Exhibition shows mechanics of cultural influence

Storytelling is part and parcel of the visual arts. Tales told can come from abstract technique or subject matter of a particular piece. They can be biographies of the individual artists or of collective cultures. They can reveal political landscapes or map intellectual terrain at a particular time and place.

Aside from their aesthetic beauty, color woodcuts made in America, Britain and Japan at the turn of the last century also illustrate the unmistakable influence each culture had on the others.

An exhibition of color woodcuts from those three countries is set to open at the Chazen Museum of Art on Saturday, Dec. 9. It is a show originating at the museum under the guidance of Andrew Stevens, Chazen curator of prints, drawings and photographs. Stevens says that the Chazen’s excellent collection of woodcuts made in the early 20th century by artists of those three countries came to fascinate him.

“At that time, Europe and America had become enamored with Japanese prints, and artists and collectors were studying them carefully, learning about the way they had been made and about the culture they came from,” he says. “In some ways this was a mirror image of the influence of Western art upon Japanese artists. They had long been interested in art from Europe, and when Japanese ports forcibly opened for trade in 1853, a flood of Western influence came into Japan. By 1900, Japanese artists were exploring how best to make use of Western tradition and meld it with Japanese traditions.”

Stevens says that these mutual influences are readily apparent, in both technique and subject matter, in the 110 works going on display at the Chazen.

“Even the colors in the prints share many similarities. Artists around the world used them in what can be called an international style,” he says. “For example, in the first decades of the 20th century we see prints by Americans like Arthur Wesley Dow and Bertha Lum that borrow from Japan. In Dow’s ‘Apple Tree of 1922’ he uses the Japanese techniques of line, form, color and the harmonious arrangements of light and dark for the print. In Lum’s ‘Fox Lady of 1913’ she uses Japanese subject matter. In Japan, Hiroshi Yoshida returned from trips to Europe and America with images of those countries, of the foreign people and cities he found there. He interprets them in a combination of Western and Japanese styles.”

Stevens says the aforementioned examples rank among his own personal favorites, but he adds that each print in the exhibition sets its own standard of excellence. “There would be no point in having them in the show if they didn’t,” he says.

He adds that another fascinating aspect is the insights that the woodcuts provide into aesthetic sensibilities of a century ago, and how those aesthetics changed with exposure to other cultures and traditions.

“I hope viewers get a sense of how cultures expand themselves by looking abroad, and what they learn from one another,” he says.

Stevens will discuss the color woodcuts at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 8, in L140 Chazen. A free public reception will follow at about 6:30 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through Sunday, Feb. 25.

For more information about the exhibition, which is free and open to all, or for details about related educational presentations, visit http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/ or call 263-2246.