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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 19, 2016)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER December 19, 2016 Volume 26 Number 24 December 19, 2016 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2016. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. 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Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. I thought about how van Gogh might have felt n 2012, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I’d long been a fan of Vincent van staring at the original Japanese prints in his Gogh’s artwork, particularly the “The Starry impoverished room in Paris, talking to himself and Night” and his “Sunflower” series. I was surprised, putting his interpretation into the artwork. I however, to see Japanese artwork at the museum. pictured the beginning of his madness and what he When I looked a little closer, the pieces were might have imagined when “The Courtesan” talked actually van Gogh copies of Japanese woodblock to him, teaching him how to paint differently. Then prints called ukiyo-e, an art form that flourished I thought of an idea. What if I could create a play in between the 17th and 19th which the courtesan came to centuries. When Japan life to become van Gogh’s opened up trade to the west in muse? 1854, it ended roughly about Years later, I found transla- 200 years of seclusion and tions of van Gogh’s letters and allowed exports, including began to shape his dialogue Japanese artwork. with the courtesan in the Van Gogh, and many painting. While reading his European artists including letters, I discovered an Manet, Degas, and Monet, isolated man who spent a were fascinated by Japanese Pictured are an original Japanese print by great deal of time alone, prints. The artists were drawn Utagawa Hiroshige, “Plum Garden at Kameido” writing and reading American to the vivid colors, the spatial (left), and “Courtesan (after Eisen),” van Gogh’s and British authors, and difference in perspectives with interpretation of Keisai Eisen’s “The Courtesan.” otherwise devoting himself to foregrounds and backgrounds, (Images licensed per Creative Commons Attribu- painting. He had little money and the joyful approach to the tion 2.0 agreement.) to do anything else. prints. Van Gogh popularized the phrase Yet his letters spoke in revelatory tones about Japonisme to describe the Japanese influence on how much he loved the Japanese prints — to the western art and culture. point of fetishism. The Europeans portrayed Asian Van Gogh especially loved two Japanese artists art as “Oriental” and exotic, putting it on a pedestal, and copied their pieces while adding his own style while at the same time considering it “primitive” and touches. Both artists created their works and full of Asian stereotypes. Van Gogh collected during the Edo (present-day Tokyo) period between hundreds of Japanese prints despite his poverty. 1603 and 1868, when Japanese society was under Japonisme caught on throughout Europe and the rule of a Tokugawa shogunate. Utagawa influenced a new wave of painting. Impressionism Hiroshige is well known for his “Thirty-six Views of owes a great debt to Japanese art. Mount Fuji” landscape series. Keisai Eisen is What I learned at that museum moved me enough renown for his series of prints of beautiful women, to write a play based on the Japanese prints that particularly courtesans, during the more decadent inspired van Gogh. Four years later, I’m staging a Bunsei Era (1818-1830). Courtesans at the time reading with music and movement by Unit Souzou held an elite status as entertainers who had a range to be held at New Expressive Works (N.E.W.), of art skills in ikebana (flower arranging) and sado located at 810 S.E. Belmont Street in Portland, on (tea ceremony) as well as training on musical January 27 at 7:30pm and January 28 at 2:00pm instruments such as the koto and shamisen. and 7:30pm. I’ve gathered a group of talented I was fascinated with van Gogh’s copies of Asian-American actors to turn those musings of van Hiroshige’s “Plum Garden at Kameido” and Eisen’s Gogh talking to “The Courtesan” into a short play to “The Courtesan.” While “Plum Garden” depicted a show not only the global influence of Japan on van winter wasteland with distant figures, “The Gogh and western art, but also how western Courtesan” was colorful with a beautiful woman consumerism and environmental disasters affect looking back almost defiantly. In both paintings, modern-day China. Included in the play is a story van Gogh added brilliant colors and a border about two scientists who deal with an environ- framing his copies. “Courtesan (after Eisen)” is mental disaster and one day encounter van Gogh’s bordered by water lilies, cranes, and a boat as if to Japanese paintings. give it a more western feel, yet the image of the The play is called The Courtesan in honor of the woman in the painting haunted me. She looked wise original painting in Amsterdam. It is the first play and shrewd and as if she was about to speak. Continued on page 16 I Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
