E A s t M E E t s W E s t: D o W A N D J A PA N Hannah Millen ’16
A
rthur Wesley Dow was a groundbreaking printmaker, a teacher at many reputable art institutions, and a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A lesser known aspect of his artistic practice was his photography. Dow took countless photographs during his lifetime, and he saved many of his cyanotypes in his own personal collection. He was fascinated by elements of Japanese art, which he used as a model across all media throughout his career. in the cyanotypes two vases with irises and Flowers with Pods, he used the Japanese concept of notan, as well as Japanese principles of color and line usage, to transcend the boundaries between the artificial and natural worlds (figs. 24, 25). Dow was born in 1857 in ipswich, Massachusetts. Following many other young American artists, he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian in 1884.1 it was there that Dow realized his attachment to landscape painting, a genre he went on to explore in various media during his long career.2 While he was in France, he attended an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints organized by Paul gauguin. initially, Dow felt little inspiration from the prints; he did not appreciate their style and would not until the 1890s.3 in 1891, however, Dow came across a book of Hokusai prints in the Boston Public library that entranced him. After this discovery, he became a major proponent of what he understood to be Japanese style. He believed that Japanese art was simple and direct, driven by formal structure and composition.4 these ideas, along with others, would create the basis of Dow’s treatise Composition, first published in 1899. in Composition, Dow argued that the academies in Paris and Europe were biased in the art they taught because they ignored all non-Western art.5 He opposed imitative teaching, stating that it did not help students to copy old masters. rather, he felt that it was more important to focus on the “rhythmic harmony” of scenes, which could be found by studying the patterns of nature.6 Dow argued that the foundation of art was composition,
light, and overall design.7 the major principle that he took from Japanese art was the aesthetic concept of notan, which he defined as the “harmony resulting from the combination of dark and light spaces.”8 Dow claimed that the creation of “good” color in a work was dependent on the proper use of notan; in fact, without notan he believed it was impossible to create a successful composition.9 Dow used many of the principles described in Composition in his own photography and printmaking. Around 1890 he began making photographs of the ipswich area, including cityscapes and landscapes, primarily for personal use.10 Despite being an amateur photographer, he saw photography as a fine art form and recognized its merits.11 Dow made photographs as stand-alone works of art and as studies for his woodblock prints and paintings.12 As Barbara Michaels states in her essay “Arthur Wesley Dow and Photography,” Dow chose the cyanotype process because he favored its blue tones, a color also prominent in his paintings and prints. While other photographers rejected the cyanotype, “Dow had the imagination to feature it.”13 it was through the cyanotype process that he produced two vases with irises and Flowers with Pods.
two vases with irises was probably made around 1900 (fig. 24). it features a botanical subject that has been removed from its natural setting and placed in front of a rough, burlap-like backdrop, contrasting the living flowers with a background of dead space. there are three fresh irises contained in two vases. the diagonal from the flower in the right vase intersects with the flower in the left, creating a dynamic tension in the composition, which Dow called opposition.14 Dow arranged the flowers in this configuration to draw the viewer’s eye from the tallest iris blossom downward in a fluid motion to the other flowers. the lighting in this photograph hits the flowers head on and casts few shadows. Because the singular iris shadow is directly behind the flower on the left, the blossoms almost
Fig. 24: Arthur Wesley Dow, American, 1857-1922, two vases with irises, about 1900, cyanotype, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of Philio Wigglesworth Cushing and Henry Coolidge Wigglesworth from the collection of their parents Frank and Anne Wigglesworth in memory of their love for ipswich. M. and M. Karolik Fund and Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, 2006.1277.160 48