Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Closed Head---Open Mind
A Reception of an Idea of Yoshizawa's
Origami can be done as a doodle—you pick up a scrap of paper, say the receipt from your recent shopping expedition, and play with it absent-mindedly at the outdoor cafe, bending it this way and that till it starts looking like an animal, all while waiting for the espresso to arrive.
But you can also design origami deliberately, so that it will seem like a doodle. Here is a an extremely simple set-up that you can actually do with a grocery receipt:
I venture to say that you can make—maybe not ALL the heads of all animals from this start (with mild variations), but certainly a good many of them. A head that’s mounted on a long neck or a pole. With a bit of finessing you can squeeze out a good lower-jaw too.
Since the set-up is so simple and the number of folds is small, you can do this with thick “artistic” paper too, like Canson Mi-Teintes, and preserve the unblemished, unbroken expanse of the sheet, with all its glorious texture—letting the paperiness of the model shine.
And then it will still be origami. But no longer just a doodle.
* * *
Now, this is a simple idea. But it didn’t form itself simply, waiting for the coffee to arrive. There’s actually a long back-story to it, a whole origami biography. Which I’ll try to sketch out, for those who might like some chattiness along with their pictures and espresso.
I got my start in folding as a boy in 1972, from Harbin’s “Secrets of Origami” and Randlett’s “Best of Origami”—books brought to me while convalescing in a hospital in Jerusalem for a serious illness. Those were pages filled with magic, from many authors, but the hovering spirit throughout seemed to
be that of the mysterious Japanese giant Akira Yoshizawa; and when I started designing for myself 15 years later in Chicago (with CHAOS—the CHicago Area Origami Society in its first days) it was very much with this artist as role-model. There was no question that in his hands origami could be a fine art, endlessly suggestive, expressive, technically masterful but never letting itself get swallowed by technique. For all that, Yoshizawa’s prickly prima-donna Japanese-master persona irritated me, and when he visited the U.S.—as near as Detroit—I didn’t betake myself to meet him. That was youthful arrogance: it has its place, even if I kick myself for it now.
Life gallops on. I was studying aesthetics in grad school at the University of Chicago , then fled with my PhD to Israel. Things eventually advanced, both professionally/curatorially and origamiwise/artistically; in 2007 these combined and I was asked to put together Israel's first large-scale international exhibition of origami art. This was at a prestigious venue: the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, in Haifa, which houses the largest collection of Japanese art in the Middle East.
It was obvious that I needed to have Yoshizawa works for this show, to give it gravitas and to anchor origami firmly in the public mind as an emerging Japanese art, even as it is also an international one. But it became even more obvious because of a rather fantastical coincidence. Felix Tikotin from Holland, the late founder of this museum, and perhaps the greatest dealer in classical Japanese art in the 20th century—prints, enamel vases, swords, netsuke, and the like—also turned out to be (from a little research on my part, chasing a tip by Dave Brill) the key 'mystery man' who in 1955 arranged Akira Yoshizawa’s first-ever museum exhibition at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. This was also the first museum exhibition for origami as a fine art, anywhere. Much new and exciting information on this episode, which centers on the figure of Gershon Legman—who 'discovered' and corresponded with Yoshizawa then ensnared Tikotin to display his works—has been turned up recently by Laura Rozenberg. [Note: she's finally written about it!]
Soon I was holding actual Yoshizawa works in my hands. At first works from a clandestine collection that exists in Haifa; later official works lent to me from Japan for the exhibit through the kind graces of his widow, Mrs. Kiyo Yoshizawa in Tokyo, based on the lifelong gratitude which the Yoshizawas felt toward Felix Tikotin for the help in 1955.
This was tremendously moving for me. Some of those models were the very ones I’d caught glimpses of in the books by Harbin and Randlett as a boy. Now I could feel their weight and texture, study the dimpling touches. (And without the ‘white gloves’!) I have to say, primitive or not, these works were haunting to hold. The hardness of the paper I was not used to; one could not help but think of the resilience of the man who made them, and the toughness of the time: 1950s Japan, pulling itself out of the war years; and this man going door to door selling fish treats, while pioneering his craft and our field.
These were the first of several opportunities I was given to study Yoshizawa’s works at close hand. Origami may well have advanced but I find there is still much to learn from the Master. For instance, notice the attention he gives to the heads in his animals. They are often wide—3D like the rest of the body—and get slightly more detail (usually eyes, ears, mouth, nose, horns etc) than the rest of the animal does, almost as if the head were a model to itself. In the best works the head is smooth on top; in the less than best, where the paper joins there is a seam line that seems to be trying to stay hidden. This is the “head” equivalent of the now-known origami ideal of the “closed back” (of which, more below).
The curatorial side of things—my discovery of the historical “Tikotin connection” —kept on having ramifications in the present as well. Tikotin’s grandson who resides in Amsterdam was informed of this chapter in his grandfather’s career, and used his contacts in Holland to arrange a new exhibition there: Yoshizawa’s first one-man show in Europe since that 1955 one. It was held in May, 2011 at Leiden’s SieboldHuis JapanMuseum. Some images of this rare and magnificent exhibition of Yoshizawa animals can be glimpsed on Paula Versnick’s Flickr site.
This show was curated and set up by Mrs. Yoshizawa herself, who came specially. The museum’s director was Kris Schiermeier, another high-powered individual (her previous job was Curator of Exhibitions at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.) I was brought in to lend a hand with various aspects, including the wetfolding workshops. For these, I somewhat impetuously decided on teaching Yoshizawa’s signature Swan.
Trouble was—I couldn’t figure out how to make it! The version from a square, diagrammed in one of his books, did not give similar results. Eventually I learned that the “main” version of this model starts not from a square but from an equilateral triangle. But by then I had “reverse engineered” a Swan that starts from a square and ends up much like his triangular version, and it is that which I taught the poor unsuspecting students at the museum’s wet-folding workshop. (The first session was full of real folding pros—from them I heard no complaints.)
Before and especially after the workshops I studied this Swan, and continued to think about it.
It is one of three iconic models Yoshizawa had, and which he did not refuse to teach in public; the other two being his Butterfly and his Gorilla. The Butterfly is a masterpiece of transformative economy—a few baby-steps and you are there. Michael LaFosse has designed exquisite lepidoptera that are unquestionable improvements on his master’s, and are now his own signature models; but just as unquestionably—he will be the first to admit—they are not improvements in economy, in the ratio of ends to means. Indeed one would be hard-pressed to find anything that is, that gets so quickly from square to living thing with all parts in the right place. Yoshizawa’s Gorilla is a consummate hybrid: a body that is very simple to make—a 6-year-old can do it—but then a head, which calls for infinite weathering, experience, subtlety, a touch that only a master can give. A true sculptor, a Giang Dinh, can go to town with it, but no one else can. (Of course a true sculptor does not bother tweaking the head on top of a Yoshizawa Gorilla, but makes his own.)
The Swan continues with this thought of “simple models that allow infinite artistry”, but it is more complete. The origami aspects are meant to begin to disappear into a full sculpture. Yoshizawa kept finessing this model his whole life, striving for some sort of perfection in curvaceousness and grace.
This is the model that the Master taught Felipe Moreno in Zaragoza, Spain, for whom it has become a favorite.
Formally, it is still very much origami—quite a simple model actually. But at the same time Yoshizawa seems to be seeking an opposite to origami: a kind of maximum distance from it in a few short moves. Curves of surface and line, for instance, rather than all-flat planes and angularity. Likewise, the cut-edge of the paper is nowhere allowed to be prominent; where it does appear (at the bottom of the wings) it faces down to the table, away from the viewer: that's a way of concealing the model's origins in a delimited paper sheet. The back of the neck is smooth and the front curls inward in multiple layers--no cut edge seen, again--and in any case the forward bend of the head above largely obscures the view of the join; so another, "ugly" artifact of origami animal models, the seam, is kept out of sight. Most notable is the back, which is done without any sharp folds. The wings start out from the sides—sufficiently far apart to give the model a noticeably wide, smooth back. The reverse-folds making the tail and neck are kept soft. It is clear Yoshizawa was already thinking fully about the concept of the closed back; even if many of his other models don't show this trait; and as usual thinking about it several decades before it reached wider consciousness among origami designers.
Consider the easiest way to make a swan. There is nothing simpler than to take a fish base, use its flaps as wings, its long points as head and tail. But that would put a severe split down the back, and leave the cut edge of the paper in the flaps face up. These would have been unacceptable for Yoshizawa.
Look for comparison also at how Ligia Montoya designed her Swan: a simple but careful construction which starts from a dart. Flat planes, gracefully spreading in back for the wings and tail. Not quite a closed back, yet not a fully open one. She sets the tone for flat origami, or more accurately, plane-based origami, which can also be 3D.
I used to think of this as a fundamental difference between the origami that was emerging in Spanish-speaking parts of the world and this other origami that Yoshizawa had pioneered. Today, I doubt whether this sort of distinction based on locality ever had much validity, and clearly with the global mixing effected by the Internet it is even harder to argue for. But even if this style of flatness’ did indeed influence the Spanish-speaking side of origami more than the rest of the world (along with maybe a certain increased “sociality”, that is, relatively clean folds and communicable steps), it doesn’t form a clean contrast with Yoshizawa’s heritage in any large geographic sense.
That is because the class of followers of his teachings seems to have shrunk. Who after all has absorbed them now? Joisel was certainly a great admirer of Yoshizawa's, but one can’t point to any direct teaching from him—unless it was some idea of the whimsical, which Joisel went after in completely his own way. There is certainly Giang Dinh, who notably picks up the wet-fold (I would say more masterfully than his master) while doing away with the preliminary ‘base-forming’ steps which connect origami with its historical and its child-minded beginnings. There is Michael LaFosse and there is Dave Brill, each of whom clearly inherited some of Yoshizawa’s ethos. (Hard to define exactly how: a relative simplicity, or at least an admiration for it as ideal; and an appreciation of, a willingness to work sometimes with thicker, wet-foldable paper. Of course the fine-art leanings too.) And there is Stefan Weber, in some of his brashness and deftness, in the ad-hoc, discovered solutions which then get reworked through endless repetition into an instinct: a masterful flourish. —Are there others I am forgetting?
[Added: My mind indeed slipped. Dave Brill mentions (see his comment below) Alfredo Giunta and Max Hulmne; for gesture and economy of line I could add Lionel Albertino, and for curvaceousness and 'simplicity' perhaps Jozsef Zsebe. No doubt there are others too, it depends how widely one defines "influence".]
The above are, so to speak, “organic” receivers of Yoshizawa’s teachings. But it is also possible to coldly isolate elements of his logic and apply them. Last year I did an experimental series of “Bird Volumetric Studies”, where I tried to make bird shapes using all and only volume-creating folds (mainly angled crimps that end in the interior of the sheet); these also serve as ‘ornamental’ folds, and leave no superfluous lines, while enclosing the shape in least-wastage volumes. The aims and approach are very different from Yoshizawa’s (there are no simple set-up moves, it is 3D work from the git-go), but the breadth of the smooth back is clearly important for the resulting models, and that in its way reflects a concept of AYs. Perhaps the one he promoted with his Swan.
But now there are these heads, where I’m trying to borrow a bit more. The simple set-up; the thick, wet-foldable paper with very little layering; the scope that the design leaves to incorporate ad-hoc solutions; and especially--the broad smooth curving surface of the sheet, the "head" equivalent of the “closed back”.
More important still are the questions. How do you get origami to come alive? If there is, besides what is called "touch", some technical trick to this--like leaving a surface smooth, without sharp folds--what parts of the body is it really essential to do that with? The smoothness of the paper is a kind of visual invitation to stroking, suggests softness (even if the paper is up to 300 grams thick and fairly resilient). Is that a way to engage the viewer? To add to a model's "delicacy"? Or to its "simplicity"? Or to its ‘depth’ as art?
The continuation from Yoshizawa is a continuation of his questions, not necessarily the answers he found, although these very often point the way.
Origami can be done as a doodle—you pick up a scrap of paper, say the receipt from your recent shopping expedition, and play with it absent-mindedly at the outdoor cafe, bending it this way and that till it starts looking like an animal, all while waiting for the espresso to arrive.
But you can also design origami deliberately, so that it will seem like a doodle. Here is a an extremely simple set-up that you can actually do with a grocery receipt:
I venture to say that you can make—maybe not ALL the heads of all animals from this start (with mild variations), but certainly a good many of them. A head that’s mounted on a long neck or a pole. With a bit of finessing you can squeeze out a good lower-jaw too.
Since the set-up is so simple and the number of folds is small, you can do this with thick “artistic” paper too, like Canson Mi-Teintes, and preserve the unblemished, unbroken expanse of the sheet, with all its glorious texture—letting the paperiness of the model shine.
And then it will still be origami. But no longer just a doodle.
* * *
Now, this is a simple idea. But it didn’t form itself simply, waiting for the coffee to arrive. There’s actually a long back-story to it, a whole origami biography. Which I’ll try to sketch out, for those who might like some chattiness along with their pictures and espresso.
I got my start in folding as a boy in 1972, from Harbin’s “Secrets of Origami” and Randlett’s “Best of Origami”—books brought to me while convalescing in a hospital in Jerusalem for a serious illness. Those were pages filled with magic, from many authors, but the hovering spirit throughout seemed to
be that of the mysterious Japanese giant Akira Yoshizawa; and when I started designing for myself 15 years later in Chicago (with CHAOS—the CHicago Area Origami Society in its first days) it was very much with this artist as role-model. There was no question that in his hands origami could be a fine art, endlessly suggestive, expressive, technically masterful but never letting itself get swallowed by technique. For all that, Yoshizawa’s prickly prima-donna Japanese-master persona irritated me, and when he visited the U.S.—as near as Detroit—I didn’t betake myself to meet him. That was youthful arrogance: it has its place, even if I kick myself for it now.
Life gallops on. I was studying aesthetics in grad school at the University of Chicago , then fled with my PhD to Israel. Things eventually advanced, both professionally/curatorially and origamiwise/artistically; in 2007 these combined and I was asked to put together Israel's first large-scale international exhibition of origami art. This was at a prestigious venue: the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, in Haifa, which houses the largest collection of Japanese art in the Middle East.
It was obvious that I needed to have Yoshizawa works for this show, to give it gravitas and to anchor origami firmly in the public mind as an emerging Japanese art, even as it is also an international one. But it became even more obvious because of a rather fantastical coincidence. Felix Tikotin from Holland, the late founder of this museum, and perhaps the greatest dealer in classical Japanese art in the 20th century—prints, enamel vases, swords, netsuke, and the like—also turned out to be (from a little research on my part, chasing a tip by Dave Brill) the key 'mystery man' who in 1955 arranged Akira Yoshizawa’s first-ever museum exhibition at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. This was also the first museum exhibition for origami as a fine art, anywhere. Much new and exciting information on this episode, which centers on the figure of Gershon Legman—who 'discovered' and corresponded with Yoshizawa then ensnared Tikotin to display his works—has been turned up recently by Laura Rozenberg. [Note: she's finally written about it!]
Soon I was holding actual Yoshizawa works in my hands. At first works from a clandestine collection that exists in Haifa; later official works lent to me from Japan for the exhibit through the kind graces of his widow, Mrs. Kiyo Yoshizawa in Tokyo, based on the lifelong gratitude which the Yoshizawas felt toward Felix Tikotin for the help in 1955.
This was tremendously moving for me. Some of those models were the very ones I’d caught glimpses of in the books by Harbin and Randlett as a boy. Now I could feel their weight and texture, study the dimpling touches. (And without the ‘white gloves’!) I have to say, primitive or not, these works were haunting to hold. The hardness of the paper I was not used to; one could not help but think of the resilience of the man who made them, and the toughness of the time: 1950s Japan, pulling itself out of the war years; and this man going door to door selling fish treats, while pioneering his craft and our field.
 |
| Akira Yoshizawa, "Dogs". Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, 2007 |
These were the first of several opportunities I was given to study Yoshizawa’s works at close hand. Origami may well have advanced but I find there is still much to learn from the Master. For instance, notice the attention he gives to the heads in his animals. They are often wide—3D like the rest of the body—and get slightly more detail (usually eyes, ears, mouth, nose, horns etc) than the rest of the animal does, almost as if the head were a model to itself. In the best works the head is smooth on top; in the less than best, where the paper joins there is a seam line that seems to be trying to stay hidden. This is the “head” equivalent of the now-known origami ideal of the “closed back” (of which, more below).
The curatorial side of things—my discovery of the historical “Tikotin connection” —kept on having ramifications in the present as well. Tikotin’s grandson who resides in Amsterdam was informed of this chapter in his grandfather’s career, and used his contacts in Holland to arrange a new exhibition there: Yoshizawa’s first one-man show in Europe since that 1955 one. It was held in May, 2011 at Leiden’s SieboldHuis JapanMuseum. Some images of this rare and magnificent exhibition of Yoshizawa animals can be glimpsed on Paula Versnick’s Flickr site.
 |
| Akira Yoshizawa, "Camels". SieboldHuis JapanMuseum, 2011 |
This show was curated and set up by Mrs. Yoshizawa herself, who came specially. The museum’s director was Kris Schiermeier, another high-powered individual (her previous job was Curator of Exhibitions at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.) I was brought in to lend a hand with various aspects, including the wetfolding workshops. For these, I somewhat impetuously decided on teaching Yoshizawa’s signature Swan.
Trouble was—I couldn’t figure out how to make it! The version from a square, diagrammed in one of his books, did not give similar results. Eventually I learned that the “main” version of this model starts not from a square but from an equilateral triangle. But by then I had “reverse engineered” a Swan that starts from a square and ends up much like his triangular version, and it is that which I taught the poor unsuspecting students at the museum’s wet-folding workshop. (The first session was full of real folding pros—from them I heard no complaints.)
 |
| Saadya Sternberg, wetfolding workshop. SieboldHuis JapanMuseum 2011 |
Before and especially after the workshops I studied this Swan, and continued to think about it.
It is one of three iconic models Yoshizawa had, and which he did not refuse to teach in public; the other two being his Butterfly and his Gorilla. The Butterfly is a masterpiece of transformative economy—a few baby-steps and you are there. Michael LaFosse has designed exquisite lepidoptera that are unquestionable improvements on his master’s, and are now his own signature models; but just as unquestionably—he will be the first to admit—they are not improvements in economy, in the ratio of ends to means. Indeed one would be hard-pressed to find anything that is, that gets so quickly from square to living thing with all parts in the right place. Yoshizawa’s Gorilla is a consummate hybrid: a body that is very simple to make—a 6-year-old can do it—but then a head, which calls for infinite weathering, experience, subtlety, a touch that only a master can give. A true sculptor, a Giang Dinh, can go to town with it, but no one else can. (Of course a true sculptor does not bother tweaking the head on top of a Yoshizawa Gorilla, but makes his own.)
The Swan continues with this thought of “simple models that allow infinite artistry”, but it is more complete. The origami aspects are meant to begin to disappear into a full sculpture. Yoshizawa kept finessing this model his whole life, striving for some sort of perfection in curvaceousness and grace.
 |
| Akira Yoshizawa with Swan. SieboldHuis JapanMuseum, 2011 |
This is the model that the Master taught Felipe Moreno in Zaragoza, Spain, for whom it has become a favorite.
Formally, it is still very much origami—quite a simple model actually. But at the same time Yoshizawa seems to be seeking an opposite to origami: a kind of maximum distance from it in a few short moves. Curves of surface and line, for instance, rather than all-flat planes and angularity. Likewise, the cut-edge of the paper is nowhere allowed to be prominent; where it does appear (at the bottom of the wings) it faces down to the table, away from the viewer: that's a way of concealing the model's origins in a delimited paper sheet. The back of the neck is smooth and the front curls inward in multiple layers--no cut edge seen, again--and in any case the forward bend of the head above largely obscures the view of the join; so another, "ugly" artifact of origami animal models, the seam, is kept out of sight. Most notable is the back, which is done without any sharp folds. The wings start out from the sides—sufficiently far apart to give the model a noticeably wide, smooth back. The reverse-folds making the tail and neck are kept soft. It is clear Yoshizawa was already thinking fully about the concept of the closed back; even if many of his other models don't show this trait; and as usual thinking about it several decades before it reached wider consciousness among origami designers.
Consider the easiest way to make a swan. There is nothing simpler than to take a fish base, use its flaps as wings, its long points as head and tail. But that would put a severe split down the back, and leave the cut edge of the paper in the flaps face up. These would have been unacceptable for Yoshizawa.
Look for comparison also at how Ligia Montoya designed her Swan: a simple but careful construction which starts from a dart. Flat planes, gracefully spreading in back for the wings and tail. Not quite a closed back, yet not a fully open one. She sets the tone for flat origami, or more accurately, plane-based origami, which can also be 3D.
I used to think of this as a fundamental difference between the origami that was emerging in Spanish-speaking parts of the world and this other origami that Yoshizawa had pioneered. Today, I doubt whether this sort of distinction based on locality ever had much validity, and clearly with the global mixing effected by the Internet it is even harder to argue for. But even if this style of flatness’ did indeed influence the Spanish-speaking side of origami more than the rest of the world (along with maybe a certain increased “sociality”, that is, relatively clean folds and communicable steps), it doesn’t form a clean contrast with Yoshizawa’s heritage in any large geographic sense.
That is because the class of followers of his teachings seems to have shrunk. Who after all has absorbed them now? Joisel was certainly a great admirer of Yoshizawa's, but one can’t point to any direct teaching from him—unless it was some idea of the whimsical, which Joisel went after in completely his own way. There is certainly Giang Dinh, who notably picks up the wet-fold (I would say more masterfully than his master) while doing away with the preliminary ‘base-forming’ steps which connect origami with its historical and its child-minded beginnings. There is Michael LaFosse and there is Dave Brill, each of whom clearly inherited some of Yoshizawa’s ethos. (Hard to define exactly how: a relative simplicity, or at least an admiration for it as ideal; and an appreciation of, a willingness to work sometimes with thicker, wet-foldable paper. Of course the fine-art leanings too.) And there is Stefan Weber, in some of his brashness and deftness, in the ad-hoc, discovered solutions which then get reworked through endless repetition into an instinct: a masterful flourish. —Are there others I am forgetting?
[Added: My mind indeed slipped. Dave Brill mentions (see his comment below) Alfredo Giunta and Max Hulmne; for gesture and economy of line I could add Lionel Albertino, and for curvaceousness and 'simplicity' perhaps Jozsef Zsebe. No doubt there are others too, it depends how widely one defines "influence".]
The above are, so to speak, “organic” receivers of Yoshizawa’s teachings. But it is also possible to coldly isolate elements of his logic and apply them. Last year I did an experimental series of “Bird Volumetric Studies”, where I tried to make bird shapes using all and only volume-creating folds (mainly angled crimps that end in the interior of the sheet); these also serve as ‘ornamental’ folds, and leave no superfluous lines, while enclosing the shape in least-wastage volumes. The aims and approach are very different from Yoshizawa’s (there are no simple set-up moves, it is 3D work from the git-go), but the breadth of the smooth back is clearly important for the resulting models, and that in its way reflects a concept of AYs. Perhaps the one he promoted with his Swan.
 |
| "White Pigeon", by Saadya Sternberg. From an uncut square. |
But now there are these heads, where I’m trying to borrow a bit more. The simple set-up; the thick, wet-foldable paper with very little layering; the scope that the design leaves to incorporate ad-hoc solutions; and especially--the broad smooth curving surface of the sheet, the "head" equivalent of the “closed back”.
More important still are the questions. How do you get origami to come alive? If there is, besides what is called "touch", some technical trick to this--like leaving a surface smooth, without sharp folds--what parts of the body is it really essential to do that with? The smoothness of the paper is a kind of visual invitation to stroking, suggests softness (even if the paper is up to 300 grams thick and fairly resilient). Is that a way to engage the viewer? To add to a model's "delicacy"? Or to its "simplicity"? Or to its ‘depth’ as art?
The continuation from Yoshizawa is a continuation of his questions, not necessarily the answers he found, although these very often point the way.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Horse Heads
Update July 2018:
Horse Head origami sculptures like these have been shown at the BETA International Fair in Birmingham (for the equestrian crowd there), at the Chi Mei Museum in Taiwan, and in art exhibits at the Beit Meirov and the Hankin Design Galleries in the city of Holon, Israel. I am pleased for all the attention via Pinterest.
Enjoy the pictures! Horse lovers who wish to own the actual objects should contact me at saadyaorigami@gmail.com.
-------------------
This turns out to be a very popular sculpture, with an appeal to horse lovers everywhere, both inside and outside the origami world.
I'm often asked often how I came up with it. The answer is basically what you would expect. I have several ‘full horse’ models that I'm still tinkering with (have been since 1989....). On one, the ears were unsatisfactory; so, in 2004 while out at a fast-food shop I did a blow-up-study focusing only on the head. That left excess paper, which got folded out of the way in overlapping flaps. The results—a little like barn or stable doors with the head peeking out—pleased me; and so, a New Model. Recently (2011), prompted by a fan who was enthused by just this shape, I picked the model up again and put much improved eyes & ears on it.
Now, the above is easy enough to say. But it also happens that during those seven years of gestation, the thinking in origami has progressed, and mine has along with it.
1. For instance: one of the obsessions now in origami design is the color change. Paper has two sides; if they each have a different solid color the folded model can have a single contrast of colors between them. A lot of design effort is presently invested in putting the color changes exactly and only where it is right for an animal. The pioneer of this sort of thinking is Neal Elias in the mid-20th century, whom I've written about before; its leading modern exponent is probably Quentin Trollip.
But I would like to ask an even more primitive question. Is the limit here really only one contrast, for a sheet that has two colors on each side?
Notice that when a paper surface is curved (conically or cylindrically), the light reflects off it as a graduated shadow, which alters the hue in an eye-catching way. Then there’s another kind of shadow, created by pockets that drink up the light: these increase the contrast right at the lip of the pocket. So it is possible to design a model that takes advantage also of these variations to a hue. For each initial color, instead of just its hue-as-flat, you have now also the hue-as-curved and the hue-as-pocket-shaded; so six hues in total, or 14 possible contrasts.
Look again at these Horse-Heads and count how many I have used.
2. I’d been thinking about the role of the closed back in origami. What makes it preferable for an origami animal to have a smooth, unbroken layer of paper at its back—rather than a seam of folded layers which come together along the spine? Is that something about how we see an animal, or how we relate to an origami representation of one? I believe it was Yoshizawa who was first—as in so many other things—to notice this about origami animals; at any rate, many of his famous models take care to avoid the open backs used by many current designers (notably John Montroll), which are generally much easier to come up with.
Since the horse model I was studying had a closed back but still an ‘open head’, rather than a smooth surface across the ridge of its nose—this aesthetic fact was especially irksome for me, and I tried to deal with it in various ways.
Now, a join of layers along a central ridge, can usually be pulled apart to expose the smooth surface underneath. If this process is continued an ‘open back’ gives way eventually to a ‘closed back with folded ornaments alongside it’. How “eventually”? At what point does ‘open’ turn into ‘closed’? A series of experiments ensued.
The ‘exposed’ light-colored ridge of the Horse Head here, is one result. And my more recent work in Animal Heads takes even fuller advantage of these ideas.
2. Simplicity. There are so many meanings of this term in origami. The champion of one kind of simplicity is—again—Yoshizawa, in his iconic Butterfly (of course not all his models are exemplars of this quality). And there the term just means, that in a very few steps, you get a change of form, a metamorphosis from a simple square into the distinctive shape of Lepidoptera, with the parts all in the right place. Nowadays there are much fancier Butterflies flittering about—Michael LaFosse’s, and a nice antennaed variation by Robert Lang—but none come close to Yoshizawa in Value for Money: results for the number and ease of moves involved.
How to bring this idea up to date?
My model is not nearly so simple, coming in at just under 20 moves. But it is still simple for the striking results. The relatively minimal manipulation of the paper, is apparent in the smoothness of the resultant sculpture.
But I achieved the economy by a different method than Yoshizawa’s. The number of steps were minimized by trying to have each accomplish several things at once. The following won’t mean much to those who haven’t made this model (and I’ve taught it so far only to a few groups and individuals), but:
- The same 2 folds that form the dip of the nose, also directly create the nostrils
- Just one rabbit-ear makes both the (incipient) eyes and (the incipient) ears
- The move that bends the head off the neck, narrows the ears too
- There’s a ‘triple-ripple’ on the mane, but it’s actually made by adding a single crimp to what’s already there
- The move to form the “stable doors” also creates the curve at the nape of the neck
and so on.
4. Representation vs. Signaling. Technical folding, while we’re at it, strives for increasing accuracy via an increasing amount of detail. This gets you the ‘wow effect’, but at the expense of the viewer not being able to follow the folds with his mind’s eye: a pretty big loss. And there are other costs. Here I wanted, in a relatively followable piece, to obtain the striking appearance not from fancy footwork and not from micro-representation, but from labor of a different kind: the labor of looking. Look at an animal and see what about it makes it most striking, most distinctively itself, most winsome to us, and capture that. A horse sticking its head out of a stall, almost asking to be stroked on the head—that is an animal signal, evolved among other things also in the relation that’s developed between equine and human. It is what works for us; it is designed to appeal. If you pay attention to these "g-spots", you can get your wow without having to go technical at all.
5. How a Paperfold is Read. Finally—this is a subject that Herman van Goubergen has made pretty much his own—some folds in a paper animal look like a head, others like eyes (sometimes when you don’t want them to), some like legs, etc. In short each bit stands for something else. You are always reading the model as..., seeing-it as.... --Can this be played with?
Of course the above description holds true no less for a bit of charcoal rubbed on paper or on a cave wall; or a bit of stone chipped this way or that. Art that represents has been with us at least 30,000 years. But somehow with origami the whole subject seems to be getting brought up for discussion again; maybe because of the ease with which you can flip a fold or move it slightly and have its significance change; but I suspect also because of the speed with which the mind is willing to hover over a model and read and then differently reread the tiniest indications.
Here it is perfectly clear that the light part of the paper is supposed to be the white patch which a horse sometimes has on its forehead; continuing in the same light color it becomes the mane, then wraps around and becomes the pillar, or the doors of the ‘stall’ out of which the horse is poking its neck. You see that the sheet is continuous, and you know that you are reading the two ends of it differently, and yet this doesn’t in the least obstruct your enjoyment of the work. On the contrary!
Not quite an optical illusion, but maybe an optical teaser.
Known Influences / Nice Images
A classic--the Selene Horse (here and here)
Great shot of ponies swimming and struggling to keep heads above water
Sculpture by Nic Fiddian Green, toiling out there in his studio in England
And in a more abstract and modernist vein--equally great--Deborah Butterfield
Exhibition History
This model has been displayed at the 2012 Beta International Fair (a Horse-themed trade show), in Birmingham, England, and at the Italian and Spanish origami conventions in 2011 and 2012. Versions are currently on display at the Jerusalem gallery that represents me. If you're in Israel, please stop in at:
Rakia Gallery
18 Shlomzion Ha-Malka Street
JERUSALEM
02-502-3450
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Equine Sculptural Origami
I'm writing this post on the occasion of the huge equestrian trade fair going on this week in Birmingham in the UK. A few Horse-Heads of mine are on display there, very much like these:
"Horse Heads", by Saadya, Feb 2012. Uncut sheets of Canson watercolor paper are pre-inked on one side and folded while wet.
These are origami sculptures: that is, they obey the rules of the new game of origami (start from a single sheet, and make your shape entirely by folding, without cutting), while trying to stay true also to requirements of traditional sculpture (an older game with a lot more rules...)
The display at the fair is meant to draw attention to a neat invention by Josephine Unsworth--about which, more below.
HORSE EXHIBITION
You visitors to the Birmingham Fair (and my regular readers too) might like to know that I am putting together a museum exhibition devoted entirely to horses and equestrian subjects. Besides my own things there will be work in it by some of the top origami designers in the world today. Origami is an entirely new medium for sculpture, with lots of potential for expressing an animal's personality, energy, soul --and a disarming magic that may be specially suited to the mysterious soul-bond we have with this particular beast. At any rate: it is unlikely you will have seen equine sculpture of this kind in person anywhere before.
This exhibit will travel, so if there's a museum or high-end gallery in your neighborhood that would be interested in hosting it, I'd be happy to hear from you. (The same goes for my regular readers and interested visitors around the world: drop me a line.)
"Origami Equestrians", by Saadya,1992. From a square sheet of contact paper + foil. (Henkin Gallery of Design, Holon, Israel.)A few years ago at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art (Haifa, Israel), I was privileged to be given the chance to assemble a large exhibit of artistic origami which had as a centerpiece this magnificent series of galloping horses, by the great Uruguayan origami artist Roman Diaz. This is the caliber of the work that I am aiming for now. Sculpture in origami, that can hold its own against anything done in any other medium, over the last 6,000 years. Let those who think that "origami is just craft" go on with their chatter.
Roman Diaz (Uruguay), "Wild Horses". (Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa, Israel.)
Finally--a word about my "sponsor" this week at the Birmingham BETA International fair, the optician Josephine Unsworth, who has a terrific, horse-sensitive invention she is launching there. It's a replacement for the blinders and nose-binds in use for centuries, that keeps a racehorse focused on the region in front of it (where it has stereoscopic vision) by making it peer through sort of goal posts positioned on the sides of its head. This lets the head and eye assume more natural positions, which means a less-stressed animal and in the end, a better racer. I really liked the concept-- a whole new way of considering what and how a horse sees, what makes its vision comfortable--and the thoroughness of the research that backed it up; which is why I joined forces with her. And the product that resulted is fresh, simple, well-thought-through: Just like good origami.
Wishing you a fun and prosperous fair
Saadya Sternberg.
Monday, November 14, 2011
"Eyeball" series
Starting out, I did not intend this to be a self-portrait. But I'm told now that this is not a conclusion I can exactly avoid....
You be the judge.
Anyway. So, I figured out how to do eyeballs properly from origami, and now am going crazy putting eyes on everything.
Anyway. So, I figured out how to do eyeballs properly from origami, and now am going crazy putting eyes on everything.
Note the magnets--the lozenge-shaped thingies. I use those on the 3D surface in places where clips can't reach, to hold layers together as the misted paper dries. (The paper is pre-treated with methyl cellulose and a light ink rub, so it stiffens up nicely.) --Anybody else do this?
Cheers!
Saadya
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Saturday, September 03, 2011
New Paper Heads
A few heads showing off some of the latest technology. All are folded from uncut rectangles of paper --grays Canson, greens Fabriano--pretreated with methyl cellulose and a light ink wash, then wet-folded. The beard-nose-mouth is a construction mostly worked out six months ago; the eyebrows and "wheat-sheath" motif I came up with in the last few weeks. Enjoy -S
Friday, April 01, 2011
“Sculptural Origami”--published!
At last! my little book is now seeing the light of day.
("Sculptural Origami" is available on Amazon, sometimes with a different image depicted as the cover by mistake.)
("Sculptural Origami" is available on Amazon, sometimes with a different image depicted as the cover by mistake.)
Equally parts coffee-table art book, and hands-on, get your fingers twitching model and sculpture-making guide, there's a text, and there's a DVD, covering three of the four main branches of origami that I've been exploring in recent years:
- FACES
- ANIMALS
- CURVES
I didn't want this to be just an “instructional manual” (= origami diagrams book) but even so instruction, that is, constructing-guiding-demonstrating-suggesting-directing-cajoling-provoking-leadingbyexample (with lots of hand movements) is very much the essence of this book, because it's very much the essence of origami.
So there are diagrams & step-by-step guides in both book and DVD, and there is some fancy talk, but the sculpture images are what's really meant to linger in your mind.
I give away probably the two most important secrets for how I make my faces. The DVD shows both basic concepts and one complete project for making a head. The text also shows how to relate faces to busts. Most of the rest you should be able to figure out for yourselves, by exploring.
Among the animals taught is my Horse, both standing and grazing postures. Your author humbly suggests that this model alone is worth the purchase of the book.
Among the animals taught is my Horse, both standing and grazing postures. Your author humbly suggests that this model alone is worth the purchase of the book.
A few other animals diagrammed or DVD'd are pictured below. All are pure origami from one square, but none of the models is "complex".
Some extremely basic curve-folding ideas, easy enough to state informally, give rise immediately to striking and unexpected origami/geometric consequences. So, this book should interest also those of you who like to think about math.
The publisher worked hard on this book, and had to put up with my rants, raves and overall terror at having zero artistic control. But I have to admit, in the end it came out a handsome product. Thank you Dover.
Hope you all enjoy it!
Saadya
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Yoshizawa Exhibition
I have the honor of announcing, on behalf of the SiboldHuis JapanMusem, that an exhibition of origami art by Akira Yoshizawa will be held in Leiden, the Netherlands, from April 30 to May 29, 2011.
Titled “Animal Parade. Origami by Akira Yoshizawa”, the focus will be on animals—as they have that special quality of 'liveliness' that the 'Father of Modern Origami' was noted for. There will be over 200 sculptures in various postures and groupings, from periods spanning the Master's career. These "range from gorillas and seahorses to a dinosaur and a horse of exceptional height", as per the exhibition website which is now up.
This proximity (the museums are a few dozen kilometers from each other) is no accident.
In January, I had the good fortune to meet with Kris Schiermeier, Director of the SieboldHouse, who was visiting Haifa here in Israel, and was much impressed. I had gone to Haifa, actually, to meet Jaron Borensztajn, to try and gather some historical information about his grandfather, Felix Tikotin, the Japanese-art dealer who arranged the first Yoshizawa exhibition in Amsterdam 1955. But there I learnt that he and Kris were plotting with Mrs. Yoshizawa a second, historically-symbolic exhibition in Holland, scheduled for April. And now it will be taking place!
My only complaint is that the show will be up only one month.
More news will be posted here about what promises to be fantastic exhibition, as soon as it becomes available.
Saadya
>> Added 2012: I have been remiss in writing about this exhibit and it is weighing on me. Meanwhile have a look at some of these photos from the show, taken by both Paula Versnick and myself.
2013: I did end up writing a few words about Yoshizawa's influence, at least on me. See: http://www.origami-aesthetics.blogspot.co.il/2013/08/closed-head-open-mind.html
Titled “Animal Parade. Origami by Akira Yoshizawa”, the focus will be on animals—as they have that special quality of 'liveliness' that the 'Father of Modern Origami' was noted for. There will be over 200 sculptures in various postures and groupings, from periods spanning the Master's career. These "range from gorillas and seahorses to a dinosaur and a horse of exceptional height", as per the exhibition website which is now up.
Lectures and hands-on workshops by origami luminaries (as well as by Yours Truly) are scheduled for the weekend of May 7-8.
This will be the largest-scale showing of Akira Yoshizawa's pioneering work in any setting outside of Japan, since the 1950s. The last such museum exhibit at this scale in the West was also the first one: the exhibition in Amsterdam's Stedelijt Museum in 1955.
This proximity (the museums are a few dozen kilometers from each other) is no accident.
In January, I had the good fortune to meet with Kris Schiermeier, Director of the SieboldHouse, who was visiting Haifa here in Israel, and was much impressed. I had gone to Haifa, actually, to meet Jaron Borensztajn, to try and gather some historical information about his grandfather, Felix Tikotin, the Japanese-art dealer who arranged the first Yoshizawa exhibition in Amsterdam 1955. But there I learnt that he and Kris were plotting with Mrs. Yoshizawa a second, historically-symbolic exhibition in Holland, scheduled for April. And now it will be taking place!
There is more to this story that I am not at liberty to reveal yet.
This is a very rare opportunity for anyone in the West--or anywhere for that matter--to see Master Yoshizawa's work in person. I can't convey how deeply moved I was the first time, a few years ago, that I held in my hands some of his works, models I'd known as a boy only from photographs in the Harbin books of the 1970s. Now a direct view will be available to anyone.
My only complaint is that the show will be up only one month.
More news will be posted here about what promises to be fantastic exhibition, as soon as it becomes available.
Saadya
>> Added 2012: I have been remiss in writing about this exhibit and it is weighing on me. Meanwhile have a look at some of these photos from the show, taken by both Paula Versnick and myself.
2013: I did end up writing a few words about Yoshizawa's influence, at least on me. See: http://www.origami-aesthetics.blogspot.co.il/2013/08/closed-head-open-mind.html
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Head
Added 14 March, 2012. All of you thousands of sudden visitors to my site, who came here today via the "Google doodle" or by Google-imaging "Akira Yoshizawa"---I am immensely flattered, but am just a humble student of the late great master.
If you like this "Head", you might like to know that the sculpture was shown during a talk at the fabulous Yoshizawa animal origami exhibit at the SieboldHuis JapanMuseum in Leiden, the Netherlands, last year, where I was invited to speak. A few Yoshizawa images from that exhibit may be viewed here. (It's what you came for after all... )
Poke around my blog if you want to see what modern paperfolding art looks like---at least my modern paperfolding art.
Your appreciation of origami, warms the heart.
--Saadya
----------------
ORIGINAL POST (January 2011)
Head, by Saadya
Made for Jaron Borensztajn of Amsterdam, collector and grandson of Felix Tikotin, the great Japanese Art collector and dealer who arranged for Akira Yoshizawa his first proper exhibit outside of Japan: the 1955 exhibition at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.
More news about Yoshizawa in Holland—hopefully soon.
Instructions for this head, all except the ears (a recent development) can be found in my book, Sculptural Origami, which will be out any day now. This sculpture is from a single uncut rectangle of watercolor paper, acrylic-painted on one side; then wetfolded—an old technique, not coincidentally, of Yoshizawa's.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Stephan Weber
I first encountered Weber at “Masters of Origami” in Salzburg, 2005, a show put together by the Red Bull corporation. That was a landmark exhibition, full of first-rate origami some of which was also high art indeed—but Stephan's pair of giant, almost snorting red bulls, struck me as that show's focal point. Immense, vigorous, detailed, absolute icons of latent power, I could not take my eyes off them. Stephan tells me he was tasked by Red Bull to make them about a week before the opening, and complied.
Stephan divides his time between Germany (was it Cologne?) and Patagonia, Chile. What he does in Chile I don't know, except that he likes to go fishing and is rebuilding after a hostel he owned was destroyed by a volcano. In Germany he works the holiday season folding and selling on the street. (These details are sufficiently sketchy that I'm sure Stephan will pardon me for disclosing them and maybe erring a bit.) This constant practice over the years has made Stephan the fastest folder in the world, and also attuned him to what delights an audience and where in the longer sequences their patience flags. That in turn has shaped his approach to paper and his concept of an ideal origami design: it had better be short and effective.
At “Masters of Origami” I was too shy to ask him to make me one of his bulls (a ten-minute folding job for him), though Joseph Wu was lucky enough to get one. We didn't really communicate. But I watched from the side as he did his public folding, surrounded by Austria's fashion models—young blond Claudia Schiffer lookalikes—who were gazing on, wearing expressions of rapture.
It's strange but one lives one's life vicariously, through other people too or more exactly fantasies of them. We do it with them and they do it with us. He is jealous of where I've gone with the Faces or the thin layer of analysis that stretches over the spontaneity, in origami and other things; or the fact I can string a few sentences together. I am jealous of his speed in folding; of his animal spirits with the paper, and very sure sense of paper's qualities; and especially of his direct contact with people, the most extreme and direct form of origami connection, that almost no one else has. Also the persistence and spirits needed to do this 11 hours a day, 40 days on end. He sings for his supper: what do we do? That's what's called earning one's living honestly, not this writing of books or or giving lectures or doing commercials or all the other stuff origami professionals do for a buck, no offense. I can't do what he does but I can sure admire it. And living out in beautiful reaches of South America half the year, well for me that's just another unlived dream.
I tried folding his Bull twice (first from a visual reconstruction, later from diagrams), but had trouble with the proportions. In terms of a teachable sequence, it is a crude, ugly fold, with few landmarks. That is OK; not all origami has to have the goal of teachability or repeatability. We can't all be hyper-referencers like Komatsu or strict 22.5-degree-enjoyable-sequencers like Roman Diaz. There is real virtue, if also drawbacks, to the raw, blind attack on the square of paper, wrestling the form from it almost without thought (but with the benefit of years of tactile experience) in the most direct and quick manner. Speed! Touch! Results!--And if possible also: Minimum of lines!
Of his animals, the Bull is far and away the best; others, like the Squirrel, the Hounds, can't help calling to mind comparable models by other designers (LaFosse, Komatsu, Montroll, Joisel, Yoshizawa) and not always gaining from the comparison. I think there are great advantages to maintaining a certain distance from the broader origami world, but periodic contact and competition is a good thing too and it is undeniable that if origami has progressed faster and farther than other plastic arts that's due to its extra social & communicative dimension. Yet some people need a certain isolation to develop a purer sense of themselves, and I very much respect that. Certainly one grows more curious about these characters who keep themselves apart. I am rooting for the holdouts.
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Added February 17, 2011. I am pleased to learn today (it had nothing to do with me) that Stephan Weber will be a featured guest at the 1st Origami Canada convention, to be held in Vancouver, BC October 5-9, 2012.
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