My first film lasts two minutes and was made in iMovie. Hundreds of megabytes in size, the file was compressed and rendered for online viewing when I exported it. In this process, the content of the final frame became unreadable. Here is what I was trying to show:
For more about this project, see the editor’s diary at mixed nerve.
My big read of the last month has been a Honolulu Academy of Arts book called Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco, by Kendall H. Brown and Sharon A. Minichiello, which I carefully rationed out to a minimum of four but not more than six pages at a time. I finished it last night and look forward to reading it again in a few months. I can only call this a “thundering good read” rich with the sweet pain of having to put it down repeatedly even though you know you must. I am no fan of art criticism; art criticism often appears to be practiced as a vice. But the text of Taisho Chic was written in a gloriously conversational mode by someone with the eyes of an axe, and with no hawk to grind—text as sweet and subtle as the art on the facing page. Taisho is technically the imperial reign that followed the Meiji, but Taisho Chic is here defined to include the 1930s, up to the wartime austerity measures and reinforcement of nationalistic retro-traditionalism, what Miriam Silverberg called “the end of modernity.” This art is closely related to ukiyo-e bijin ga, featuring style and mood above all else, in particular through portrayals of beautiful women. It all puts the reader or viewer in mind of Lafcadio Hearn’s remark that of all the traditional fine arts of Japan, the women themselves were the highest achievement.
Gary Mawyer
Possibly the most popular of all Kuchi-e by Terazaki Kogyo for your summer fun.
This image and caption are from The Art of Japan, the site of two dealers in prints and paintings. Two other sites worth visiting are mikworks and Unique Japan. Anyone interested in things Japanese—traditional, modern, and digital—will enjoy these.
