[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest              Sunday, 18 October 1998      Volume 05 : Number 316

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From: mmflavio <mmflavio@slip.net>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 06:13:08 +0000
Subject: [Baren 1896] Books on woodblock  printmaking 

Hello,
as a recent student of woodblock technique I am trying to find some
texts that will be useful for my understanding of the various steps
necessary for a good print. I am also trying to understand which book to
purchase first. I am buying the Oliver Statler "Modern Japanese Prints:
An Art Reborn" (thank you for the tip).
Coming from an european artistical background and being interested in
that branch of the art as well, should I look for any other that have
excellent insights on the technique, maybe from a different point of
view? How about Gustave Baumann, anybody familiar with his technique
book? I have found "Munch the printmaker" to be very useful. Or maybe
books about Heckel or Nolde's woodcuts? Any suggestion is very
appreciated.
Thank you to everybody in advance.
Marco Flavio Marinucci

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 18:25:57 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1897] Jean and Van Gogh 

A few weeks or so ago, back in [Baren1798] , I tossed out a small
question ...

>Jean wrote:
>> I have placed on my home page 
>> http://users.lanminds.com/~jeaneger/
>> my woodcut portrait of Tomoko Murakami ...
>
>Jean, the moment this print came up on my screen, it reminded me
>instantly of Van Gogh.  !?!?  I don't mean that it _looks_ like a Van
>Gogh, but there is something in your print that makes a direct
>connection - and it is a very interesting artistic point.  
>
>Can any of you guess what it is?

Nobody 'bit' at this, and I guess maybe my point was a bit too obscure
...

The lady in Jean's print has a box of stuff sitting on the table beside
her, and this box is a very common type here in Japan - it is what we
call a 'mikan bako', an orange box.  Boxes for shipping oranges used to
be actual wooden crates, but are now simply made of a tough cardboard. 
Everybody has them around the house, full of books or tools or
whatever.  The lettering on the side of the box is always the same - the
three cursive characters making up the word 'mikan' - 'mandarin orange'.

I am sure that Jean cannot read Japanese, so she saw these characters
not as a word, but as a type of visual decoration.  When she copied then
into her print design she got them close but not quite 'right'.  They
are sort of readable, but one is upside down and another is distorted. 
This is _exactly_ the same thing that Van Gogh did with a collection of
Japanese characters in two of the paintings he made in 1887 as 'copies'
of prints by Hiroshige.  

Jean I'm not trying to make fun of you here; it's simply that I find it
very interesting to see how these 'words', things that have real
meaning, are transformed into 'objects', things that simply convey the
message 'Here be something exotic and interesting' ...

I'm sure that Van Gogh had no idea at all that the characters he copied
into his painting were simply a Tokyo street address; for him they just
'looked neat'.  And would Jean's print be any more/less interesting if
she had carved the word 'oranges' on the side of that box?

Anyway ... I thought it was interesting ...

Dave B.

P.S.  By the way, did you know that Van Gogh had, in addition to the world's
largest collection of Van Gogh paintings (!), a large collection of more than
400 ukiyo-e prints?  No money to buy food, clothes, even tubes of paint - but
still a collection of Japanese prints.  Now there was a guy with his priorities
in the right place!

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From: <hudson@panther.middlebury.edu>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 07:47:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Baren 1898] Re: Books on woodblock  printmaking 


Mario asked about books ...

Hello, this is Ray Hudson in Vermont.   About books on printmaking--One
that I've enjoyed reading in now and again is Evolving Techniques in
Japanese Woodblock Prints by Gaston Petit and Amadio Arboleda.   It was
published by Kodansha International Ltd.   I have a 1977 first edition and
I don't know if it has gone into other editions.  It's full of examples of
various printmaking techniques with interesting photos of printmakers at
work.   There's a section called "Six Artists and their Radical
Techniques" featuring Morozumi osamu, Miyashita Tokio, Noda Tetsuya,
Funasaka Yoshisuke, Yoshida Hodaka, and Matsumoto Akira.   It also has a
good set of appendices and a glossary.

Ray H

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End of Baren Digest V5 #316
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