fan crest   title
Home •  Recent Update •  Sales Gallery •  Archives
Articles •  Varia •  Glossary •  Biographies •  Bibliography
Search •  Video •  Contact Us •  Conditions of Sale •  Links
 

Archive: Kawanishi Hide (川西英)

Description:
Kyokuba shaseichô (Folding book of circus drawings: 曲馬冩生帖)
Signature:
Signed in the block on the cover and colophon: Kawanishi Hide hanga (川西英版画), and in the blocks on the drawings as Hide (英)
Seals:
Artist seal: Hide (ひで) below signatures on interior pages
Publisher:
Hanga Sô, Ginza, Tokyo (operated by Hirai Hiroshi)
Date:
5/1934
Format:
(H x W)
Sôsaku hanga woodblock-printed book
29.7 x 22.4 cm
Impression:
Excellent
Condition:
Excellent color, original staples intact; mild dog-eared corner LL of cover, some pigment transfer on all pages (which is often found with this book)
Price (USD/¥):
SOLD

Inquiry: Ref #KWN10

Comments:
Background

Kawanishi Hide (川西英), 1894-1965, whose given name was Hideo, was born and worked in Kobe, an international port city that inspired much of his subject matter. He was employed as a postmaster, but his ancestors were merchants, particularly traders in several alcoholic spirits, sake (酒 or nihonshu 日本酒), mirin (味醂), and shôchû (焼酎), which they transported to Tokyo in their fleet of ships. Kawanishi's family opposed his becoming involved in painting and printmaking. A self-taught artist, Kawanishi started painting in oils, but turned to woodblock printmaking after seeing a print by Yamamoto Kanae (A small bay in Brittany) displayed in a shop window in Osaka. He was not interested in ukiyo-e, although Nagasaki-e naturally fascinated him, with its exotic ships and foreign traders. Gradually abandoning oils, Kawanishi fell under the influence of the Art Deco poster style of the 1920s and first exhibited prints in 1923 with the Nihon Sôsaku Hanga Kyôkai (Japan Creative Print Association 日本創作版画協会 founded 1918). Other influences were Takehisa Yumeji (竹久夢二), Onchi Kôshirô (恩地孝四郎), Yamamoto Kanae (山本鼎), and European artists such as Lautrec, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Leger, and Matisse.

Kawanishi used poster colors and sumi (Japanese carbon black, i.e., soot, water, and glue), cutting his blocks with a curved chisel to obtain soft edges. He used katsura or ho wood, and printed on hodomura paper. He produced a large number of single-sheet designs (possibly as many as 1,000), as well as printed albums and books, and sets or series. The latter included Shôwa bijin fûzoku jûnitai (Twelve customs of beauties from the Shôwa era), 1929; Kobe jûnigagetsu fûkei (Scenes of Kobe during the twelve months), 1931; and Hanga Kobe hyakkei (Prints of one hundred views of Kobe), 1935. Kawanishi was awarded the Hyôgo Prefecture Culture Prize (1949) and the Kobe Shinbun Peace Prize (1962). His son Kawanishi Yûzaburô (1923-2014) worked in his father's style, but with more international subjects.

For more about this artist, see Kawanishi Biography.

Note: There is some confusion about how some of Kawanishi's books were produced, but the following seems to be the actual story regarding three publications in particular. Our source is Kanai Noriko, curator, Kobe City Museum (Kôbe-shiritsu Hakubutsukan: 神戸市立博物館), who is the world’s authority on the works of Kawanishi Hide. In 1934, Kawanishi teamed up with the Tokyo publisher Hanga Sô to produce three books: two on the circus theme and one on the opera "Carmen." Operated by Hirai Hiroshi, the small publishing firm Hanga S was in business from 1/1933 to 9/1936, specializing in limited-edition books from blocks carved by sôsaku-hanga artists. The blocks were carved and proofed in Kawanishi's atelier in Kobe, but were then sent to Tokyo and printed on paper derived from the cores of industrial paper cylinders by means of a novel type of machine press. Housed in a trade school now known as the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the press was operated by their technician. Thus, contrary to what has been written in other sources, the images in these three books, while self-carved, were not self-printed by the artist. Moreover, the experimental and unique nature of this enterprise places these three books in a rarefied category of prints and multiples created through the adaptation of industrial-age techniques. To our knowledge, this exciting but fraught paper-core, machine-press technique was never use by other artists and publishers.

The current volume being offered here was the second of the circus books. It used more colors and was thus more costly to produce, which required pricing that impeded sales when first released. Today, of course, Kawanishi's circus-themed books and images are quite sought after by collectors.

Design

Kawanishi was fascinated by foreign circuses, although not so with the traditional Japanese brand. As early as 1918, he visited a hippodrome circus and afterward made oil paintings of acrobats, horses, elephants, and other related subjects. He loved the gathering of so many foreign visitors and the strange animals. He first saw a lion at just such a show, which he later referred to as the "Chiarini Circus," a term once used by the Japanese for any foreign circus, but taken from a much earlier company name that was run by Giuseppe Chiarini (1823-97), and which toured Japan in 1886 and 1889. Kawanishi once said (see D'Orlando ref. below), "When you entered the tent, the smell of the animals, the smell of the circus, would merge into one. My heart captured everything moving before my eyes: the red robe of the animal trainer, with the golden decorations glittering in the light."

Kawanishi's renderings of equestrian riders, clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists, lion tamers, seal trainers, and elephant trainers capture the spectacle of the circus in a colorful and playful manner. Kawanishi's fascination with the circus world and his woodcuts detailing the various entertainments, although built upon a different aesthetic, remind us of the American artist Alexander Calder's (1898-1976) line drawings and lithographs on the same themes. Both artists expressed a childlike joy and excitement about the marvels to be witnessed in a circus.

Despite the several condition issues noted above, this copy is in a relatively good state of preservation. The experimental nature of the book's production process, which repurposed non-archival, extremely heavy paper (more like sheets of cardboard) while forcing the ungainly marriage between a brute press and Hide's delicate woodblocks, resulted in virtually all known examples coming down to us with toning, foxing, dislocated bindings, and multiple splashes of spray pigment. Nevertheless, this was a standout undertaking beyond the usual limits of the sôsaku hanga tradition.

For other circus designs by Kawanishi, see KWN11, KWN13, and KWN15.

References:

  • D'Orlando, A., de Vries, M, Uhlenbeck, C. and Wessels, E.: Nostalgia and Modernity: The Styles of Komura Settai and Kawanishi Hide. Amsterdam: Nihon no Hanga, spring 2012 (exhibition cat.).
  • Kawanishi Hide, Gashû "Kôbe hyakkei" Kawanishi Hide ga aishita fûkei (Collected pictures, "100 Scenes of Kobe," favorite scenes of Kawanishi Hide: 画集『神戸百景』川西英が愛した風景), 2008.
  • Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art: (Kawanishi Hide, the retrospective. 120th anniversary of his birth (Kobe shiritsu Koiso kinen bijutsukan (神戸市立小磯記念美術館), Kawanishi hide kaiko ten --- Seitan ichihyakunijû nen (川西回顧展 生誕120年). Kobe: 2014.
  • Uhlenbeck, C., Newland, A.R., de Vries, M.: Waves of renewal: modern Japanese prints, 1900 to 1960, Selections from the Nihon no hanga collections, Amsterdam. Hotei Publishing, 2016, pp. 240-246.