Sadao Watanabe: Japan's Pre-eminent Christian Printmaker

The work of Sadao Watanabe is unique in the annals of printmaking. His work is uplifting, informative, spiritual and has a look not unfamiliar to us westerners; but the story is the same, no matter what the cultural influences.

Watanabe's work has become popular in secular and religious print collecting circles. His career's subject matter is based upon Christianity and the stories of Christ's life, yet the manner in which the artist orchestrates his images is fluid and sinuous. In some of the work, there is a reference to some of the flattened perspectives found in orthodox icon paintings, where the figures' heads lean to the left or the right, and we sometimes see an angel or two swooping into the corners of his compositions. We also find elongated hands and feet, and dour-eyed, serious faces as one would find in eastern orthodox images.

His compositions, as often found in Japanese prints of the 19th c., do not contain any unnecessary information. We see the subject at hand, doing what the story suggests, and no more. Watanabe often fills his compositions with the figures, and then there are other irregularly-shaped compositions where he integrates the background color of the paper with the subject. His use of bold, simple color is effective and it enhances his subjects.

Watanabe also incorporates Asian elements into his work, such as the figures have almond-shaped eyes, and many figures wear kimonos. There are also influences of Buddhism, and Asian items like sake and sushi thrown into the mix. The effect of his clean lines, and simple message comes through and brings the viewer a feeling of joy, and peace.

Bio
Sadao Watanabe (1913 –1996), was a Japanese printmaker known for his biblical imagery, Watanabe was born and raised in Tokyo. He was famous for using the Japanese folk art style of mingei to create his work. His desire was to create art that could be enjoyed by common people and displayed in ordinary settings.

Watanabe dropped out of school at the age of ten when his father died. He became an apprentice of the master textile dye artist Serizawa Keisuke (1895–1984), where he learned to draw and dye fabrics. At seventeen, Watanabe became a Christian and devoted his entire career art to the gospel and biblical subjects, but often placed his subjects within a Japanese context.

In 1937, Watanabe saw an exhibition of Serizawa Keisuke’s (1895–1984) work at Japan’s Folk Art Museum. Watanabe later attended a workshop where Serizawa taught his katazome technique, which originated in Okinawa. The mingei and katazome methods use only natural organic materials and mineral pigments in a medium of soybean milk.

In 1958, Watanabe received first prize at the Modern Japanese Print Exhibition held in New York City Watanabe’s work was included with other featured sosaku hanga artists in James Michener’s The Modern Japanese Print (1962).

Selected Public Collections:
Benedictine University
British Museum
Museum of Modern Art
National Museum of Modern Art, in Tokyo
Valparaiso University
Vatican Museum
Watanabe’s prints have also shown in the White House, in Washington, DC.

The "Twelve Days of Christmas" in Print!

Greetings, my inked up friends.
As we celebrate the holidays, I hope you will take time out to count your blessings and tell the people in your lives how much they mean to you. I chose this year to put the 12 days of christmas song to print, so enjoy, and I will look forward to seeing you all in the coming new year!


On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
12 Drummers Drumming
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

The "Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol (thought to be of French origin.)

The Pure Expression of Max Pechstein's Prints

The prints of Max Pechstein are a symphony in tactile seduction. They have a primitive linear quality indicative of the media. He enticed the medium to make spectacular portraits and figurative works which exude emotion, passion and action. He intertwines Afro-centric mask-like faces with actual primitive statues from the South Pacific and crowds up the composition, further heightening the angst taking place. These figures seemingly move comfortably with their angled features and confined spaces, packed with action and drama.

Pecstein is capably expressive with his color, when he chooses to use it, but he often does not, and we miss nothing for the choice. His black and white images sing with clarity and directness. They slap us in the face and say’ Hey, try doing better than this!” , and I would say that that may not always be possible. How does one improve upon a perfect expression?

As we look at the world’s current events, the work of the Expressionists ring truer and are more honest about how humanity is not always attractive or appealing. These works show us that there are still hard, not so noble sides to ourselves and our emotions can be powerful. Pechstein’s portraits often show hardened, weary faces vs. the mask-like veneer of others, while still others convey compassion and curiosity.

Pechstein’s work is a great model of the German Expressionist movement and his use of emotion to convey how we are all human.

Bio
Hermann Max Pechstein (1881 –1955) was a German artist, and a member of the expressionist Die Brücke art group. He is best known for creating images of portraits and landscapes.
Pechstein was born in Zwickau. He studied art at the Dresden’s School of Applied Arts and the Royal Art Academy. In 1906, he met fellow artist Erich Heckel and joined an art group called Die Brücke. Later in 1910, he helped to found an art group called Neue Sezession, which earned him attention for his work, but the Die Brucke group expelled him for breaking away from their group. He was a prolific printmaker, producing nearly nine hundred prints during his career.

After Pechstein travelled to France and Italy between 1907 and 1908, then he returned to Berlin. Pechstein developed an interest in a so-called “primitive” art like many of his Expressionist comrades. He travelled to the western Pacific island of Palau in 1914 where he created images based upon “exotic” subjects.

Pechstein never broke entirely with the Expressionist style. In 1916, the first monograph on Pechstein’s work was published. He collaborated with several publishers, including Fritz Gurlitt, who commissioned numerous portfolios and illustrated books.

He also received commissions to decorate houses and make designs for stained glass windows. At the outbreak of World War I He returned to Germany, and suffered a breakdown. At the end of the war, he joined the Novembergruppe and Arbeitsrat für kunst groups.

Pechstein was professor of art at the Berlin Academy from 1923-1933. He did commissions for the German government for the International Labor Office in Geneva, in 1926. The Nazis turned him out from teaching for being a degenerate artist, but he was reinstated in 1945. In 1933, a large portion of Pechstein’s work was confiscated by the Nazis. Several of his works were displayed in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937.

He is buried on the Evangelischer Friedhof Alt-Schmargendorf, in Berlin.

Jean Charlot -Mexico's Brethren Printmaker

The prints of Jean Charlot reveal a man in love with foreign culture, and the exotic indigenous peoples who inhabit them. Charlot originally hailed from Europe, but he came to live in the Americas and embraced the culture, the food, women, the innocence of youth and the nurturing of family life.

He loved to portray daily rituals and embraced small moments in one’s life. The gentle simplicity of his compositions and blended colors vibrate life under the surface of one’s skin. The gentle kiss of a mother to her infant, and the intimacy of watching a mother combing a young girl’s hair are examples of an artist who is presently witnessing the event. He is not a voyeur sneaking a peak, at an intimate moment. He is part of the activity, and so are we.

Charlot’s compositions are closely cropped to his subjects. There isn’t a lot of excessive space around his figures, and their short, squat stances pull us closer to them, as though they are children to be cared for, looked after, and protected. Charlot’s Hawaiian-inspired images show mythic figure which look like statues, or personified spirits in the natural settings. His colors are flatter and more colorful that the previous Mexican-inspired work. The later pieces express more peacefulness and a oneness with the environment.

In all, Charlot brings small moments of observation to a grander level of tranquility and internal peace. I hope you enjoy seeing these prints, and reading more about his life, which was fairly instrumental in re-introducing Jose Guadalupe Posada’s work to the Mexican people; and bringing Posada’s skeleton figures to such joyful prominence every year when we celebrate the Day of the Dead.

Bio
Jean Charlot (1898 –1979) was a French/ American artist, who worked in Mexico and the United States. Charlot was born in Paris, but he claimed to have Aztec roots. This was because his mother was from Mexico, his grandfather was a French-Indian mestizo, and his Spanish great grandfather had married a woman who was half Aztec.

Charlot was fascinated with pre-Columbian artifacts and Mexican manuscripts. He studied art in Paris before serving in the French Army during WWI. In 1921, Charlot and his mother went to Mexico City, where he met Fernando Leal, Diego Rivera, Dorothy “Zohmah” Day and Pablo O'Higgins. He later married Day, who had originally moved to Mexico to be involved with the Mexican art movement.

Charlot is credited for having brought the work of Mexican printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, to international acclaim. Posada was prolific, having produced more than 15 thousand political satirical prints and lithographs, which were known from Mexico’s pre-revolutionary newspapers. Because Charlot was impressed with Posada’s cartoon-esque style, he sought out Posada's former publisher and in 1928 and1930, he published catalogs of Posada’s prints. Posada's images ultimately influenced several great Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Pablo O'Higgins, and still is a major influence on today’s younger Mexican artists.

After the Mexican Revolution, mural painting became one of the more accessible visual means to convey the government’s messages about social justice. Charlot participated in this mural art movement with his fresco called "Massacre in the Templo Mayor".

From 1926 to 1928, he spent time at Chichen Itza, helping to excavate, trace and copy bas-reliefs and painted surfaces from their newly revealed ancient Mayan temples. This had a major influence upon his own art.

While Charlot lived in the US, he also did some commissions for the Work Projects Administration's Federal Arts Project. In 1947, he moved to Colorado and spent two years teaching fresco painting and making lithographs at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He then moved to Hawaii to teach art at the University of Hawaii. His latter works reflect images from his thirty years’ living on the island, and they exude his fascination with nature and the Hawaiian people.

Public Collections:
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Cleveland Museum of Art
Hawaii State Art Museum
Honolulu Museum of Art
University of Hawaii at Manoa

1940 - illustrated Tito's Hats, which was written by Mel Ferrer.
1972 - published "An Artist on Art: Collected Essays of Jean Charlot", on Mexican art history.

Prints from the Normal Editions Workshop

"If We can't Print it, You Don't Need it Done!". If you recognize that motto, then you know which of N.E.W.'s printmaking brat packs were hanging around in the printshop ambitiously learning how to make some amazing works of art. That was the motto emblazoned upon the dark red and white t-shirts of the elite group of students and faculty who worked at Normal Editions Workshop, at Illinois State University, from the mid to late 1980s. We proudly wore our shirts to printmaking conferences and workshops, and we followed our mentors James D. Butler, Harold Boyd, Ray George and Richard Finch happily like mice after a pied piper.

The mission: work with any and all visiting artists coming to ISU, get them to make a print, and learn from watching the Master R.D. Finch roll up a transparent yellow like no one else in the whole printmaking universe. The atmosphere working at N.E.W. was serious, electric and collegial. It was more than that. It was a printmaking inked up fingers group of people that loved the smell of ink and loved hearing the snap of the roller coming off the litho plate. We grained stones, prepped plates, went to the shop at all hours, including weekends, to complete an edition within the prescribed deadline. We shared our lives, our artistic aspirations and managed to make some mighty fine prints which helped to sustain the print shop operations, and earn some kudos from the university's administration.

The program, one of the pioneers in the country, quickly established itself as a major destination to go study printmaking and gain some practical training with which to take under one's arm as we moved out into the world of art-making. Good lessons were learned about patience, perseverance, and all with a healthy dose of experimentation thrown in for good measure. Some of the artists coming through the N.E.W. shop when I was there were Sidney Goodman, Roseanne Retz, Wayne Kimball, Stewart Hitch, Dike Blair, Claire Seidl, and editions by the ISU art faculty James D. Butler, Richard Finch, Harold Gregor and Ray George.

When Richard finch retied a couple of years ago, the N.E.W. helm was passed over to the capable hands of Veda Rives. She, and her print guru faculty and the ever-ambitious printmaking students at ISU are continuing the tradition, and are bringing in visiting artists with a 'taking no prisoners' attitude.

Another thing that helps sustain the N.E.W. printshop activities are its travelling shows, like the one currently showing at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. Forty-two original prints are located in the 2nd floor Atrium Gallery in Kindlon Hall through December 19. It is well worth the trip, so get your pilgrimage print hats on and come take a look at these beauties.

I don't know about you, but I am liking the idea of a printshop that has the courage to try several different media and styles, brings in a wide variety of artists so students get some real world experience working with ideas and personalities. N.E.W. is one of the best in the country, and if you were a printmaking student wanting to get a good dose of the print world, you would get a great experience coming to Normal, Illinois. (Really, no one really admits going to school in Normal. It just takes too to explain, so we say Bloomington, or just say its in McLean County.)

I credit the experience at N.E.W. as having honed my printmaking chops and it helped me pursue my career goals as a teacher and curator. Thanks are an inadequate expression for all the experience has done for me, and the print students coming out of this program.

The team at N.E.W. is a cut above, and in a couple of years, the school will have a new art facility, and hopefully an expanded N.E.W. printshop as well. Here's to all the great people at N.E.W. If you are interested on bringing one of their travelling print exhibitions to your venue, contact Veda Rives at vrives@ilstu.edu

So remember, "If We can't Print it, You Don't Need it Done!"