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Blanton exhibit reveals lesser-known art passion of writer James Michener Blanton exhibit reveals lesser-known art passion of writer James Michener By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin Here in Austin, best-selling author James A. Michener is remembered by art aficionados for the singular collection of 20th-century American paintings that he donated to the Blanton Museum of Art. An early supporter of the University of Texas museum (he began giving artwork as early as 1968), Michener also donated $10 million toward a new museum building. But before the Pulitzer Prize winner amassed his American paintings collection, he busied himself with a very different art passion: Japanese woodblock prints. Now, an exhibit culled from the Michener Collection at the Honolulu Academy of Arts lands at the Blanton, giving Austin a chance to see the other side of the collector and philanthropist who helped shape the Blanton. More than 50 prints spanning three centuries are featured in "Exquisite Visions of Japan" on view through Aug. 24. The Honolulu Academy's Michener Collection boasts 5,400 prints the author bequeathed upon his death in 1997. When Michener began collecting Japanese woodblock prints in the late 1940s, it was hardly a fashionable pursuit. His service with the U.S. Navy in World War II and in the years afterward took him around the South Pacific and Japan, an experience that led to his discovery of the art form. Michener found the colorful, delicately rendered prints "one of the most totally delightful art forms ever devised ... its allurement infinite." True to his methodical nature, Michener's research on the art form led to his 1954 book on the growth and decline of the Japanese woodblock prints, "The Floating World," one of the first full-length English-language studies on the subject. The art of ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," emerged at the beginning of the 1600s in the bustling metropolitan culture of Edo (modern-day Tokyo). At the time, Japan was a country virtually isolated from the rest of the world. Yet while the ruling shoguns might have kept a tight rein on the political sphere, Edo's burgeoning middle class enjoyed a certain cultural freedom that allowed them to "float" free of too much official interference. Teahouses, geishas, sumo wrestling and Kabuki theaters flourished. And to celebrate these entertainments, artists produced woodblock prints depicting Edo's popular culture. Famous Kabuki actors and wrestlers or beautiful courtesans became the subjects of mass-produced prints that were sold to and casually collected by a moneyed middle class, much like baseball cards or movie posters are today. The prints were both affordable and ubiquitous. Particular prints went in and out of fashion as tastes — and popular culture icons — changed. The number of prints in good condition that survive today is not vast by most measures. Michener's collection — the bulk of which he bought from a Chicago collector — is in particularly good shape. By the time Japan began to open its borders in the mid-19th century, the heyday of ukiyo-e prints was waning. However, they were eagerly snapped up by a curious West suddenly hungry for all things Japanese. Indeed, "Japonisme," to use the term coined by one critic, was all the rage in 1870s Europe and the decades following. Creatives of all types were inspired by Japanese aesthetics, from painters such as Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who penned the opera "Madame Butterfly." Likewise, among their many popular comic operettas, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan wrote "The Mikado." Interest in Japanese art and culture was at a low point in post-World War II America when Michener began acquiring woodblock prints. But his interest was unwavering, his passion for Japanese woodblock prints as much cultural advocacy as anything else. "I must stress that Japanese prints are a joy," he wrote in "The Floating World." "In the long history of man's persistent attempts to create beauty, these prints are one of the gratifying successes." |
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This year's 'New American Talent' takes a very topical turn By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin It's summer, and that means we have the next iteration of "New American Talent," the annual juried exhibit featuring the work of emerging artists from across the country. Arthouse has presented "New American Talent" for 23 years now, since long before the talent competition became the super-popular form of pop culture entertainment — not to mention reputation-maker — that it is. "Project Artist," anyone? No, "New American Talent" is much better than that. And this year's version is sharper than ever. The works are selected by Nato Thompson, a curator at Creative Time, the New York-based nonprofit that commissions innovative public art projects. Kudos to him for sorting through more than 1,000 entries to select 43 artists whom he identifies as "curious" and able to present "lush mysteries in a world that often seems altogether too transparent." (Sixteen of the artists are from Texas, with seven from Austin.) And perhaps the most refreshing aspect of these artists' curiosity is their sense of timeliness and topicality. Call it the curse of graduate art school, but emerging artists can end up so addled by their own self-involvement that they can't produce anything that's not too, well, self-involved. But much of what's on exhibit in "New American Talent" percolates with contemporary issues: climate change, the war in Iraq and its far-reaching consequences, technology's intrusion into everyday life. Something like Margot Herster's "Kuwaiti Detainees in Guantánamo Bay" is advocacy as much as it is art. Through her connection with attorneys representing the detainees at the Cuba naval base, Herster has collected more than 2,000 images the attorneys gathered from their clients' families. As a way to establish their clients' trust, the attorneys traveled to the Middle East and photographed detainees' family members and homes and carried personal messages back to Guantánamo. Among other photos that Herster has arrayed on the wall at Arthouse are images of a Muslim family joyfully playing with a new baby — a baby whose father is detained at Guantánamo and has presumably never seen his child. It's a considerably more thought-provoking view of the detainees than the one presented by U.S. officials. Goran Maric approaches the same topic from a different tack. His expressively rendered quartet of etchings depicts horrifying scenes of prisoner torture. Less immediately direct, but no less loaded with conviction, are Chad Erpelding's elegant "Topography" black-and-white digital prints. With frenzied lines that resemble a map gone haywire, Erpelding creates an artistic representation of the powerful global networks that seem to govern our world: the World Trade Organization, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Not everything in "New American Talent" is quite so explicit with its message. A miniature moss-covered mountaintop crowned with a tiny solar panel, Alec Appl's "Mt. Solar" charms with its dollhouse scale. Yet with an ordinary desk lamp playing the role of the sun and feeding the solar panel, the irony to Appl's piece is loud and clear. Going way beyond ironic and touching on the absurd is Emily Puthoff's "S.I.R.E.N. Surrender Modulis." Through a performance video and other documentation, Puthoff contemplates the strange coincidence that apparently has Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il all reportedly devoted fans of Whitney Houston, and in particular Houston's recording of "I Will Always Love You." "Could it be that this song is the axis upon which even the fiercest hearts will turn?" Puthoff writes on a diagram of her project. Who knows? Perhaps the answer to world peace is Whitney Houston. |
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