you know those golden ceramic or plastic cats you see at the entrance to every chinese resturaunt and yo sushi? those are maneki-neko. They are welcome cats (maneku is to beckon) and their job is to beckon customers from the street. The waving arm isnt actually waving you see. Its beckoning and this leads into the culutral difference lesson that I had today with Gunch, my new friend.
Whereas we Western folk beckon to someone with a gesture that is a palm up finger flick - imagine how you gesture 'come here', the Japanese do it palm down. Their palm down finger flick beckon looks very similar to our palms down finger flick voetsek so initially being called to by a Japanese person is very confusing (it happened to me on my hospital trip). this is the most notable gesture divergence i have come across yet (aside from the gesture for 'I' or 'me?' which for us is pointing to the chest and for the Japanese, a point to the nose).
So anywho, Gunch told me that when Maneki Neku manufacturers realised that their cats were popular tourist trinkets and that Westeners had a different directional beckon they began to produce cats that gestured the other way, the Western way. So apparently, if i look hard enough I'll be able to find Maneki-Neko that dont gesture down in a 'wave' beckon, but up: the Western way - as if throwing salt over its little golden shoulder.
(Todays blog is dedicated to Smashley - for his endless fascination with Maneki Neku).
.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Hiroshima Weekend
This weekend I felt like a mini-adventure. Nothing that would result in cuts and bruises; just a little foray into a new place (that is safely only an hour and a half from home). Thus I ended up in Hiroshima city - not for the first time. But it was was the first time by myself. It feels like ages since I have been utterly by myself. Strange, since I am in a country where I dont know anybody. The truth is that the people I do know I see a lot and I could feel my personality slipping into the liminal space between being my personality and their personality. Blahblahblah off I went and in Hiroshima I found the aloneness I needed among 1 million people. The following three posts (HW) can be read chronologically top to bottom.
HW pt1: Art museum
My first destination in the city was the Prefectural Museum of Art. The building reminded me of the Whitney. Seventies grey brick with very clean corners. I liked it. Inside was that blessed hush combined with sub-zero air conditioning - that special art gallery feeling. I could pay 600 Yen for a normal ticket or 900 Yen for normal entry plus a special exhibition or 1200 Yen for the gallery, the special exhibit and the entry into the traditional Japanese garden next to the gallery. I could see some of the garden through the huge windows - a neat green square with leaves romantically scattered about, along the farthest side ran a collonade of vines under which were weather beaten adarondak chairs. Temptation enough! I took the really pricey ticket.
I spent and hour or two in the gallery's permanent collection. It is small but very well chosen and curated. You enter into a mini-sculpture hall. At the far end is a huge mother and child that looks like its made of gold but really thin gold with a light bulb inside because it glows. It is in fact the original plaster cast of a bronze but its lit so beautifully as to look like the light is internal. The sculpture was made shortly after the A bomb and shows a Pieta-like duo but instead of Mary's knowing calm, the mother is distressed, the weight of her dead child wrenching her arms down and pulling her back. I would say close to 60% of Japanese art I saw this weekend had a connection with the war or the bomb. It was quite harrowing and meant that when it came time to visit the A bomb museum itself, I just couldnt do it.
After the sculpture garden you find yourself in the European art room. As you enter Dali's enourmous Dream of Venus lurches at you. It is fucking wonderful. It is not his most famous drippy clock painting but it is a drippy clock painting and it is huge and when I finally let it have me I got lost in the landscape and the dali turquoise sky and the satisfying illusion of the drippy clocks for ages.
The other highlight of the room was an Arp sculpture called Birth or something equally non-descript. If you walked round and round the small bronze it seemed to morph and bubble becomeing a fish and then a bird and then a fish again. It was also perfectly lit. The lighting in the whole place so well done.
The second room of the permanent collection was Japanese art from the same period as the art in the European room (1915-1960) : war years. Apart from the work that was clearly influenced by the Bomb, I found it hard to distinguish Japanese-ness in the paitnings. They all looked like Miro or Picasso or German Expressionist knock offs. Which gots me to thinking: we allow our Western art to have Japanese influence (Van Gogh and his crew) or African influence (Picasso and his posse) but when the influence runs the other way, suddenly they become knock offs. Must all Japanese art look like wood block prints? To answer my question the next room housed a contemporary work by a Japanese artist consisting of ten or so kimonos suspended behind glass lit with surgical white light. I loved them. They were Japanese but they weren't wood block prints (which dont get me wrong, are really beautiful). I dont know what I was supposed to admire in the Kimonos: the cloth, the slight surreal oversized-ness, the craft of them. I ended up admiring the cloth which ranged from muted Japanese tartan (such a thing exists) to crazy Op Art blocks in neon pink and grey.
All this thinking and looking had made me very hungry so I treated myself to a posh lunch in the gallery resturaunt. Fish, pickles, rice, salad and accoutrements. plus coffee. I was the youngest person in the place by at least 30 years. Imagine upper east side matriarchs in pearls but make them Japanese - those were my fellow diners. Still, unlike the upper east side, I was treated politely, generously and kindlylee - I have yet to encounter anything but in this country.
The views of the garden were enticing me and even though I had a special exhibition calling me from the third floor, I reasoned, what if it rains later in the afternoon? Just a quick garden turn-around after lunch then I would give the special exhibition my full attention. The garden was just too much to ignore.
I spent and hour or two in the gallery's permanent collection. It is small but very well chosen and curated. You enter into a mini-sculpture hall. At the far end is a huge mother and child that looks like its made of gold but really thin gold with a light bulb inside because it glows. It is in fact the original plaster cast of a bronze but its lit so beautifully as to look like the light is internal. The sculpture was made shortly after the A bomb and shows a Pieta-like duo but instead of Mary's knowing calm, the mother is distressed, the weight of her dead child wrenching her arms down and pulling her back. I would say close to 60% of Japanese art I saw this weekend had a connection with the war or the bomb. It was quite harrowing and meant that when it came time to visit the A bomb museum itself, I just couldnt do it.
After the sculpture garden you find yourself in the European art room. As you enter Dali's enourmous Dream of Venus lurches at you. It is fucking wonderful. It is not his most famous drippy clock painting but it is a drippy clock painting and it is huge and when I finally let it have me I got lost in the landscape and the dali turquoise sky and the satisfying illusion of the drippy clocks for ages.
The other highlight of the room was an Arp sculpture called Birth or something equally non-descript. If you walked round and round the small bronze it seemed to morph and bubble becomeing a fish and then a bird and then a fish again. It was also perfectly lit. The lighting in the whole place so well done.
The second room of the permanent collection was Japanese art from the same period as the art in the European room (1915-1960) : war years. Apart from the work that was clearly influenced by the Bomb, I found it hard to distinguish Japanese-ness in the paitnings. They all looked like Miro or Picasso or German Expressionist knock offs. Which gots me to thinking: we allow our Western art to have Japanese influence (Van Gogh and his crew) or African influence (Picasso and his posse) but when the influence runs the other way, suddenly they become knock offs. Must all Japanese art look like wood block prints? To answer my question the next room housed a contemporary work by a Japanese artist consisting of ten or so kimonos suspended behind glass lit with surgical white light. I loved them. They were Japanese but they weren't wood block prints (which dont get me wrong, are really beautiful). I dont know what I was supposed to admire in the Kimonos: the cloth, the slight surreal oversized-ness, the craft of them. I ended up admiring the cloth which ranged from muted Japanese tartan (such a thing exists) to crazy Op Art blocks in neon pink and grey.
All this thinking and looking had made me very hungry so I treated myself to a posh lunch in the gallery resturaunt. Fish, pickles, rice, salad and accoutrements. plus coffee. I was the youngest person in the place by at least 30 years. Imagine upper east side matriarchs in pearls but make them Japanese - those were my fellow diners. Still, unlike the upper east side, I was treated politely, generously and kindlylee - I have yet to encounter anything but in this country.
The views of the garden were enticing me and even though I had a special exhibition calling me from the third floor, I reasoned, what if it rains later in the afternoon? Just a quick garden turn-around after lunch then I would give the special exhibition my full attention. The garden was just too much to ignore.
HW pt 2: the garden
Japanese gardens are an art form. The paths are created to provide a walker with a wide range of views and contrasts - shade looking into light; light looking into shade. across the water looking at the water from the stones etcetc. There are also seats carefully situated to provide a sitter with the ultimate vista, heavy on the composition. Shukkein Garden in Hiroshima did all this. Although it is in the city centre, two minutes into the garden and you cannot hear or see the city in the slightest. The hobbity paths take you around and through the big central lake. There are old wooden boats moored here and there (I thought initially just for decoration but I reaslised the gardeners must use them to go into the lake and prune tend the little islands). One feels immediately at ease in the garden. It is the beauty but also the way people use it: they are relaxed. Little old ladies were sleeping on benches. Teenagers in enourmous clothes with rhinestones walk around chatting. Dads with cigarettes hanging out their mouths help their kids spot terrapins - of which there are many! I liked that it was ot an exclusive space, it is an utterly public one but, and here's the wacky part, these teenagers and dads with cigarettes are so respectful of the place that they wouldnt dare be boisterous or drop ash on the floor. An example of where letting your hair down and trashing the place are not synonymous. I always thought they were. I spent about an two hours in the garden: walking, spying on people and looking at views whilst quietly contemplating my cultural inferiority. when I had finished in the gallery I went back to the garden and ate an ice cream and read The Great Gatsby. It was a beautiful afternoon.
completely ruined me for the special exhibit.
completely ruined me for the special exhibit.
HW pt 3: special exhibit
The Special Exhibit was a Le Corbusier extravaganza with not only building sketches and blue prints and photos but models and drawings and paintings by him too - who knew he painted? he was actually quite a good painter and a very good sculptor. The room filled with his fine arts was also filled with ultra hip hiroshima fashion types so I was too intimidated to go really close and examine the work. from afar it looked great. Analytical Cubism at its humourous best. What really did it for me was the models. Oh architectural models!! why are they so beautiful? these ones (again) were lit to perfection; the absolute best one being a cross section of an apartment in Unite de Habitation with a light box on the one side that mimicked the sun so you could see how light would fall in the kitchen or the bedroom at different times of day.
There was a dvd of the construction of some of his most famous stuff but it was in Austrian or German or something. All the hip Hiroshima people watched it diligently. Even though I could have more successfully pretended to understand what was being said, by that time I was tired and I wanted to buy things to renew my spirits. The gift shop was oddly stocked...and I could only afford post cards anyway.
There was a dvd of the construction of some of his most famous stuff but it was in Austrian or German or something. All the hip Hiroshima people watched it diligently. Even though I could have more successfully pretended to understand what was being said, by that time I was tired and I wanted to buy things to renew my spirits. The gift shop was oddly stocked...and I could only afford post cards anyway.
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