i'm nothing in particular

His first works as a student were decidedly post impressionistic, often featuring the works of his favorite impressionists in backgrounds of his portraits similar to Manet. He becomes very cubist Picasso and later after meeting him, gets into Matisse’s color fields. After the war he did a lot of more public oriented work for the post war efforts before going to New York and boom ... getting into abstract expressionism. This period though I would argue he truly comes into his own…he does own the originality of his abstract works….and to an extent he really did with the Picasso cubist works. From his chose to the newly created at the time acrylics (people feared they wouldn’t age well). At the time he was criticized as being steeped into orientalist decorative traditions which for me is reinforcing the art world’s centralization to whiteness. But he really hit his stride painting till he died making some of his best works into his 70s. When his wife died, it all came full circle incorporating faces into his work…at first in mourning his wife before the faces taking on a life of their own in his remaining years.His first works as a student were decidedly post impressionistic, often featuring the works of his favorite impressionists in backgrounds of his portraits similar to Manet. He becomes very cubist Picasso and later after meeting him, gets into Matisse’s color fields. After the war he did a lot of more public oriented work for the post war efforts before going to New York and boom ... getting into abstract expressionism. This period though I would argue he truly comes into his own…he does own the originality of his abstract works….and to an extent he really did with the Picasso cubist works. From his chose to the newly created at the time acrylics (people feared they wouldn’t age well). At the time he was criticized as being steeped into orientalist decorative traditions which for me is reinforcing the art world’s centralization to whiteness. But he really hit his stride painting till he died making some of his best works into his 70s. When his wife died, it all came full circle incorporating faces into his work…at first in mourning his wife before the faces taking on a life of their own in his remaining years. My favorite by him (that I saw in person but wasn’t in the book) was actually painted the year he died titled, “DABO and Scarecrow.” It features this impossibly empty black negative space with a multi-colored scarecrow with birds all around him. “A scarecrow, made to drive birds away, becoming their friend and living in the same composition…” I think he saw himself in it always wanting to relate art to the public despite being rather private and feeling through his accomplished life he achieved that albeit with some humility involved.

#finishedbooks After Meji by various. Picked this up a while ago from the @sailobin bookshelf. I strongly recommend they're shop if you are ever in the Sasazuka area...a lot of gems. The book is made of 17 essays from all aspects of art since the Meji period…and in English which is a rather important distinction in this case. The book comes as a response to the lack of extended analysis on modern and contemporary Japanese visual arts. The rather lengthy and informative intro offers reasons or perhaps the polarities that have led to this. The first and foremost being the tension between the national and international. Extremely valid, I even recall in writing about Danskhwa for TokyoArtBeat the reason most don’t know and would only know Lee U Fan from this movement for example is the fact he left Korea, of course his work took on a universality I don’t want to simplify here, but there is this preoccupation for maintaining an insular Japanese-ness. Also peculiar I learned from experience Japan at times even needs outside acceptance to believe in their own. Kurosawa for example wasn’t regarded till "Rashomon" won at Venice, and I recall being here when "Okribito" came out I couldn’t see it till it had won Best Foreign Film in the US. This is more notable in architecture and the avant-garde. A second is a common theme in art or really the sentiment that guided the Taisho period and that is the tension of the older traditions versus the new. Another and quite similar again in the tension of adapting from abroad and also in general Japan’s own market and taste… and its burgeoning pop culture. Think all of this paint the complex picture of why yes you would know Murakami Takashi but not Munakata Shiko. Speaking of the latter the section on modern printmaking were really interesting enjoying Munakta but Onchi and Hiratsuka. The essay on Okakura, "Tension and Aesthetic Nationalism" should have been more obvious than mingei’s skew but was revealing. And finally loved the section on calligraphy, always the biggest fan of Ozu' observance of mu (nothingness) that calligraphy expresses rather beautifully…a fact I forgot or haven’t appreciated due to utter lack of kanji. Was also the reason I decided to give up studying tea ceremony after two years. But was enamored reading the sections on Nakahara Nantembo and Fukushima Keido. The former even once wrote that his favorite poem was simply 28 repititions of the word mu. Both naturally devloped their own personal variations of this and other characters, expressing their own vision of the word's form and meaning. In each their own most famous work, respectively, "Mu Manon" and "Mu Nantembo" scroll there are two more large characters to contrast with mu well Fukushima's mu is accompanied only the eight small congee of a simple ranking signature. It is as though Nantembo wrote MU! while, Fukushima has written MUUuu. This is an outstanding characteristic of calligraphy. Each character can endlessly be reinterpreted in different scripts styles and compositions here. The two forms for mu are extremely different and yet they both convey the power of this conception in zen. A really great read.

#finishedbooks In Praise of Shadows by Tanazaki Junichiro. I read this a long time ago probably around 2008 between eikaiwa lessons. Forgot how impressionable I was as I read it again. It totally founded my disdain for kabuki in favor of Noh something I only recently realized the pointlessness of. Though to be fair I still haven't seen kabuki live but have seen noh over a dozen of times. But ultimately it is about light or really the lack there of as a visual aesthetic. “The quality that we call beauty… must always grow from the realities of life.” And so with this there really was this practicality in regard to the time that he was lamenting. As electricity becomes available the reality of building around candle light changes. From kabuki in praise of Noh, that adopted the very much the same lighting, to his favorite restaurant there is this theme. Originally I think I read it quite literally as a sorta aesthetic jimi/ hade argument. Nearly 20 years later I read it as someone griping about the times ...just with really beautiful insight. A sentiment I think he himself reflected when later in life upon building a new house his architect told him he had read his book and knew exactly how to design it in which Tanazaki more or less said hell no haha. I love that humility…really just a writer writing inhibited…I mean he starts off glorifying a toilet in an outhouse. I do have a practical reason for reading this and I was curious about candles in Japanese interiors in general that hopefully will be reflected in an upcoming exhibit. Also felt his work is really misunderstood, not sure how many white photographers who shot sunlight in Japanese interiors calling their work, “In Praise of Shadows” (a close second is Tokyo-Ga or an Ozu title for a photo exhibition) missing the point of darkness and its suggestion of more and the objects with gold flakes that naturally reflect light offering this beauty.

#finishedbooks African-American Art by Sharon Patton. Originally ordered this in 2018 and read it in Baltimore right after my visa issues started...review is somewhere on my instagram. I remember reading it then and just really only knowing maybe 3 artists from the whole book, whereas now I know about 85% of the artists. Was a such a huge shift for me from 2018-2022 no longer having a permanent home and bouncing around between Baltimore and Nebraska... and Sweden for the job I had at the time. In actuality , I would use the Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) for an example, where visiting in 2018 they had a wall somewhere in modernism near the toilets...a section crudely called black art. In it they had maybe 9 works from all different periods…and ya that was that. Historically we represented at one point nearly a quarter of the population and have been reduced to 9%, systematically making up 32% of jail population while remaining visible in entertainment and sports…BUT going into 2020, black artists only represented 1.3% of art in museums. I just went last November to the VMFA and no more was it all but actually integrated within the zeitgeist of American art. Actually and as a result having access to these artists now gave this book a much better context. And I appreciate its lengthy sections on folk art as traditionally our contributions in that field had been undervalued as well although such a major part as with Native American, etc as well. Quick re-read really that plugged in some gaps in my knowledge.

#finishedbooks Alexander Dovzhenko: The Poet as Filmmaker by Marco Carynnyk. Received this a while back from @will who always gives me the most random coolest gifts (the vase pictured was from him too). How in the world he knew I would like this book is beyond me. Most cinephiles wouldn't even know Dovzhenko. At best they would know Eistein, but only because at some point they were 'forced' to watch "Battleship Potemkin." If they're slightly better than they would know Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera", but rarely do I meet anyone who knows the Soviet's third best silent film director in Dovzhenko. "Earth" and "Arsenal" are the two films by him that need to be seen the latter is top ten of for me of the 1920s. Predating those beautiful Buñuel/Dali films and Cocteau (probably same as Man Ray but with narrative), the opening war scene of "Arsenal" with the dead man and that fixated smile and the German soldier laughing to death at the site of it as gas engulfs him was really early surrealism on film. The scene of the war torn town that just featured widowed women completely motionless as well was just beautiful. Always wanted to shoot a film back home and just start with an opening slow slow dolly shot of a block of row houses and all the mothers who have lost their children in the streets motionless... perhaps one day, but from this the title "poet as filmmaker" makes perfect sense. After a lengthy introduction, the book features his own autobiography and then his notebooks making up the bulk of the book. Seeing the inner workings of his mind and all the violence he endured through the World Wars in Ukraine are somehow eerily indicative of the contemporary right now. But a really beautiful mind and his love for Shostakovich dotted throughout....chief's kiss. Cheers to Will for this.

#finishedbooks A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Wada Sanzo. First heard about this reading @ian 's design book, 'Fraction' and recall making a note of it. Recently, damn I forgot who it was posted it, but was a great reminder and ordered it. This is his original 6 volume work published in the early Showa period in the 1930s. Consisting of 348 color combinations and in a time of increasingly avant-garde and diversified use of color, he was quick to focus on its importance and laid the foundation for contemporary color research. It was the first systematic approach to color in Japan as the concept of colors was not generally recognized at the time so sample of color combinations containing specific color. Combination patterns were highly unusual. It also served as a precursor laying the groundwork for modern color studies that accommodated both traditional Japanese color schemes that imported western ideas. Originally in a card format, my edition came as a tiny yet functional little bathroom book size. A lost art in itself with smart phones lol.

+Aye new quilt post. This was my first t-shirt quilt and a commission from my father. T-shirts quilts I noticed are usually a graduation gift etc especially in the midwest, that involves cutting up T-shirts into blocks. Thought it would be the simple but their nature to stretch requires this heat adhesive stabilizer that was kind of a pain. This are all of our family reunion t-shirts that will celebrate our next one in St.Louis this summer, our first in a while. Probably ain't finna go but ya😅.