Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped in at the Art Institute of Chicago to take in “Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum” (on display through September 27). It’s a nice collection of about thirty pieces, and one of the nicest things about it is that it treats screen painting as a living tradition, including a number of fascinating twentieth-century pieces. I was struck in particular by Yamakawa Shuho’s 1933 Relaxing in the Shade, a portrait of two moga (modern girls) relaxing at the beach. There is also a panel containing a dozen characteristically warped images of hens and roosters attributed to the always surreal Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). Many of the works on display integrate calligraphy with visual image, sometimes breaking down the distinction between the two modes.

I also took in the Cy Twombly exhibit (on through October 11) in the museum’s new modern art wing. It includes a number of paintings that integrate written script, including meditations on a haiku by Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707), a poet who has long fascinated me.

Over at Japan Focus, there is a marvelous new translation (from German) of an article by Tawada Yoko, the poet, novelist and essayist who works between Japanese, German, and English. “The Letter as Literature’s Poetic and Political Body” is a thoughtful, imaginative meditation on the status of written script in this age of graphic novels, cell phones, and Internet. Even translations of classic literature are metamorphosing before our eyes, growing insect legs and acquiring hard paragraph breaks. Tawada writes,

The letters lie there like delicate, dangerous fish bones long after the reader has consumed and digested the contents of the text. The useless bones should probably be thrown away, but somehow they look significant. I stare at a letter on the page I’ve just read and wonder: what are these strange figures here before my eyes? Are they shadows or footprints? They gaze back at me wordlessly, as if they wanted me to remember something. It’s no longer the meaning of the text that’s at stake. The question, rather, is how to respond to the unsettling presence of the bodies of these letters.

I’m not sure what this has to do with writing and visual images, but last weekend in London Amy Winehouse made a guest appearance in concert with the grand old ska band The Specials. I’ll be in London for most of next week. I promise to keep my eyes peeled for any similar cameo appearances–and, for that matter, for any imaginative couplings of written script with visual iconry.