Have you come across 'pocahotties'? I hadn’t either until a few weeks ago. It is apparently the term used for young women who dress up in 'Red Indian' outfits in which to prance around on Halloween. I have to confess that until recently, being as happy to watch scantily dressed young women capering around as the next male, I would have seen this as essentially harmless, although it isn’t prevalent in the UK. However, reading the reaction of those on the receiving end made me realise that in practice this is just as offensive as would be putting on blackface and an 'African Princess' outfit. While there are, and probably always have been, people who respect Native American culture and see virtue in emulating it, dressing up for a party is not respect.
Following this up, I came across the term 'cultural appropriation’, defined on Wikipedia as “the taking – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artefacts, history and ways of knowledge.” It is perhaps best used to describe the broader process of acculturation from the perspective of a minority or weaker culture.
While I understand the 'pocahottie' issue, I have immediate problems with this wider concept. Almost every term used in that definition has further problems of definition. What does ‘taking’ mean? What is a culture? Can we locate the source of ‘intellectual property, cultural expressions or artefacts, history and ways of knowledge’ at a cultural level? Can the appropriation of objects like works of art be considered in the same way as appropriation of content like artistic styles or culturally significant rituals?
Moreover. as the term has passed into wider usage, its meaning has become confused, muddled and riddled with inconsistencies. In particular it has become used to justify claims that the use of concepts from other cultures is in some way unacceptable, to be avoided and perhaps even racist. Dig into blog comment threads and you will arguments to that effect about judo and other martial arts, yoga, textile patterns, music and a huge range of artistic endeavours. Most of these arguments moreover take the ‘donor’ culture at face value, without looking to see how far it is itself a synthesis. The implied suggestion that these cultures cannot stand up for themselves but must be defended by others and, implicitly, fossilised is also at best patronising and potentially racist.
To take this further let’s look at some cases of alleged content appropriation in the arts.
Jazz and blues are generally considered to have their roots in African-American culture. It has been argued in the past that when non African-American musicians attempt to play jazz or blues they are cannot perform with the right sensitivity and feeling and are also damaging the culture from which they are ‘stealing’.
So far as the first argument is concerned there is plenty of contradictory empirical evidence. Many years ago I saw a TV interview with musicians Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee in which they recounted how, when they first heard a recording by the British artist Lonnie Donegan, they thought it was by Leadbelly, so accurately had he captured the sound and feel.
Philosopher James O Young in his book Cultural Appropriation and the Arts
A third example can be found in the almost universal praise for the work of Eric Clapton from black artists like Muddy Waters and B B King.
The second argument about damage to the donor culture also fails to stand up to investigation. The classic 'St James Infirmary Blues' is a case in point. The words and melody have their origin in an 18th century traditional English folk song called "The Unfortunate Rake" (also known as "The Unfortunate Lad" or "The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime"). There are numerous versions of the song throughout the English-speaking world. It evolved for example into other American standards such as "The Streets of Laredo". Effectively the song is the product of a long process of adoption, adaptation and transmutation into the blues we know.
A similar case is the song ‘Goodnight Irene’ recorded in 1950 by Pete Seeger and the Weavers. This was an adaptation of a song called ‘Irene’ by Leadbelly and proved controversial at the time. It turned out however that the Leadbelly song – which he had copyrighted – was based on a traditional Southern folk song he had learned from his uncle. That song was in turn an arrangement of a waltz written in the 1880s by Gussie Lord Davies, an African America composer who wrote however for a largely white audience. Probably Leadbelly’s uncle had come across it via that non African-American channel. Davis of course had in turn appropriated the waltz from the music of Vienna. The song has now permeated British culture to the extent that it has become the club song for supporters of the English football club Bristol Rovers.
In both cases these songs have been passing in and out of African American culture over an extended period. The extent to which they can be placed within a specific culture is minimal and the extent to which any culture has been harmed by the process is probably zero.
Film is another example of appropriation resulting in positive outcomes. The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa made numerous films based on Western literary sources. Perhaps the greatest of these are Ran (derived from King Lear) and Throne of Blood (derived from Macbeth). Another of Kurosawa’s films Seven Samurai was in turn remade as The Magnificent Seven, while his film Yojimbo became A Fistful of Dollars.
Shakespeare was himself an arch appropriator, from Holinshed and others. His themes and plots have a mythic quality that stands above any specific culture and so easily slip from one medium to another and from one cultural setting to another. As well as the Kurosawa films, Lear was the inspiration for the film Broken Arrow Lance, the musical Kiss me Kate came from Taming of the Shrew and most well known of all perhaps, West Side Story, from Romeo and Juliet. His work was also the stimulus for the suite “Such Sweet Thunder” by Duke Ellington.
Appropriation of content then has been the source of much great work. The adoption of artistic elements from a culture and their remaking into something new is a positive thing. Examples have been cited from jazz and film, but there are many others. In music, tango, salsa, Tejano, flamenco and high life are all syntheses from a range of cultures. Surprisingly perhaps the Mexican Tejano music includes elements from the brass band music of German immigrants, while flamenco incorporates Arabic and even Indian influences via Gypsy music. None of these examples cited have taken anything away from their culture of origin, in fact by their creation the sum total of human happiness has been increased.
Cultural and artistic change is inevitable. Without it we would still be picking wild berries and fleeing from predators. Trying to prevent change will be as successful as King Cnut. Everyone loses.
I think I have more to say on this, but this post is already rather long.
I realised when reading this previous post that my concluding paragraph doesn't really address the issues as clearly as I would have liked. Rather than edit that post - an edit would probably be missed by those who had already read it - I'm picking the topic up afresh here.
In essence I want to make two points:
First, the complex process by which these prints are made calls into question their conventional attribution to a single named artist. Decisions by the so-called 'copy artist' (hikko), by the carver and by the printer all had a significant impact on the aesthetic and artistic quality of the finished piece. Attribution to the 'artist' seriously devalues the contribution made by the other artisans involved.
Second, the multiple stages of production also call into question the narrow view of the original that surfaces from time to time and that I have already addressed in several posts here. Let's look at these stages and see where the 'original' might be found.
The conventional attribution might suggest that the original lies in the initial drawing by the artist. Setting aside that this drawing is done purely for the purpose of creating a woodblock print (what I called in this post the 'intention of the artist'), this causes immediate problems for the second, more elaborate drawing used to prepare the blocks. Despite being prepared by the so-called copy artist this second drawing (hanshita) is in no way a straight copy. Woodblock printer David Bull in this discussion thread, included some examples that make this point very clearly.
Here for example is an initial sketch by Hokusai.
While here is the same section from the final print:
The step between these two is of course destroyed in the carving of the block, but it is clear that the making of the hanshita involved much more than simply tracing and required in its own right a considerable artistic input.
David Bull also provided an example of a surviving hanshita, which is as detailed as any final print:
David Bull's argument is that the role played by these other craftsmen (and they almost always were men) demands a much greater recognition. I agree entirely, but my point here is in relation to the identification of the 'original'. If the surviving example of a hanshita is typical of the great ukiyo-e prints, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, then those unknown artists should be seen as artists in their own right.
If on that basis we then argue that the hanshita is the original, the initial sketch becomes just a preliminary study - a concept drawing - and the attribution should go to the hanshita artist.
What about those who argue that the plate (or the photographic negative or the digital file) is the original? I have argued elsewhere that those few who attempt to make this argument do so either from ignorance of the process or from special pleading (ie they sell reproductions and want their product to be elevated to the same standing as 'handpulled prints') Nevertheless if we take the argument at face value, it still doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. A typical woodblock print may have 15 or more blocks and some may be used 2 or 3 times. Some prints require perhaps 100 impressions to get to the final image. There is thus no single block that can be pointed to as the 'original' .
Normally these prints were not produced in limited editions. Each print run would be quite small - perhaps 200 - to reduce wear and tear on the blocks, but there would be no overall limit. The same applies in fact in the West - prints by the master wood engraver Thomas Bewick were not issued in limited runs.
In summary therefore, if we try to place the 'original' anywhere but the final print, many problems arise. If we accept the defining characteristic as being intention, then regardless of the numbers produced, the original is the printed paper on which the image appears and all these other problems simply disappear.
I did, rather mischievously perhaps, consider the idea that these woodblock prints are perhaps the earliest conceptual art. After all the process starts with an idea - or concept - in the mind of the publisher, who then draws together the resources to realise his concept. That would make the publisher the 'artist' of attribution!
In the classic period of Japanese woodblock printing (ukiyo-e or floating world) the initiative for a project – whether for a print or print series - came almost always from a publisher, who would contract with an artist, normally paying an agreed sum per design, for the production of the preparatory sketches. The artist would then this drawing to a copyist, who would make made an elaborated final copy which showed the (usually black) lines which outlined everything in the image. After approval of the completed drawing by the official censors, it would go to a carver, who specialized in carving the blocks used to produce the print. A master would do the detailed work with the rest left to an apprentice. A third set of artisans then stepped in - the printers who both made and applied the inks to the blocks.
Conventionally the resultant prints are attributed to the artist who prepared the first sketch, but the role of the other artisans was critical to the final product. It could be argued that giving central importance to the designer actually says more about the acquisitive attitudes of the collector in Western culture than it does about the real ‘maker’. We appear unable to accept the idea of a collective product arising from the culture of the people.
The collector mentality also affects how we perceive these prints. As originally conceived they were mass-produced and transitory. It was the scale of the industry, producing everything from wrapping paper and food labels upwards that supported the work we now ascribe to the likes of Hiroshige and Hokusai. There was no attempt to artificially limit the numbers and over the years other carvers would cut new blocks and the same images would appear time and time again. My own collection includes a 19th century version of this print by Hiroshige.
My print is much smaller than the ‘original’, but given the nature of the production process it is in my view equally ‘authentic’, showing if anything much greater skill in the rendering of the graduated colours in sky and water (bokashi).
In essence I would argue that the collaborative nature of the process, especially the total dependency of the artist on the skills of the carver and printer make the concept of an individual ‘maker’ of these prints untenable. Furthermore, the lack of any concept of a limited edition places the value of the work produced squarely in the artistic merit and not in scarcity. Blocks for popular series would be printed again and again, being recut if they became worn. There is some indication that total runs of up to 20,000 were made for popular prints.
Useful links
The production of Japanese Woodblock Prints
Japanese Traditional Prints – Just who made them anyway?
Chats on Japanese Prints (Discussion forum for Shogun Gallery – now closed but still readable)
Mokuhankan – attempting to revive the traditional production of Japanese prints
Woodblock.com – web site of David Bull
