Importing Japan

By the mid 1800s artists were raising their horizons. New compositional ideas had floated over from China and Japan.  Edward Manet, Whistler, and Gustav Klimt took notice. So did blossoming American Impressionists like John Henry Twachtman. The imported Japanese woodblock prints revealed the power of simplified designs, simplified and unified shapes, and rhythmic variety along lines of shapes.

Example 1 presents a woodblock print by Hokusai with the high Japanese horizon. Observe in Example 4, how Twachtman arranges his horizon and land masses similarly.  In example 2 notice the clear, clean shapes and their twisting variations in Hokusai’s Irises and Iris fronds. This elegant simplicity  influenced Twachtman.  In example 3 we see Twachtman’s preliminary small oil sketch for his later larger oil (Example 4). Both images are on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of  Art. Example three shows us anecdotal plants and flowers.  The tall grasses are just willowy vertical strings of paint.  Later, after he has simplified his design and developed example 4 the grasses are unified,  elegant,  substantial, and more confident. His scattered anecdotal flowers have been excised. You see that Twachtman’s formal Parisian studio training still has him using the classic European painting model of division by thirds.

example 1. Hokusai woodblock, Admiring Irises.

example 2.  Hokusai’s woodblock of Irises.

example 3. Twachtman’s  oil sketch/study.

example 4. Twachtman’s finished exhibition painting.

While wandering Barn Island’s Nature Preserve in Eastern Connecticut I found compositions corresponding to Hokusai’s and Twachtman’s. I stumbled across similar discoveries on Randall’s Farm in Southwestern Connecticut and along the Long Island Sound.

My most distilled composition can be seen in example 5. Here is a high vague horizon. Below it lies a canted light shape and below that lies the heavily textured and suggestive foreground shape. In this textured foreground I punctured its stubbly and reedy low tide surface with slashes of vertical lights. Their collective pattern creates a serpentine dance toward the horizon. I painted on brushed silver anodized aluminum with some translucent glazing  to add sparkling variation to the surface. Unfortunately, this can only be experienced when you view the painting first hand shifting eyes and position about the painting.

example 5. Exposed by Low tide, oil on brushed silver anodized aluminum.

While further reducing the complexities of design I developed example 6, a more abstracted image.  Here I  pursued the effects of vertical light and dark forms clattering against one another. The bottom sinks into dark shadow while the top dissolves into light.

example 6, reed abstraction, oil on aluminum.

Examples 7 and 8 present parallel compositions but, I reversed the shape of the bright water area.  Example 7 and 8 were smaller studies to test compositional ideas.  Example 7 is 18×18 and example 8 is 24×24.. Example 9 presents  further development these ideas in a larger format, 36×36. In example 9 I exploited the underpainting’s orange/yellow/reds with the use of a squeegee deleting shapes suggestive of bending reeds.

example 7. 1st study.

example 8. 2nd study, reversed water shape.

example 9. larger 36×36 painting.

Being aware of our influences helps us become more inventive with our compositions. We  see how art history influences us. We are more able to modify art history  by altering its models. Example 10 presents a shadowed pond by Klimt. Notice how I use the large dark mass on the left taken from Klimt’s (and other’s) design.  I explore a variation of the design and build a unified sense of light in example 11, (step one of a 36×36). In example 11’s step two I put more contrast into the design. This painting awaits its step three.  In example 12 (a 48×48)  again I started with the same design  but, I altered the palette and created a different feeling of light and texture. This painting also awaits another step  (see next steps in an upcoming blogpost).

example 10. Pond by G. Klimt.

example 11. step one of a 36×36.

example 12.step two of a 36×36.

example 13. the 48×48 on brushed silver anodized aluminum.