Ukiyo-e Prints

浮世絵版画

SOMETIMES IT IS A CURSE

FOR A GOOD ARTIST

TO BE BORN AT THE WRONG TIME

Laurence P. Roberts in his A Dictionary of Japanese Artists (p. 203) says that Yoshitaki "From about 1860 to 1880 [was] the leading designer of actor prints in Osaka." However, Roberts adds: "His work...did not escape the general decline of quality in the print field that set in during the second half of the 19th century." While this artist may not have been a creative genius he may also have been a product of his age. His milieu, the zeitgeist, the alignment of the planets: No matter what particular influences you believe in Yoshitaki had to have been a product of his age. How many potential Jackson Pollacks lived in ancient Babylon? How many unleashed Rembrandts rode with Genghis Khan? There must have been some, but they had the bad luck to be born out of time and place. Surely this was one of the cosmic jokes which plagued Yoshitaki.

In a remarkable short story by Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist", the author tells us that large crowds once would pay good money to watch a man in a cage starve himself. The longer he fasted the more people wanted to watch. But the times changed and interests waned. Fasting became a solitary pursuit and Kafka's hero practiced an art no one cared for anymore. By way of analogy, that is what happened Yoshitaki. He came along at a time when ukiyo-e was on the decline. Still, he wasn't a bad artist. He even had an advantage: Yoshitaki was a pupil of Yoshiume, a name which does not quickly come to mind, but Yoshiume was taught by Kuniyoshi.

Back in the late 1980s, give or take a year, I went to hear an elderly - no ancient - pianist. He was forty-five minutes late on stage because they couldn't rouse him from his nap. When they did he was cranky as hell. Slowly he lumbered across the stage to the piano and I swear - no lie - it must have taken him two to three minutes just to sit down. When he finally did and touched flesh to keys he was brilliant. The audience loved him and brought him back for something like six encores. Poor man. This was Mieczyslaw Horszowski who by then was nearly one hundred years old. But that is not my point. My point is that he came out of an era in which he was blessed by his connections. Horzowski's mother had been a pupil of one of Chopin's students. Later in Vienna Horzowski studied with a student of a student of Beethoven's. Such lineage does not lie. That is why when I tell you that Yoshitaki had been a pupil of a pupil of Kuniyoshi's it actually means something. Some level of standards and quality had to be maintained. At least they had in these two examples.

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