West Dove/East Dove --- Days14/17 & 18

Walks: Hood, Asian Art Museum

Distance:  1.5 miles, 6 miles

So with TV's Shogun on her mind (she's a latecomer to it; one episode left to watch), Ciwt was inspired to visit our outstanding Asian Art Museum today.  

There may have been no Impressionism movement in art or it might have happened at a different time if the Japanese hadn't had the habit of wrapping their Western imports art prints.  Apparently the latter were that commonplace and inexpensive.  But they were the exact opposite in Paris and they hit the world of artists like a bombshell.  Artists like Monet, deGas, Pissarro and others flocked to see them when they arrived, and Monet accumulated a large collection which he displayed in his Giverny dining room and other rooms around his home.  

The artists were astounded and then strongly influenced by the simplified forms, flat perspecitves and open areas of the woodblock prints. By the turn of the nineteen centuries many artists including Matisse and Picasso had integrated their formal linear simplicity into their own art.

Among the most widely known examples is Picasso's Dove of Peace:

Pablo Picasso, Dove of Peace, 1961, lithograph

Which in turn he made more open, simple, and linear from his own 1949 lithograph:

Pablo Picasso, Dove, 1949, lithograph

And which the 1949 Paris Peace Conference chose for its poster:

Picasso's images of the dove became a phenomenon around the world. Between 1949 and the artist's death, he created numerous works, including posters, prints and drawings, which depicted the Dove of Peace. Variations of the image were used for Peace Congresses in Wroclaw, Stockholm, Sheffield, Vienna, Rome and Moscow. Oh, and it should be mentioned, the 'dove' was actually a Milanese pigeon, which had been a gift from his friend (yes) and fellow artist, Matisse.

In a West/East turnaround, the famous and beloved Chinese artists, Qi Baishi, was said to be one who saw the poster.  And..felt he could more authentically capture the aliveness and spirit of the dove.  So, he created his own pen and ink painting which was used for the 1952 Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference in Beijing.  He then went on to produce many more paintings of  doves.

Qi Baishi (Chinese, 1863-1957), Dove of Peace, 1952, Hanging scroll; ink and colors on paper

Qi Baishi, Bird of Peace, ink and color on paper, ca 1950's

Largely through the works of these two important artists, one from the West and the other from the East, since the 1950's the dove has gradually become an international symbol for peace.