Katsue Inoue I

Katsue Inoue

By

Cliff Parfit

I first met Katsue Inoue at her superb one man show in the art gallery of the Daimaru Store in Shimonoseki City. In Japan, art exhibitions are often held in the major department stores, and gallery-goers have the additional pleasure of being able to purchase any of the exhibits on the spot. Her works were all woodblock prints (what the Japanese call 'Sosaku Hanga') though most were so large that I marveled at her technical virtuosity.

The prints were mostly of flowers, and those which impressed me had a nostalgic, Art Nouveau atmosphere though, at the same time, many lively, modern touches. There were, in particular, some brilliant prints of poppies with long sinuous stems. It was impossible not to admire them, and yet I was conscious of the fact that there was hardly a suitable wall-space for such prints in my book-filled home, so my mind turned to ex libris, and I wondered whether the artist could make an ex libris with the power of those large prints. When I consulted her through the agency of Nobuko my wife, she was in some doubt about it; also she had never made an ex libris before. We had no time for a long discussion as she had to catch her plane back to Tokyo, but she kindly agreed to do her best, and in a few weeks I had a welcome call from the store to say that my ex libris plates were ready. The lettering in unfamiliar English script was not perfect, but the general impression was delightful, especially as many of them were hand-colored by the artist. Soon after, in 1982 she designed some more bookplates-this time with elegant lettering in Japanese and I had the pleasure of introducing a new artist of original talent to the ex libris world. Not that she was unknown as an artist, as she had been responsible for many exhibitions and had undertaken many important and difficult projects such as large murals for Buddhist temples and other historical buildings.

She had, however, proved her ability to adapt her powerful conceptions within the small space of an ex libris, and was soon to exhibit her plates in the exhibitions of the Nippon Ex Libris Association. Her ex libris were commissioned by people well known in Japanese society and in 1986 she brought out a boxed folio of fine ex libris in a limited edition. One of the plates, for Miss Michiko Nagai, the well known author, was of a Heian style woman with long straight hair and several voluminous kimonos. It seemed to have been printed from a large number of blocks and was proof that Katsue had the patience and technical skill to print such a complex and demanding plate. I immediately asked her to make me a similar plate with the image of Murasaki Shikibu the author of one of my favorite books (though in translation, as few Japanese even can read such very ancient Manyogana Script) the world's first novel, The Tale of Gengi.

It was some time before she was able to find the time for such a project, but one day the package arrived. Printed from ten blocks, it was superb in color scheme and design. It has always been one of my most popular plates but I was not at all keen to exchange it as the number printed was small.

Katsue Inoue II

Of course it had been very time-consuming in production and was of necessity, expensive. It is an entirely timeless plate which has been much admired over the years.

Katsue has been for many years a familiar figure at the congresses of the Japan Ex Libris Association and is recognized as one of the classic artists of the present age. There is no formula for her bookplates, they range widely from abstract designs to portraits, landscapes, seascapes, flower fantasies and anything that takes her fancy or is requested by her clients. A small selection of her considerable output of bookplates is presented here but, of course, in the life of such a well known artist, ex libris art must be a minor aspect of her busy life.

Katsue’s work are widely exhibited in Japan. Although, it must here be admitted that bookplates do not look their best in a gallery setting; there, large framed works dominate the eye. Bookplates come into their own in a private setting where one can sit comfortably and examine them closely and at leisure to enjoy the artist's elegant conceptions, the jewel-like precision of her technique and all the fine qualities of a fine artist-craftsperson at the peak of her skill.

It should here be mentioned that Katsue is admired and respected by her fellow artists. As long ago as 1981 she was elected a Director of Japan Itagain - the professional association of Japanese woodblock artists (which however, has one American member (though long resident in Japan) in the person of Mr. Clifton Karhu). The term Itaga refers to the skill of employing the grain of the wood in the design of woodblock prints.

Through this Association, Katsue often shows her work in group exhibitions which are perhaps more common here in cooperative, friendly Japan than in countries where artists have to make a lone bid for personal recognition. Here in Japan the traditional, painstaking processes involved in cutting and printing a plate connect modern woodblock artists, however tenuously, with the great artists of the past such as Utamaro and Hiroshige, though they worked in entirely different circumstances. Katsue is of course, an exponent of the Sosaku-Hanga process introduced into Japan by Kanae Yamamoto in the early years of the past century though in her paintings in ancient temples she follows a far older tradition. Sometimes the two traditions are fused as in my Murasaki Shikibu plate, but this was
clearly a serendipitous work of art, as with her wide experience of Heian art she is a brilliant interpreter of that high level of culture in ancient Japan which contrasts so vividly with the crude, largely illiterate society of contemporary Europe.

When my wife and I met Katsue on November 30th at the Amelia Gallery in Tokyo, she was dressed entirely in black enlivened with the glittering silver bracelets and rings she loves. Even her short cropped hair was black though now with a hint of silver here and there. We were surprised to find that in the whole exhibition every work was executed in black and white only. She explained to us that she has for some time been experimenting with black pigments and recognizes as many as seven different varieties of black in her work.

Katsue Inoue III

To my mind her work has become more cerebral and perhaps more serious but in her conversation she was the same woman we had always known, a littlesaddened by the death of fine fellow artists such as Mr. Yonejiro Sato, but still bubbling over with new projects and full of news of her work. We learned that in addition to her work on Buddhist temples, she undertakes large, demanding projects in the decoration of hotels and hospitals and that she is giving five days a month to lecturing at the Yomiuri Culture Center. I feel sure that her teaching and lecturing must be of great value as she is a born communicator whether visually in her art, or in her exciting and original ideas and conversation.

Again, I noted an Art Nouveau flavor in many of her images, but yet her work is still entirely up to the moment. We chatted a little about the empty rooms, piles of bricks, pickled sheep, unmade beds and tatty collages etc which pass as 'high art' at the present time but agreed that this kind of stuff was just a transient blip in the long and generally honorable history of art. One cannot but wonder how museums of the future will find lumber rooms big enough to hold all this junk.

The bookplates here illustrated are selected from the wide range of Katsue Inoue's work, some delicate and feminine and others bold and powerful, but as I have previously remarked, Japanese bookplates need to be seen in the originals perhaps more so than the plates of any other country. The choice of the paper (still made by hand in this country of mass production and robotization!) the delicate hand-coloring and the seven varieties of black can be perceived only by the human eye at quite close quarters. An illustration, even in color, can never quite do justice to the original work.

I had some difficulty in following her description of the infinite care and trouble she takes in preparing the black pigments in which she prints her work and her reasons for going to so much trouble. As I listened I was reminded forcibly of the painters of the Renaissance laboriously grinding their lapis lazuli and other mineral products to make those gorgeous colors which no modern paint manufacturer could hope to emulate. Yet this is still part and parcel of Japanese art - - the patient effort to achieve exactly what lives in the mind's eye of the artist.

Though in her active and busy artistic life bookplates can command only a small portion of her attention, I still regard her as one of the outstanding ex libris artists of the present generation.