If you’re among those of us who have never viewed Japanese woodblock art with any concentrated interest, Williamstown’s Clark Art Institute exhibit, spanning 140 years of images, is a revelation. The vivid colors, the expertise and the design of these woodcut prints, dating to the 1830s, are spellbinding.
“Some of these you look at and you can’t even believe it’s a woodblock. It must be drawn,” Jay Clarke, the show’s curator said during a walkabout through the galleries. She’s the institute’s curator of prints, drawings and photographs.
Seeing these images in books somehow fails to display their dynamic range. The artists, past and present, are exemplars of the form in often creating three-dimensional depth from engravings made upon cherry wood. In some illustrations the grain of the wood itself is part of the image.
“You really have to see these in person, Clarke added.
The exhibit of 89 works of art is divided into three motifs. The first catalogues the era of ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the Floating World”) woodcuts, a period when the country was isolated from the west. The second section displays early 1900s woodcut art, shin hanga, much of it designed for western eyes.
“It’s kind of like selling to the tourist trade,” Clarke said. “There would be umbrellas, this beautiful rain and architecture.”
Indeed, these artists, who frequently composed their landscapes with Mt. Fuji prominent, were masterful in creating the atmospheric effects of rain, fog and falling snow.
The last section of S-saku hanga, highlights the modern age wherein artists may use abstraction in creating scenes and work independently through every stage of the process.
Woodblock printing was well developed in China by 600 A.D. and served to create books and illustrations prior to the invention of moveable type presses. Through trade, Japan adopted the process and may have pioneered the introduction of color.
In 1637, the Japanese feudal lords virtually banned trade with the west, limiting commerce to trade with China and the Dutch. This peaceful seclusion continued until Commodore Matthew Perry’s “gunboat diplomacy” broke the isolation in 1853. When Japanese officials later delayed treaty negotiations, they were threatened with war.
Decades later, exported Japanese woodblock art became influential to Impressionists such as Degas, Renoir and Pissarro. In 1887, Vincent van Gogh, with unusual discipline and with oils, expertly copied Utagawa Hiroshige’s “Sudden Shower at Ohashi.”
Of the early artists, a former fire warden, Hiroshige (1797-1858) was perhaps the most influential. He was enormously prolific, designing books, paintings and improving techniques of ukiyo-e. When he died, the spirit and visual poetry of this extremely precise art soon declined.
The influence of these Japanese artists upon the Impressionists was profound. Whereas these European artists may have indicated areas of incidental space with shading, they learned from woodblocks that such areas could remain flat without details.
They were also impressed that far-off vistas could be juxtaposed with partial walls or moon gates in the foreground, adding a sense of depth. Incidental figures might also be slightly cropped out of an image, suggesting spontaneity in the design.
In later years, traveling Japanese artists were as impressed by the lush, colorful works of painters such as Paul Gauguin so the cross-pollination of western and eastern ideas was complete.
In the classical ukiyo-e business of woodblock sales, the artist composed a scene on paper, in reverse, that was then placed over cherry wood and engraved by another worker. Prints were then made in a laborious process, one at a time. Each color required a separate block, or a partial block, and all labor was done by hand. The publisher, who often had suggested what the original image should be, was vital to the sales of the image. The illustrations strived to be popular, and beyond landscapes, the artists would depict well-known Kabuki actors, beautiful women and comic scenes ranging from drunks to people slipping on ice. There was also a lively market in adult fare.
For this reason there were government censors and sumptuary laws. The vertical banners on many images indicate not just the woodblock’s title, artist and publisher, but also the government seal of approval.
“They weren’t supposed to show erotica,” Clarke said, “although this was a very strong current in Japanese woodblocks.”
The censor’s seal, she said “ensured that the image wasn’t politically sensitive or seen as offensive.”
It was assumed that an engraving could be processed no more than 200 times before it would lose its fine edges. In the 19th century these images could be purchased for a few pennies. They now command prices similar to paintings of that period.
In the newly renovated Manton galleries, curator Lara Yeager- Crasselt has assembled 34 works on paper, including rare books, to highlight another period of artistic cross-pollination.
From the 15th century onward, northern European artists, via sailboats or travel over the Alps, were magnetically drawn to Italy. This included artists such as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens.
“There’s this huge movement that picks up pace in the 16th century and it was really what you had to do as an artist. You had to go to Rome,” Yeager-Crasselt said.
The Italians favored a classical approach to the rendering of the human body as underlined by del Pallaiuolo’s “Battle of the Naked Men” (c.1470). Ten figures are in violent combat without any hint of embarrassment from catastrophic wardrobe malfunction. They’re all posed, however, to display muscles generally only seen in Hollywood movies. The engraving served as a primer as to how the ideal body should be depicted. The print remained popular well into the 17th century.
Nearby is a lively red chalk illustration by Rubens of “Hercules Strangling the Nemean Lion” (c.1620). Based upon a sculpture, the classical body again, fully strained, is depicted with robust musculature and it’s clear that the artist changed elements of the pose in seeking perfection.
Rubens had written that in transforming a three-dimensional sculpture into a drawing, it should be made dynamic, “it should never smell like stone.”
Fledgling painters had many resources. In 1646, the painter Annibale Carracci printed “The Occupations of the Bolognese.” The catalog was filled with examples of workmen, such as a detailed illustration of a merchant in leggings and loose clothing carrying shoes on a pole. In 1650, the Netherlander Abraham Bloemaert created the “Tekenboek,” a sketchbook showing how to draw human anatomy starting with noses and eyes. The Clark’s copy shows abstract whorls of red chalk on its pages, traces made by a student long ago.
Yeager-Crasselt explained that, in these earlier times, the artistic ideas of these prints had greater mobility than paintings and provided a cultural dialogue between artists of the north and south.
Entering a small gallery in the institute’s marble building, you can view a collection of northern European paintings, which Yeager-Crasselt also curated.
“The idea of this show is to look at the innovations in 17th century Dutch genre painting through a very focused lens of their idea of an interior world,” the curator said.
The miniature paintings were extremely popular in their time and valuable enough to be traded for a home.
At the gallery’s entrance you view Gerrit Dou’s “Girl at a Window,” which, according to Yeager-Crasselt, has only been exhibited once in the institute’s history.
Dou had commanded lofty prices for his paintings and his work reigned until the early 20th century. Alas, after centuries his fame flickered out, supplanted by the works of Rembrandt.
Dou was a paragon of “fine art” and his effects of light and color is complemented by invisible brush strokes, created at times by using a single hair to apply paint.
Opposite the Dou is a 1653 portrait of a “Public Notary” by Gabriel Metsu. The artist was impressed with Dou’s treatment of everyday subject matter and the work echoes the girls’ portrait, with a figure also peering from a stone building with light provided from the outside.
Equally remarkable to the detail upon detail in these small images are the paintings in which light from a single candle illuminates an interior scene. A smiling boy holds a state-of-the-art 17th-century mousetrap near a cask and cabbage and a hanging game bird. Half the scene is in darkness and the smile may allude to an ancient symbolism, the bird suggesting sex.
“I’m hoping that people on one level are just amazed at the beauty and the skill and the craftsmanship that went into making these works,” Yeager-Crasselt said. “I think we can relate to these people. The idea of sitting privately at a window and thinking, that’s as relevant today as it was 400 to 500 years ago.”
“Japanese Impressions” continues through April 2. “Looking North and South” (European prints and drawings) continues through May 29. “An Inner World” (Dutch genre paintings) continues through Sept. 17.
Admission: $20; free admission if under age 18 or students w/i.d. Directions: Take Route 2 west to Williamstown. The institute is a half-mile south from the rotary intersection of Routes 2 and 7, just past the college.