“Janus”

“Janus” (ca. 1985)
by Barry Winsor-Smith (1949-)
24 x 24 in., pastel on paper
Coppola Collection

I am a triple-lucky damned dog to have picked this up, many many! moons ago. A BWS original of a mythological sort of portrait. I have called this Janus, but it was untitled. And it thousands of times more stunning in person. You may resume normal breathing.

I contacted the BWS studio in 2016 to see if I could get any more info on this piece. The gracious and fast reply, in return:

Dear Brian,
Thanks for contacting us.
Your original is a 1980s chalk drawing that Mr. Windsor-Smith did for the pleasure of it and not for any distinct purpose. We hope you’ve enjoyed it all these years.

“Modern Beauties” (1898)

“Modern Beauties” (1898)
by Mizuno Toshikata (1866-1908)
bound book, issued by Akiyama Buemon (Tokyo)
14.15 x 9.25 in., woodblock in on paper
Coppola Collection

Mizuno Toshikata 水野年方
 (artist names): Ōsai 応斉 and Shōsetsu 蔗雪 (used in the artist’s seals)

Toshikata was born Mizuno Kumajirō. When he was about thirteen years old his father, Nonaka Kichigoro, sent him to study with Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839-1892), but his father removed him from Yoshitoshi’s studio and sent him to a relative of his mother to earn his living as a painter of ceramics, instead.

In 1882, however, he returned to Yoshitoshi’s studio. In 1887, on Yoshitoshi’s recommendation, he succeeded Yoshitoshi as the illustrator at the newspaper Yamato shimbun, where he achieved acclaim. During the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), which brought about a brief resurgence of woodblock printmaking, he created a large body of work depicting battle scenes. His work is some of the best to be produced during that period.

As times became difficult for Japanese printmakers due to the introduction of photography and lithography, Toshikata turned toward the design of illustrations for novels (kuchi-e), literary journals, and the design of fashion plates for department stores.

Toshikata published a number of series of bijin prints and genre scenes, featuring women and children, including print sets such as Thirty-six Types of Beauty (Sanjurokkasen), 1891, published by Kokkedio, Modern Beauties (Imayo bijin) 1898-1899 by Akiyama Buemon, and Ancient Beauties (Kodai bijin), 1906-07.

This complete book includes a table of contents describing the 12 images. The English translations on each page were added by someone, at some point. Copies of the unremarked pages from this book are available on line.

 

Dead Men Don’t Write

The posting about James Gray may be the first of an interesting series. At least, I am motivated to pursue it.

Certainly the idea of “letters home from the front lines” is not a new one, but I am definitely being drawn in to this fine, fine grain size for understanding wars, breaching across the time of the Civil War to the Vietnam War. There have been some collections of letters recently available, so I am pulling together a collection with this “letters home” theme.

One of these letters truly got my attention for the clear, clear poignancy of a simple, four-word phrase (and you can find it up there in the title). A soldier during the Korean conflict sent a letter home, dated “14 April 49” … and here is how it begins:

Hi

Don’t know if this off-spring of yours can be classified as lucky or not – he thinks maybe he is. You ask why? Goes like this: he’s still living. How does he know Well, he’s writing, and dead men don’t write.

I think that is rather stunning.

Let’s see if I can make something of it.

“32 Actors” by Kunichika

“32 Actors” (ca. 1870)
by Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900)
7 x 4.5 in., woodblock ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Here are 28 of the 32 images from this book, including the inside front cover and the inside back cover. These were originally glued at the edges into a book that accordion-opened.

At 13 years old, Toyohara Kunichika (30 June 1835 – 1 July 1900) became a student of Tokyo’s then-leading print maker, Utagawa Kunisada. His deep appreciation and knowledge of kabuki drama led to his production primarily of ukiyo-e actor-prints, which are woodblock prints of kabuki actors and scenes from popular plays of the time.

He successfully transitioned from the Edo period (through 1868) to the Meiji period (1868-1912), characterized by modernization, industrialization, and extensive contact with the West. To his contemporaries and now to some modern art historians, this has been seen as a significant achievement during a period of great social and political change in Japan’s history.

Ukiyo-e artists had traditionally illustrated urban life and society – especially the theater, for which their prints often served as advertising. The Meiji period brought competition from the new technologies of photography and photoengraving, effectively destroying the careers of most. Kunichika was listed as a top ten artist in 1865, 1867, and 1885.

 

 

Woodbock Printing

Humans have been stamping and pressing patterns into objects for a long time. Patterns or seals pressed into clay date back thousands of years, and hammering ingots of metal into patterns as coins appears to have started around 600-700 BCE.

Fragments of carved woodblocks used to print patterns onto silk date to about 200 CE, in Asia. Wood-based paper emerges in China around this same time (200 BCE – 200 CE), and using a carved woodblock to press out the pages of a book dates to about 650-700 CE, in the reproduction of Buddhist scripture.

The technology is simple. Regardless of your medium, parts of a solid, level surface carry ink, which is transferred onto the surface of paper by stamping or pressing.

Although moveable type (ca. 1050) enabled printing of Western languages, with the rich combination of a finite set of letters into infinite words, the pictographic Eastern languages remained more suited to carving out an entire page uniquely, as opposed to carving and sorting, indexing and storing thousands of characters.

The printing press emerges in the mid-1400s, and using carved wooden blocks as the source of impressions was common for a hundred years, until the long era of etching on metal (1500-1800) prior to lithography and offset printing.

Woodblock printing for books and artwork persisted in Asia through the late 1800s, before the era of photo-reproduction changed the world of printing.

Here is an 1853 Japanese woodblock printing plate that I own. 
This is a hard wood block carved on both sides. The printing area is 17.4 x 27 cm (6 7/8 x 10 5/8 inch), with an overall size of the woodblock of 19.2 x 40.5 cm (7 1/2 x 15 7/8 inch), with a thickness of 1.3 cm (1/2 inch). It weighs 720 g (1.6 pounds).

The provenance on this is solidly good because the book is well known. Here is the impression from this plate.

The book title is Enmi Jizokyo Wakun Zue (Sutra of Life-extending Jizo Bodhisattva with Japanese Annotation and Illustration) in 3 volumes; and these are pages 25 and 26 of Volume 2. It was printed by Bokuko and released in September 1853 by the bookseller Haruhoshi Do in Osaka. The editor and commentator was Yomogimuro Aritune, and the illustration artist was Matsukawa Hanzan (1818-1882). The scripture itself was first published in print form around 15thcentury in Japan, and this specimen is one of the first with illustrations and Japanese annotation.

Ksitigarbha is one of the four most important Bodhisattva of East Asian Buddhism, and one of the most loved figures in Japan (called O-Jizo Sama by children in Japan). Many scriptures attributed to him were translated from Sanskrit in China around 700 CE. This particular scripture (Enmi Jizokyo) was claimed to be translated by Amoghavajra (705 – 774), a highly revered Indian monk who spent most of his life in the court of Tang dynasty China.

It begins with a passage claimed to be spoken by the Buddha himself. The scriptures might actually have been originated in Japan since there are certain passages that are uniquely Japanese (e.g., mentioned the legendary Tengu – a heavenly dog). It was very popular with the Samurai of Kamakura period (11th – 12th century) and popular with people of East Asia ever since.

This woodblock printing plate contains one of the important passages with its entire annotation and its companion illustration. The pronunciation of each character was indicated by Hiragana.

It can be translated roughly as: Jizo Bodhisattva is such that he can exhibit his body in variety of forms and would like to save all the souls from all the Six Worlds (including the hell). The annotation included detailed explanation of each word and a story of two Samurai (rich and poor) of Kamakura period with the illustration showing one praying with the Jizo Bodhisattva appeared to him in person.

The other side of the block looks like this.

And the impression from this side looks like this.

Hundreds of thousands of book pages and images were printed in Japan from the period of about 1710-1875.

Still today, you can see the monks at the Sera Monastery, in Tibet, printing scripture, to be sold as souvenirs, from woodblocks. Here are some pictures I took of a monk working at the Sera in 2008, nearby to a storage wall for the woodblocks.

“Pointing to the Moon”

Pointing to the Moon” (2017)
by Barbara Kacicek (1957-)
12 x 16 in., oil on canvas on panel
Coppola Collection

This painting is the centerpiece to the collection of moon paintings that Barbara has been doing for me. The title serves two purposes. One it to point to the collection of moon paintings. The other is a reminder about the phrase where this comes from… when a finger points to the moon, only an idiot looks at the finger.

“Fantastic Four 65, page 12”

“Fantastic Four 65, page 12” (August 1967)
by Jack Kirby (1917-1994) and Joe Sinnott (1926-)
14 x 21 in., ink on paper
Coppola Collection

Fifty Years Ago!

This issue is from the true heyday of the Lee-Kirby collaboration on the Fantastic Four – other than the first 10 or so issues of the foundational Marvel universe series, I do not think any other string of comics has introduced such a lasting set of characters or stories. Starting with issues 44-47 (Inhumans), 48-50 (Silver Surfer and Galactus), 52-53 (Black Panther), 57-60 (Doomsday), 64-65 (Kree), 66-67 (Warlock)… not to mention the Negative Zone, and the fact that these 2 years are bookended by the Wedding of Reed and Sue and the birth of their son, Franklin.

After the destruction of Sentry 459 in the previous issue, the Kree Supreme Intelligence has become interested in the planet Earth. The Intelligence probes the minds of the Fantastic Four as they sleep, warning them that their guilt or innocence in the matter will be determined by his agent, Ronan the Accuser.

This issue marks the first appearance of the Kree race who originate from the planet Hala. Ronan the Accuser is depicted here with Caucasian skin, however all future depictions of Ronan shows him with blue skin typical of baseline Kree.

The FF find themselves trapped within the Aura of Negativity with Ronan. When the Thing tries to attack the Accuser he is instantly felled by a blast form Ronan’s Universal Weapon. He quickly downs Ben, Johnny and Reed.