An Afternoon with Chiura Obata and generations of Amish mystics

Originally posted May 6th, 2010

Yesterday I ran into an old friend, Chiura Obata—even though I never met him, I feel that I know him through his work—and I stumbled into the works of some extraordinary Amish women and girls who made useful, and astonishing, household goods to keep themselves and their families warm. I am going to try to describe an experience that opened my eyes to the world in a way that I didn’t expect.

In the late afternoon, I headed to free Tuesdays at the De Young in Golden Gate Park. I had just intended to distract myself, to drift around and see what was up that I haven’t seen recently. Sometimes I direct myself around a museum as if I were my own docent, and sometimes, I just stand in awe. Both these persons were present; I hope you can distinguish their voices.

I walked up the wide stairs at the south end of the building and headed straight back towards the fabric gallery where 48 Amish quilts made between 1880 and 1940 were on display. I was curious. Of course I’ve seen the coffee table books that portray these artifacts as folksy Americana, women’s craftwork, unique and colorful.

Attendant 5, Bryce Marden

One look at the real work destroyed my folksy preconceptions forever. Escher’s disoriented perspective where front and back trade places are essential components without caricatured beetles crawling over them. Georgia O’Keefe’s sensuous lines are stitched in patterns across solid blocks of color. Keith Haring’s strictly drawn, geometrically arranged figures lay flat until the lines start to dance. Then the patchwork itself dances.

These women understood geometric shapes and what happens as the background changes color decades before Josef Albers began his investigations. Jasper Johns had artistic grandmothers, dozens, maybe hundreds. Bryce Marden’s simple elegant repeated loops create the same visual magic that these women did as they set circles on the rectangular fabrics that protected their sleeping children.

Was it the practice of keeping it simple, or community, or cooperation that laid the foundation for what I saw, or is there a magic elixir in the water in Amish country? These artists, women and girls, were absolute masters of every discipline they used, design, color, geometry, and sewing. 

I walked around stunned. I lost track of time. These visionaries and mystics took whatever was at hand, used the careful, precise skills handed down to them by their mothers and created masterpieces. I wondered if they saw their work as being astonishing in the way that I saw it. Actually I suspect that they did, but it was also ordinary fare in their communities.

I will not do these artifacts a disservice by pasting up a catalogue of Internet images, no matter how beautiful, precise or detailed. One will have to give a taste. I have shown a "Shadow Pattern" design. When you see them, be in their presence, you can almost feel the hands and eyes and souls of these extraordinary, mostly anonymous artists.

Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley

The fabric gallery and the wall where Chiura Obata’s Lake Basin in the High Sierra hangs are only a few yards apart. I have been a fan of the Issei Japanese American Obata (1885-1975) since I saw his hanging scroll, Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley, during the closing exhibit at the old De Young back in 2000.

How Lake Basin became a koan that unlocked something inside me may sound disjointed—moving from quilts to a painting on silk—but it didn’t feel that way to me at all. It seemed as natural as stepping into a bath.

Koan is the Japanese word for a particular type of story telling used by old Chinese and Japanese Zen meditation teachers to help a student unlock and experience some aspect of the Buddha's teaching—and make it their own. Sometimes they contain what might be more appropriately called riddles or puzzles, but these are not just linguistic or conceptual. They hold much more than what meets the eye.

I had briefly glanced at Lake Basin before I went into the quilt exhibit. When I finally began my leave taking of the quilts with a promise to visit again before they returned to the care of Faith and Steven Brown, I walked back through the gallery's dark narrow passageway, turned right and stopped in front of Obata’s subtle brushwork. Now, the colors and shapes stopped me.

I had just spent perhaps an hour looking at colors and shapes on flat surfaces with no pretense of perspective, yet with incredible depth and dimension. When my eyes took in Obata’s floating blue lake holding up a mountain of ragged black covered with half melted snow, there it was again, the same one-dimensional quality. Lake Basin was born out of an ancient Chinese scroll that spread pieces of craggy cliffs and trees in brushwork up and down the page with trees and scholars sketched in to create an illusion of depth. Actually, when I study old Chinese scrolls, the small miniature roofs seem to act like footnotes—the painter wants to tell you, “See, that one, it’s in the distance.” But Obata didn’t import Buddhist pagodas to the High Sierra. He painted an American landscape as he found it: water, rock and sky, big and bold. But he also painted with great delicacy and restraint. It is almost reverential.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra

I sat down on the bench that was right there, waiting for the moment. My eyes moved across the surfaces. The lake floated in blue lapis lazuli pigment, completely still except where the tracings of bristle allowed me look down to the lake’s bottom. The sides of its bowl were decorated with green and yellow, new growth. On top, neither behind nor in front, the patched snow softened the dark granite’s sharp edges. The snow seemed to wrap under the mountain's weight and hold it in space; the stylized vertical marks could just as easily have been on the blanket wrapped under a child, stitched in by an Amish craftswoman teaching her daughter to sew.

I sat until the guards began to warn that they would soon close the doors. As I got up I realized that I had been sitting with a visual koan. I say koan because the play of lines and color across the silk revealed that winter holds spring, not in a temporal or sequential way, but as a mother holds her child. I was overwhelmed by the tenderness of Nature. The feeling startled me. It was sudden.

At times in the past, I have held snow on the granite peaks as inhospitable, as terrifying as the tales of Donner Pass, but now another deep understanding was also there, the High Sierra was the Source of the clear bright water that crashes over rocks in Spring making its way towards the Bay. Both points of view are equally true; one does not negate the other. But once I was able to creep inside Obata’s vertical and horizontal lines, his blues and blacks, whites and greens, I found a way to enter the wildness of nature as a friend, with no fear. I don’t know if this understanding will last, but I do know that it was not present before yesterday just as the museum was closing.

The one harsh line I could not cross on Lake Basin is where the mountain touches the sky. I am here on the earth. Both koans and paintings are the works of men, not gods. Words and colors, brushes and pencils, silk and pigments, thoughts and meditation, discourse and dreaming, these are all around us. They are both tools and the stuff we work with.



I am going to conclude with thoughts about humans crafting koans out of their experience, dreams, insight, study and the patient work of meditation. As you scroll down, you will see some of the images that I studied on the Internet. Obata was a professional artist. He painted so he could feed and clothe his wife and children. He did several versions of Lake Basin the High Sierra, a sketch, smaller paintings and wood block prints. I can’t determine the time line for certain. Art curators date the wood blocks and paintings sometime around 1930. The colored pencil sketch is clearly dated 1930. But when I examined the images of each of the works that were available, I am sure that he started the large painting that I'd sat in front of—it is nearly 6' high and 10' feet across—only after he himself had explored the shapes, colors and lines and allowed them to find their own way onto the silk. Perhaps he had a similar friendship with the wild, and felt that same tenderness I experienced Tuesday. I wondered if he kept coming back to his images in the same way that a koan grabs my mind and imagination, becoming more essential with each pass. Perhaps he and his pigment and mineral, brushes and silk shared their experience with me. No, certainly, they did.

Here are some images of the various renditions presented without further comment.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra, sketch, 1930


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, watercolor


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Tadeo Takamizawa (Printer) color woodcut on paper image: 

11 3/8 x 15 5/8 in. (28.9 x 39.7 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum

These are the pieces of art that I have quoted in post:

Print, Quilt Sale, unknown
Attendant 5, Bryce Marden
Amish Shadow Quilt, Alternate pattern name: Shadows. Maker unknown. Date Unknown. 67" x 63." Nebraska State Historical Society
Setting Sun: Sacramento Valley, CA. 1925. Hanging scroll: mineral pigments (distemper) and gold on silk, 107 1/2 x 69 in.
Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Chiura Obata, cc 1930, painting on silk (69 ½ x 102 ½ inches), made with ink and a brilliant blue lapis lazuli pigment. De Young Museum, San Francisco
Chiura Obata, photograph, UC Berkeley

Some Great words from A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

“Don't Read Success Stories You will get only message. Read failure stories. You will get some ideas to get success.”

When I read this quote of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, it struck me in a very deep way. Besides being really true, it's a corrective to my habitual half-hearted attempts at a Norman Vincent Peale type of positive thinking as well as some of my reading habits.

When I did some research, I discovered a man who had as much a way with words as he did with applying both the scientific method as well as his Muslim faith to living a full and productive life.

Times of India Photo

I’ve assembled a collection of his quotes. I dedicate this to my young Muslim friends, Aqib and Mustafa, because they inspire me, and I am very grateful for their friendship. They are both young and starting out, so I will begin with this quote:

"Sometimes, it is better to bunk a class and enjoy with friends, because now, when I look back, marks never make me laugh, but memories do." 

"For a great man religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool."

"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping; it is something that does not let you sleep." 

"Dream, dream, dream. Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result in action."

"Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action converts adversity into prosperity."

"Education gives you wings to fly. Achievement comes out of fire in our subconscious mind that ‘I will win."

“Failure will never overtake me if my definition to succeed is strong enough”.

"The world today is integrally connected through four rapid connectivities. They are the environment, people, economy, and ideas."

"A Leader must have a 'Vision' for an organisation, 'Passion' to work for achieving the goals, 'Curiosity' to travel an unexplored path and ‘Courage' to take decisions."

"When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust... Withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad."

"It is very easy to defeat someone, but it is very hard to win someone."

“Don’t take rest after your first victory because if you fail in the second, more lips are waiting to say that your first victory was just luck.”

“If you fail, never give up because FAIL means "First Attempt in Learning".

“If you want to shine like a sun, first, burn like the sun."

"All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."

"All Birds find shelter during the rain. But Eagle avoids rain by flying above the Clouds.”

“Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.”

“Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?”

 

What would Bapuji be Doing?

Originally posted on 23 April 2020. Today, June 2, 2021, we are still in state of lockdown here in India; I have revised and reposted it.

On Tuesday, 13 April 2021, I fasted. It was 397 days since the first Coronavirus Virus lockdown in India. It was also the first day of Ramadan. I am not Muslim, or even particularly religious, but I’d been asking myself what would Bapuji be doing during this pandemic, and my answer was very clear: he'd be fasting. 

Since the founding of their Republic, Indians have faced many challenges. Being true to the principles that created the largest democracy on the face of the earth, each generation has to reformulate an answer in the language and the circumstances of the present moment to this question: what would Bapuji do? This question is more than lip-service to the man whose compassion and courage inspire us. It is more than just a sound bite on the TV news to gain some political advantage. When facing the silent enemy of the Coronavirus, a life and death situation, our answer might determine whether we live or die. 

The threat of death and the economic destruction brought on by the virus is very different from the occupation of the British Raj. There is no enemy we can point to, no foreign army, no terrorist, no General Dyer, and also no malicious government conspiracy or incompetence. The victims of this virus are not defined by the language they speak, nor the clothes they wear, the clubs where they hang out, nor the religion they practice. The virus does not obey human laws or ordinary conventions. It is a force of nature.

And the threat is very grave. Many people are dying in the second wave. Crops are not harvested. Shops are closed again. Temples, mosques, shrines, churches, and gurudwaras, all are empty. The hospitals are turning sick people away because all the beds are taken. Doctors and nurses are being overworked, getting sick themselves and dying because they are caring for huge numbers of patients. But most Indians, some more willing than others, are following the advice of our leaders and health professionals and staying home, reducing the rate of infection.

But this comes at an enormous cost. Nerves are frayed. Families confined at home are seeing both the love that brought them together as well as the negative traits that they would normally tolerate. And yet, we have to do what we can because our survival depends on it. 

Of course it is far too early to begin to draw any lessons from this experience. But certain things are clear, and I think we should keep them in mind because we cannot really know how long this situation will last.

First we are all in this together. The virus does not discriminate between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, or secularist. Our only defense is a united front. We will only succeed if we work together. We number about 135 crores and share a relatively small section of the earth’s surface. This is a difficult situation even under the best of circumstances.

Second, we have faced other crises in the past, and we have prevailed. People know how to work together facing impossible situations. We've realized that any struggle is hard work, but there is no way to avoid the pain that our human life presents us.

Third, Coronavirus is stealthy. It hides. In war, soldiers wear uniforms so that they know who they are fighting with and who are the enemies. The virus has robbed us of that luxury. It has no memory of past injustices. It does not hold grudges. It does not discriminate. To those who might say that the virus itself is God’s punishment for evil, I would just beg for humility in the face of calamity. Which one of us really knows the mind of God? It is perfectly understandable to try to blame someone else when facing an overwhelming fear. It is an instinctive reaction to lash out, and we think it helps. But the virus does not share our prejudices.

And fourth, there will be pain, and suffering, and loss. These are the facts of our lives now. There is no way to avoid it. 

When I first learned about Bapuji’s fasting, I was puzzled. It seems obvious that the way to fight an enemy is to use all the strength and power at our command. I thought he inflicted pain on himself to motivate others, perhaps even through guilt, to come to his way of thinking or unite against the British.

But perhaps it was the only thing he could do. There was no other defense. There was no power that he had to defeat the oppressor other than his inner strength. He nourished his soul by depriving his body. It was also his way of standing up to the suffering of life, accepting it willingly. 

I feel helpless in the face of the epidemic. I remain confident that the situation will improve, but I cannot predict when or how. In the meantime, I will do my best, and I will try to overcome my prejudice and work with everyone to defeat our faceless enemy. And I will fast.

Ken Ireland with Ankit Deshwal

The Hoffman Process was birthed by TV sitcom “Bewitched”

Look no further!

Warning: this is a hit piece about Bob Hoffman and his “other-worldly” Psychic Process. None of my previous posts were “hit pieces” although that was the accusation. So I decided to write a real “hit piece” to demonstrate the meaning of the term and to prove that I can do that too, plus have some fun.

Hypothesis: the Hoffman Process, and Hoffman's late night meeting with the other-worldly Dr. Siegfried Fisher is really just a rerun of an episode of the TV sitcom “Bewitched.” Forget about your kindly psychic, or as he is being currently rebranded “gifted intuitive,” Hoffman was channeling Agnes Moorehead, wishing he could secretly, discreetly do the nasty with Dick York, while playing house with Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha.

A bit of background might be helpful here: the Process was revealed to Hoffman when the ghost of his late therapist, Dr. Fisher, appeared at the foot of his bed in a late night apparition, told him about “Negative Love,” illogical logic and nonsensical sense, and took him through a loving divorce with mommy and daddy. Voila! Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy.

“Bewitched” was a TV sitcom broadcast on ABC from September 17, 1964, to March 25, 1972. It aired on Thursdays at 9 PM. I’d bet real money that Hoffman never missed an episode, and the dates exactly coincide with the creation of Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy. It has all the earmarks of Hoffman’s spirituality--homey, wacky contact with the supernatural world that solves our day-to-day conundrums. It is embarrassingly middle-class. Samantha and Endora could easily walk up to the All Powerful He/She Godhead in the Great Universal Mall when they visit the hairdresser. After the Obligatory Big Warm Unconditional Love Hug, they ask a pressing question about sex or love, and the psychic message blows them away.

There has to be some intermediary because, well, that’s the way the writers get a walk-on gig for a favorite Hollywood British uncle, Maurice Evans. Evans wasn't Leo G. Carroll. Cosmo Topper might have been a precedent for a gentleman psychic but no role model. “Topper” was a sitcom based on the 1937 film Topper, from two novels by Thorne Smith. It was broadcast on CBS from October 9, 1953, to July 15, 1955. But I’m sure that Carroll was not Hoffman’s cup of tea, psychic yes but far too sophisticated and upper class. Hoffman would have rather cultivated Endora (Agnes Moorehead) as a drag persona, funny, down-to-earth, a bit ordinary with run-on banter and big hair. Her daughter Samantha’s goal was to get married and lead a normal life, her supernatural powers appearing at inconvenient but important times. Plus she was entirely overdressed for the role.

But more than anything, I think “Bewitched” domesticates the supernatural world, making it as ordinary as a dinner party in a suburban, but definitely upscale tract house, not a lot of gaudy department store furniture but tasteful with some snazzy throw pillows brought back from Acapulco. Oh, and a few unexpected guests from the Spirit World who tell the truth by god and untangle a few pesky messes of human interactions--much like the esteemed psychologist Dr. Siegfried Fisher who appears out of the blue to give you, an ordinary housewife, oops tailor, a key piece of psychological wisdom that had been missed by all the great minds on the planet. It’s also a world in which gay life might even flourish if it were hidden, because you’re obviously very close to the ambi-sexual godhead, and drag lightens things up. Definitely Hoffman's brand of spirituality.

And, I think this is key, it's a world in which there are no ponderous academics or heavy thinkers. It’s populated and fueled by the rough and tumble world of commercial advertising, wooing clients, creating ad campaigns--very favorable to the unseen world. I’m thinking of a rather famous episode where Samantha doesn't want Darrin's client to use an ugly old witch in his ad campaign (Season 1, episode 7, “The Witches are Out”). Of course she wins and everyone makes money. Perfect denouement. All in all, Sol Saks must have been very happy with the revenue for 7 seasons, even if it was finished off short of the contracted 9. That’s a mistake that Hoffman won’t make with his international licensing scheme for Psychic Therapy.

Ridiculous right? Why do intelligent people believe nonsense?

Wham bang! There you go. That’s a hit piece.

 

Here is a link to my other writing about the Process.

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021