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Manggha Museum/ Feliks Jasieński about the Japanese Art
Excerpts from the second volume of "Manggha"
The Japanese is a knight - artist.
In his soul: the ideal triad of
honour, country, and art.
So, the armour: the sabre.
The sabre - a work of art.
The armour of horror - a matchless master-piece of the universal armorer's art. The work of art fine in its production, with features national to the quick, exquisite as a whole. The blade capable of shaving the heads off a couple of necks in single skilful strike. The rest of the sabre: knick-knacks: a proving ground for artisans-artists and artists-artisans: drawers, chiselers, haberdashers, lacquerers.
An inexhaustible spring of ideas, simple but stunning. Execution - without a flaw. Everywhere and always do this decorative genius and the love for the task appear. The studiousness having its source in the innate finesse, and the zeal which results in freshness - as if something unintended, yet appealing by its unbelievable grace (...)
A modest metal circle - seven centimetres in diameter: the tsuba. The small circle which separates the handle from the blade, with the opening for the blade in the middle, and two side slots holding the heads of small daggers, inserted in the wall of the sheath, and made of wood, variously carved, lacquered and ornamented - this is a telling, and completely sufficient, proof of the artistic culture which is at an incredibly high level, and which permeates the entire national life. There are special collections of the sabre guards, comprising hundreds and thousands of pieces, but no two pieces are exactly alike. Wrought iron, and very rarely cast, bronze, iron inlaid or sometimes ornamented with gold or silver, or more rarely with enamel. The Japanese do not use precious stones as ornaments at all, nor wear them themselves. If there is opulence, it always is discrete. The guards are valuable objects not for the cost of the material, but as incredibly fine embodiments, thanks to the skillfulness of the chiselers, of incredibly graceful ideas of the drawing artists, in exhaustible in their inventiveness.
One may find on the guards all that surrounds us, starting with the blade of grass, and ending with the clouds, but what arouses our admiration and bring awe is the use of the material, the translation of nature into art, seen individually by individual individualities, from the national point of view. One may find everything there - geometrical motives, world of plants and animals or figurative and landscape compositions. The execution ranges from intentional, almost brutal simplicity, behind which a connoisseur will always see high culture, to filigree subtlety, bordering on black magic (...)
Remarkable ingenuity, grace and finesse dominate in all works of Japanese art, so also in the bronzes. It is one of the oldest and richest sections. The forms of vases, censers, candlesticks, and of various gadgets is a true feast for the eye. Animals, treated either naturalistically or stylized, represent one of the most bizarre masterpieces of the human art, and always possess, to a high degree, national character. Subtle knick-knacks, bizarre gadgets; grace, elegance, sunshine, monkey-like agility in execution, monkey-like gumption in design
Graphic artists - first of all! And it should be that way, since the art of graphic design which is not predominantly graphic does not merit existence. Graphic artists - but not thoughtless and not soulless. This art has everything: thought, soul, expression, wide expansiveness, horror and melancholy. In addition, one should want, and should be able to look through the blossoming branches [...] through the crowd of women with stylized faces, dressed in wonderfully designed, colorful dresses, created after all by the most subtle colorists of the world. (...)
At the far reaches of Asia, one step from the most abysmal of all abysses ever found on Earth, almost four thousand islands arise. The islands, like a torn and scattered emerald necklace, reach the dark north to the shining and burning south. The islands are mountainous, with craggy coast, and therefore remarkably picturesque, with diverse and bountiful flora. And above the isles and above the clouds, like a mighty and fierce ruler, rules Mount Fuji - the volcano horrible in the past, now mute. The conical giant, whose crest is covered with snow - has been - will be. (...)
There has never been, and will never be in the history of human art, a topic more popular, the topic whose elaboration would or could yield such a number of works of art of such quality, and yet so diverse with respect to the individual approaches, and the materials in which the ideas are captured. Mount Fuji is almost Japan herself; Mount Fuji in Japanese art is almost Japanese art itself. (...)
The Japanese wished to have all these diverse beauties of their country constantly before their eyes (...). The nation walks mesmerized, insatiate, and looks and looks at the wonders of nature. When the ball of fire, whose image adorns the banners, slowly bows in the glory of crimson and gold and disappears behind the breathing mighty breast of the boundless waters, and when the spherical paper lanterns, multi-colored, ornamented, are lit, then the nation sits on their delicate and spotless mats, and reaches to their pockets and drawers for piles of albums, Tokaids and Mangghas. Then, the nation sips tea and imbibes on these wonders of nature, translated into the language of charming, beautiful art. The nation - mad, suffering from a maddening case of image-madness (...).
So the armies of artists go ahead in order to provide entertainment for those "sick", and, at the same time, quench their own thirst for creating. They are fascinated by the whole surrounding world: from an ant on the blade of grass, and a spider's web, through towering and dark conifer forests, and by groves of lithe bamboo, rustling with their delicate elongated leaves which one must paint in ink with a single stroke of brush.
Then by cities, buzzing with multi-colored crowds, peaceful villages catered on the banks of glimmering lakes, or hidden in the coolness and aromatic dampness of the gorges, with their thunderous waterfalls, shining with white foam, at the feet of broad-shouldered castles and fabulous temples, with walls covered by the lace of sculptures. In their shade, dispersed in nothingness, looming discretely with blackened gold, dose off the statues Buddha, with wise, all-comprehending, and eternally absent half-smiles.
They lead us then, our blizzards, against storms, fog, downpours, blizzards, and heat, towards wild peaks, above the douds, to where the zigzaging lightnings dance playfully, to the immeasurable and unexplored ocean waves which whisper to us a mighty, monotonous, and eternal song of the universe. They are led themselves by Hokusai, decrepit but wonderfully young, full of fire and zeal, laborer indefatigable, creator of one hundred thousand works, signing them:
"an old man afflicted with a maddening mania of drawing", and reassuring, that he is only now, after having reached eighty, beginning to understand what is going on and that he hopes to create something re-ally artistic. He goes on to live eighty nine years. He is followed by Hiroshige, whose entire creative output is almost exclusively a hymn praising the native landscape.
Not only had these two artists erected an immortal monument of the wonderful beauties of the land, as it created by the genius artists for the artists. Not only had they been, are, and will be the providers of sweet moments for the art - and nature - loving souls. But also, by introducing the European artists to their way of looking at nature, and of representing nature did they cause a revolution in the European landscape painting of the nineteenth's century.
Wonderful land!
Wonderful people!
Wonderful art!
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