yellow paper

Two versions of the
same linoleum block print,
printed using different papers and ink

A long-time friend and I went to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco recently to see a collection of Japanese woodblock prints. The exhibit showcases works on paper starting with prints featuring actors, sumo wrestlers, prostitutes, and landscapes created by well-known Japanese artists such as Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. We walked into a room that displayed an original print of The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa, an image almost as famous as the painting of the Mona Lisa, both of which have been used on coffee mugs, calendars, and book bags to the point of being trite. Both still have the power in person to attract viewers to study them in their original form.

The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa by Hokusai

The Great Wave represents the changing world in Japan at the end of the Meiji period in the 1800s. The print shows Mt. Fuji in the distance and the waves coming in as if to engulf the sacred mountain. When Japan opened up to the rest of the world during this time, the culture of Japan was immediately affected. Woodblock prints showed people in Western clothing and using Western implements. Later Japanese printmakers would use their prints as tools of propaganda to show Japanese dominance over other Asian countries during the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibit at the Legion culminates with modern woodblock prints by Masami Teraoka, now a U.S. citizen, with references to the historical prints with a sly twist. McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan is one of a series of prints about the cultural changes that have occurred there. I had to laugh when I found the partly eaten hamburger hidden at the feet of the woman in a kimono and geta. Teraoka expressed my feelings exactly about how easily cultures change when countries and people can access other cultures so easily. We lose something unique in the process, but we can also gain new insight into our cultural heritage.