OUR ART: Okiie Hashimoto’s “Spring Day”
“Spring Day” by Okiie Hashimoto
‘Our Art’ is a regular feature on art in collections around West Virginia. Reprinted from the April 6, 2008 Sunday Gazette-Mail
By Bob Schwarz
bobschwarz@wvgazette.com
Okiie Hashimoto graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he trained to be an art teacher, learning painting techniques that American and European artists learned. He was a watercolorist then. Later, he took a short course in Japanese woodblock printing.
He first exhibited at the Japanese Print Association Show in 1937, but remained a part-time printmaker until 1955 when he retired as assistant principal of a Tokyo high school.
Hashimoto sticks to the flatness and patterns of Japanese decorative arts while relying on compositional elements of Western art, said Clay Center associate curator Denise Deegan. “It’s an image of a three-dimensional place that’s made to look very flat.”
The print “Spring Day” depicts his favorite subject, a Japanese garden, Deegan said. “He simplified the cropped view of a veranda and garden rocks with raked lines of sand around them. Subtle colors draw attention to the lines, shapes and patterns that are arranged in a visually pleasing and balanced composition.”
Although Hashimoto is not a major figure in the rich history of Japanese woodblock printmaking, his work is represented in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia, and the Harvard University Art Museums in Massachusetts.
Mr. and Mrs. W.E. Chilton III gave this print in 1968 to the soon-to-open Charleston Art Gallery, which later became part of Sunrise Museum, which later was absorbed into the Clay Center. A year later, Blanchette Rockefeller, mother of the state’s future governor and senator, gave 19 works that included Japanese paintings, etchings and woodblock prints.
“Spring Day” and several of the works given by Rockefeller are now on display at the Clay Center.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Just wanted you to know I have a large collection of Japanese Art, acquired while liveing there 1966 to 1970. Woodblocks from Laos and temple etchings from Cambodia, along with ancient silk and gold(chinese)thread, of Lake Hakone Japan. About 30 swords,Art Swords are a very unique Japanese expression of metal art, my Frog sword from 1860s is my favorite. The 3 monkeys from Nikko, antique hair pins from Kyoto, and on and on. I have all of Ichikawa Raizos period films, dateing from 1953 until his death in 1970. Would be willing to share with anyone interested in Japanese art. Japan sucked me, up but did not spit me out, rather, Vietnam spit me back to the states, or I would still be there teaching English I imagine.Old oriental saying:Japan will suck you, up and either spit you out, or take you in.They sure took me in,but that dirty little war in South East Asia didnt.Call for viewing, or interview, in English or Japanese.
Soredewa,
Bobby