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#finishedbooks A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore by Harold Courlander. Picked this up at the free bookstore in Baltimore a few trips ago. It has been the anchor of my to-read book stack that had been lording over me for the past 4 years. Used to have a rule no more than 4 unread books max at a time. I like to finish what I have and earn the next (my upbringing) but with this I completely finished all the books in my house. Over 600 pages, I really wanted to be in a good space to read this as I knew it would inspire my next solo show and wanted the time to incubate the ideas as I read. So the whole of experience of this book has been a real treat and shout out to the free bookstore, this is 24,000 yen on Amazon smh. From the start I like the structuring, US black folklore is usually treated separately from that of Caribbean and Latin America as if it were something completely apart. It is true there are strong distinctions between Haiti, Cuba, Brazil etc but this book simply chose to trace a thread from Africa and shoe how each had to adapt to its enslaver/colonizer. There is a commonality inherit that can be perceived and measured. While the music is obvious in its deviation from western standard time measures, I really like the evolution of the animal oral folktales. It is easy to see how Anansi the spider became Brer rabbit, etc etc. I always appreciated the pioneering work of structuralism in Carl Levi Strauss who really placed an heavy emphasis of looking into these tales in older cultures in order oder to get to their core values and the evolution of them to contemporary pop culture. Lol anthropology...really ya, but his philosophical basis has interesting ramifications for artistic interpretations. Read this back in Kagawa, currently 7 books reviews behind, but can't wait to get back into my zone out there.

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+paper collage, 2019.

"Very Like a Whale." 210mm x 297mm.

*Unavailable

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#finishedbooks Kawai Kanjiro: House to House by various. Got this exhibition catalog from @munkata who's grandfather, Shiko Munakata, was friends with Kawai Kanjiro. It was Kawai along with Yanagi Soetsu and Hamada Shoji who coined the term "mingei" as they all shared a mutual attraction to the beauty in objects created for everyday use by nameless craftsmen. By trade he was a poet, ceramicist, and sculptor. He recognized that art was born from suffering, and yet wanted to express his lifestyle and his work with joy. Like most he imitated the ancient Chinese styles that while were both technical and elegant...but they weren't quite his. After mingei he came into his own with more easy to use objects no longer featuring any signature to verify the work as his own. I like his quote justifying this, "There's no need to praise whoever made the work, as long as the object serves people beautifully in their daily lives." Toward the end his ceramics took on more sculptural forms as he began to focus on wood sculpture. Of the Mingei founders, always found it harder to come by books and exhibitions from him so this was a real treat.

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#finishedbooks Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. Ordered this after having borrowed and read it back in 2013. At the time, I wasn't interested going in, but ended up loving it. Immediately noticed how badly translated this version was then from the one I read previously. Perhaps this way is better as the unclarity certainly represents the language gap even more glaring between the teacher and the student. For those who haven't heard of this book, it was written by a German national who came with his wife to Japan before the war to learn zen. He wanted to choose a traditional art form to achieve this through and so he chose kyudo while his wife chose ikebana. He details over 5 years his tribulations with not only archery but zen itself. At the time it served as a western introduction into this mind set of process over goal and letting go of oneself. I have been practing for a month now so far has been less zen and more form. He alludes to zen in his wife's ikebana process as well, however for myself after studying ikebana for 18 years and becoming a master... these deep seeded internal interactions really don't exist as it is much more about the form with a lot of geometry and aesthetic sense dervied from experience. And honestly kyudo reminds me of being forced to learn golf as a kid with its repetitions and repeated muscle movements with a focus on the process in that sense but certainly not to such a degree. This novel with its western perspective has since become a prototype where they almost have a zen of everything type of book from motorcycle maintenance to writing a book. Some better than others😌

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#finishedbooks Genichiro Inokuma by various. Picked this up at the museum that shares the artist's name in Marugame, the Marugame Genichiro- Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art or shorten… MIMOCA. Went there with @Jennifer who had free tickets as she was on assignment to cover the exhibition. And what an unexpected surprise all around. The museum feels randomly dashed into a small city and yet all the details of it from its design that is complete with natural observance of light utilizing it in a way making what is essentially brutalism into something soft and light feeling. But more so Inokuma’s art. I don’t get to travel much (don’t see how y’all afford it) just managed a trip to Matsumoto last year where it was something very similar. I went to their local museum that had a lot of the social media tailored Yayoi Kusama stuff, but upstairs in the permanent collection from local Nagano artist discovered there amazing paintings by Kazuo Tamura. Inokuma’s painting here gave me that same feeling because I never would have heard about him if I didn’t make the trip. Even more in Tamura as people were only there for Kusama…that is what you are supposed to like instead of seeing for oneself and simply appreciating in a more visceral manner devoid of popularity. So the sincere thing one notices immediately about Inokuma’s art are his progressions. Born in 1903 he literally goes through the zeitgeist of modern western art.

His first works as a student were decidedly post impressionistic, often featuring the works of his favorite impressionists in backgrounds of his portraits similar to Manet. He becomes very cubist Picasso and later after meeting him, gets into Matisse’s color fields. After the war he did a lot of more public oriented work for the post war efforts before going to New York and boom ... getting into abstract expressionism. This period though I would argue he truly comes into his own…he does own the originality of his abstract works….and to an extent he really did with the Picasso cubist works. From his chose to the newly created at the time acrylics (people feared they wouldn’t age well). At the time he was criticized as being steeped into orientalist decorative traditions which for me is reinforcing the art world’s centralization to whiteness. But he really hit his stride painting till he died making some of his best works into his 70s. When his wife died, it all came full circle incorporating faces into his work…at first in mourning his wife before the faces taking on a life of their own in his remaining years.His first works as a student were decidedly post impressionistic, often featuring the works of his favorite impressionists in backgrounds of his portraits similar to Manet. He becomes very cubist Picasso and later after meeting him, gets into Matisse’s color fields. After the war he did a lot of more public oriented work for the post war efforts before going to New York and boom ... getting into abstract expressionism. This period though I would argue he truly comes into his own…he does own the originality of his abstract works….and to an extent he really did with the Picasso cubist works. From his chose to the newly created at the time acrylics (people feared they wouldn’t age well). At the time he was criticized as being steeped into orientalist decorative traditions which for me is reinforcing the art world’s centralization to whiteness. But he really hit his stride painting till he died making some of his best works into his 70s. When his wife died, it all came full circle incorporating faces into his work…at first in mourning his wife before the faces taking on a life of their own in his remaining years. My favorite by him (that I saw in person but wasn’t in the book) was actually painted the year he died titled, “DABO and Scarecrow.” It features this impossibly empty black negative space with a multi-colored scarecrow with birds all around him. “A scarecrow, made to drive birds away, becoming their friend and living in the same composition…” I think he saw himself in it always wanting to relate art to the public despite being rather private and feeling through his accomplished life he achieved that albeit with some humility involved.

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#finishedbooks After Meji by various. Picked this up a while ago from the @sailobin bookshelf. I strongly recommend they're shop if you are ever in the Sasazuka area...a lot of gems. The book is made of 17 essays from all aspects of art since the Meji period…and in English which is a rather important distinction in this case. The book comes as a response to the lack of extended analysis on modern and contemporary Japanese visual arts. The rather lengthy and informative intro offers reasons or perhaps the polarities that have led to this. The first and foremost being the tension between the national and international. Extremely valid, I even recall in writing about Danskhwa for TokyoArtBeat the reason most don’t know and would only know Lee U Fan from this movement for example is the fact he left Korea, of course his work took on a universality I don’t want to simplify here, but there is this preoccupation for maintaining an insular Japanese-ness. Also peculiar I learned from experience Japan at times even needs outside acceptance to believe in their own. Kurosawa for example wasn’t regarded till "Rashomon" won at Venice, and I recall being here when "Okribito" came out I couldn’t see it till it had won Best Foreign Film in the US. This is more notable in architecture and the avant-garde. A second is a common theme in art or really the sentiment that guided the Taisho period and that is the tension of the older traditions versus the new. Another and quite similar again in the tension of adapting from abroad and also in general Japan’s own market and taste… and its burgeoning pop culture. Think all of this paint the complex picture of why yes you would know Murakami Takashi but not Munakata Shiko. Speaking of the latter the section on modern printmaking were really interesting enjoying Munakta but Onchi and Hiratsuka. The essay on Okakura, "Tension and Aesthetic Nationalism" should have been more obvious than mingei’s skew but was revealing. And finally loved the section on calligraphy, always the biggest fan of Ozu' observance of mu (nothingness) that calligraphy expresses rather beautifully…a fact I forgot or haven’t appreciated due to utter lack of kanji. Was also the reason I decided to give up studying tea ceremony after two years. But was enamored reading the sections on Nakahara Nantembo and Fukushima Keido. The former even once wrote that his favorite poem was simply 28 repititions of the word mu. Both naturally devloped their own personal variations of this and other characters, expressing their own vision of the word's form and meaning. In each their own most famous work, respectively, "Mu Manon" and "Mu Nantembo" scroll there are two more large characters to contrast with mu well Fukushima's mu is accompanied only the eight small congee of a simple ranking signature. It is as though Nantembo wrote MU! while, Fukushima has written MUUuu. This is an outstanding characteristic of calligraphy. Each character can endlessly be reinterpreted in different scripts styles and compositions here. The two forms for mu are extremely different and yet they both convey the power of this conception in zen. A really great read.

#finishedbooks In Praise of Shadows by Tanazaki Junichiro. I read this a long time ago probably around 2008 between eikaiwa lessons. Forgot how impressionable I was as I read it again. It totally founded my disdain for kabuki in favor of Noh something I only recently realized the pointlessness of. Though to be fair I still haven't seen kabuki live but have seen noh over a dozen of times. But ultimately it is about light or really the lack there of as a visual aesthetic. “The quality that we call beauty… must always grow from the realities of life.” And so with this there really was this practicality in regard to the time that he was lamenting. As electricity becomes available the reality of building around candle light changes. From kabuki in praise of Noh, that adopted the very much the same lighting, to his favorite restaurant there is this theme. Originally I think I read it quite literally as a sorta aesthetic jimi/ hade argument. Nearly 20 years later I read it as someone griping about the times ...just with really beautiful insight. A sentiment I think he himself reflected when later in life upon building a new house his architect told him he had read his book and knew exactly how to design it in which Tanazaki more or less said hell no haha. I love that humility…really just a writer writing inhibited…I mean he starts off glorifying a toilet in an outhouse. I do have a practical reason for reading this and I was curious about candles in Japanese interiors in general that hopefully will be reflected in an upcoming exhibit. Also felt his work is really misunderstood, not sure how many white photographers who shot sunlight in Japanese interiors calling their work, “In Praise of Shadows” (a close second is Tokyo-Ga or an Ozu title for a photo exhibition) missing the point of darkness and its suggestion of more and the objects with gold flakes that naturally reflect light offering this beauty.

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