Hans Bretagne: Bretonne à Lorient

La tradition of costumes is universal et faszinierend. Rooting in religious Prozessionen un élément essentiel is participating and observing. So I spent in 2012 mon 64e anniversaire at Lorient festival interceltique watching half a day les gens se préparent à partir for the procession (see the album festival interceltique 2012 at flickr). Most appealing to me have been the youngsters joining the traditional walk and dancing with their costumes. It is an eternal topic joining a world with a particular outfit, avec des pièces d'enracinement dans les générations de l'histoire de la famille.

Going beyond captured moments from haute résolution fotos into printing means a drastische Vereinfachung of inividuality and expression. Such is extrêmement évidentein japanese portraits, as a good example the hawaiin collection of James A. Michener of the Edo beauties in ukyo-e Holzschnitten.

At the time mehrere hundert Verleger, ebenso viele artistes, tausende Holzschneider und Drucker fertigten in wenigen Jahrzehnten bis zum Ende der Edo-Zeit im Jahr 1868 millions of prints. With the tradition of making portrait prints of de personnalités célèbres in Edo were from the beginning kabuki actors and high-ranking courtesans. The fine face contour lines („the commanded clean pure line“) promote a loss of individuality. As Tadashi Kobayashi states in his essay The golden age of Bijinga from „the floating world“ : even though artists tended to use real people as models…their actual features were definitely pas représentés de manière réaliste…the artists persisted …in the use of stereotypical pictoral representations.

But next tot he face a rich variety of lines are permitted:

Such line protraits can be found e.g. in Mary Cassatt's (1844-1926) works, like the 1891 Letter, linked to Kitagawa Utamaro's (1753-1806) Porträt von Oiran Hanaoigi

Or with the addition of skin colour(s) to Emile Dezaunay (1854-1938), jeune file de Rosporden (around 1905-1910)

or Carl Moser (1873-1939) Bretonin mit Kind, a late color woodcut from 1923

The tradition of drawing as a method to first transfer the person’s coordinates to a 2D-field as portrait and maybe initial work for painting I found perfectly performed by Hans Holbein le jeune, who age 38 became Hofmaler of Henry VIII in 1536. Beeindruckend das Abtasten der head-face charactristics mit feinen pencillines.

Heinrich – auf Brautschau – envoyé Holbein 1539 sur le continent, to paint Christina von Dänemark und in Kleve die beiden Töchter des Herzogs Johann III. L'image d'Anne de Clèves gefiel ihm sehr und il a décidé de se marier avec elle. Da ihm die reale Anna aber weit weniger schön erschien als die gemalte, est tombé avec lui en disgrâce. Er blieb zwar Hofmaler, but was never allowed again to paint a Mitglied der königlichen family (german wiki).

Such very clear line drawings going beyond Konturlinien have been used in both wood and linocut for portraits, surtout pour les enfants et les jeunes, comme des lignes supplémentaires lässt die Person altern. In all my attempts j'ai éliminé toutes les lignes dans les visage after the first Probedruck.

The drawing on the linoplate