Virtual Collecting

On eBay just now, I found ten prints that I would buy in a Manhattan minute, given enough ready cash and an unreasonably indulgent wife. Yoshitoshi, Kiyuchika, Koitsu, Kotozuka and Kasamatsu. Yum, but $1,600 minimum for the bunch. Not gonna happen.

The only solution is Virtual Collecting. And since there are reams and reams of print images on the internet, the object of this kind of collecting has to be limiting my imaginary gallery to, say, 20 prints. With that limit, I can see now that there might be one or two candidates in the prints on my Watch list:



Tsuchiya Koitsu "Kiyomizu Ueno"
Kiyochika, "Cloudy Moon at Haneda"

Both very different, both quite beautiful, and I'd love to own them. But really, not in my top 20.

Here's a better possibility:




This is a Kasamatsu, my latest flame, of the "Ginza District". One reason I like this print so much is that it retains the romanticism of so many Shin Hanga landscape prints while capturing a modern night with modern people. (Well, 1950s, maybe.)

So, I'll add this one to the Twenty along with "Rainy Night at Shinobazu Pond" by the same artist.

This Just In! Hasui Kawase

I started appreciating Japanese prints years ago when I toured the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian and saw a collection of Hokusai's 36 Views of Mt. Fuji or maybe it was Journeys to the Waterfalls in all the Provinces.  I don't remember right now.

For good measure, even though this entry is about Hasui Kawase, here is one Hokusai waterfall.

Sometime later, my grandmother gave me an antique bijin print (beautiful woman), which is pictured in my first entry on this blog.

All this led to my purchasing a series of Japanese woodblock print calendar

s for several years running.  They all featured an artist I didn't know, since I'd mainly looked at older Japanese prints of the ukiyo-e type (pictures of the floating world, a reference to geishas, entertainments, etc.).  These were by Hasui Kawase, who

m I've since learned was the leading artist of the Shin Hanga school in the 20

th century.  Shin Hange, "New Prints", was seen as a revival of the ukiyo-e approach.  (Of which, another time.)  Kawase was named a "national treasure" of Japan for his work.

These prints in  these calendars captured me, and one day, Lisa asked me which within one calendar were my favorite.  And for Valentine's Day of the next year, she presented me with those favorite calendar pages matted and framed.  I have

 6 of them in our computer room.  Here is one, in a somewhat blurry iPhone pic:

They are handsome

, even as calendar pics, so I always wanted to know what they would be like "for real."

For real, with a woodblock print, is:

> Printed on rice paper using a series of carved woodblocks

> Preferably using good condition the original blocks, since the blocks can wear out and would be re-carved.  And as blocks wore out, printers would sometimes compensate for the loss of line and subtlety through the emphasis of bolder colors.

> Preferably from during the artist's lifetime, on the assumption he would have overseen the wor

k enough to ensure it's quality.

> And preferably from the first run of prints, or as ear

ly as possible.

For Hasui, prints that meet all those conditions and are in good condition might cost thousands.  The Hokusai above, being older, rarer and of an international level of art would be auctioned off at Christies and housed in museums.

But.

You can buy a genuine Hasui from the original blocks on rice paper for about $250.  The condition is pristine; it just isn't from the artist's lifetime.  I've now purchased two.  The first is at the framer now, and the second just arrived by FedEx!  It's for Lisa for Christmas, so don't let her know.

Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto, 1933

There's a delightful comparison of prints of this temple by various Japanese artists on the Artlino site.

In the next picture, our new print, Honmonji Temple, is s

et side by side with Hasui's original sketch.  To make the w

ood blocks, the artist's drawing is laid on top of a cherry block and the carver executes the drawing on the wood.

Now the problem is where to put them in our house!

The Colonel & The Barracuda, continued

When Jack C. presented me with Japanese prints that he had purchased when stationed overseas, there were three that I just didn't like. So they'd been sitting in my basement, instead of Jack's garage, collecting even more dust, until a few weeks ago when my pashion of woodblockprints blazed up again. So I flipped over the frames, tore off the back paper and pried out the prints.

And the answer, I still don't really the three prints all that much. Especially the two by Keiko Yurimoto (one shown here, of a woman playing a samisen).

On the other hand, the print by Tokuriki Tomikichiro, of a paper lantern seller, is starting to grow on me. Somehow the childishness of the lines seems to fit the subject, a child's version of Shin Hanga. Like so many other artists, I find that some of his prints really are marvelous, while others just do nothing for me.

It's sort of ironic that my first successful auction on eBay was the purchase of another Tomikichiro print.

These are almost primitives, especially when compared to the precision of Hasui Kawasu. There is so much variety between artists, and so much variety even within one artists's work. Kiyochika is a perfect example of that, but that's a story for another entry.

Rainy Night Kasamatsu

It's getting to be an addiction. I just think these prints are soo beautiful. Here is what I purchased tonight, by the Shin Hanga artist Kasamatsu Shiro.


"Rainy Night at Shinobazu Pond"





And here are the prints I could have bid on but didn't:





















Aren't they simply wonderful?

The Colonel and the Barracuda

When I joined A. in 1991, one of the regional field managers was Jack C., a retired army intelligence colonel who could have been held up as the definition of a curmudgeon (one in a line of men I've worked with and for). He would come in at 8 a.m., read the night's status reports and then terrorize his office managers until noon. After that, you were likely to find him snoozing in his chair while the other two field managers were still pushing their boulders up the hill. But he could get more done in that half day than most could in several.

The story goes that the Colonel's good wife was nicknamed "the Barracuda", much like Rumpole's "She Who Must Be Obeyed". When he had retired from active service, and had been hanging around the house too long for either's taste, he began to re-organize the kitchen and pantry. "Colonel, "says the Barracuda, pulling out the classifieds and stabbing one finger on a small help wanted advertisement, "A. needs clerks. You're going down there today and getting yourself a job!"

Of course, he stayed a clerk for a week or so. Within six months, he was supervising 10 television field offices from his command chair in Laurel, MD and threatening the quiet lives of all staff geeks... like me. Jack was the one who, when I brought him an analysis of cost trends in his departments, grunted and barked out, "Kelly, I want to thank you for your uninformed initiative."

One day, right after Jack had retired for second time, he called me and asked me to stop by his house, where he and the Barracuda were packing their things for a move down to the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. I had absolutely no idea what he wanted, and it was with a little fear that showed up for inspection.

"Well, Kelly," he says -- and he could always make me feel I was back at Baltimore Polytechnic in his consistent reductionism of my name name -- "I have some things here that I picked up when we were stationed in Japan." He pulled out a number of dusty frames with caked glass and flaking, browned backing paper. On investigation, they turned out to be Japanese prints, both on paper and on silk. Jack had noticed the ukiyo-e print that hung (and hangs) in my office (see my first blog entry), and felt I was the right person to hold on to these souvenirs of a different time and a different place in his life.

After some time in the attic, Lisa framed several for me -- the 3 warrior prints shown on this entry. In the next entry, I'll show the other three, which languished in the basement until just recently.

Meet Your Host

For years, I thought the ukiyo-e print hanging in my office must be a wonderful, valuable Utamaro. But the great news is... it's a wonderful, $50 print with enormous value to one person in the world.

Come see my very small collection of Japanese woodblock prints, as well as slides for prints I wish I owned, books you should sample and links to solid sites.