The Beard Art Galleries became an abstract scene.
Aloysius pushed open the door with confidence, and we were surprised by the art inside the gallery. There were no bright fruit bowls or setters with feathered tails. The strain of art in the window was deceptive, and we decided that the display was only selected to entice passengers on the streetcars.
The cloudy walls were covered with original art, gouache, oil on canvas, and watercolors on paper, mostly natural water scenes, evocative barns and country houses, railroad stations, sailboats, glorious summer sunsets, autumn maples, and winter landscapes. The trees and outlines were precise images, and the colors were intense and clean. The emigrants who moved to the cities must have been heartened by the romantic and picturesque landscapes.
Three framed distinct watercolors were displayed on sturdy oak easels near the entrance of the gallery. Aloysius moved closer and reached out to touch the magnificent images of misty scenes, and then held back with his hands raised above the easels. The three watercolors, Snowy Winter Road, Summer Afternoon, and Woman in the Garden, seemed to reach out to touch and enchant my brother and me.
Snowy Winter Road was a watercolor of giant trees on a curved country road. The trees were covered with heavy wet snow, a natural bow to the season. The entire scene was muted but the snowy trees, and the morning light, shimmer in the gallery and in my memory.
The Summer Afternoon watercolor was a subtle diffusion of light and the waft and scatter of colors on a sleepy afternoon, a misty secret scene of lacy trees in praise of nature and memory. We could hear the sound of birds and insects in the scene, and the slight glint of dragonflies over the lily pond.
The Japanese Woman in the Garden wore a traditional kimono, and she was crouched near a garden of lilies. We were touched by the subtle motion and magic of the visionary watercolor scenes. The elegant curves were natural, erotic, and magical.
Aloysius was captivated by the Woman in the Garden.
Harmonia, the gallery manager, a lanky, intense woman with short blonde hair pointed directly at my brother, but not at me. She wore a dark gray pinstripe suit, bluish necktie, and black-and-white oxford shoes. Naturally, we were distracted by her manly costume and hardly noticed her severe gestures.
Keep those dirty hands in your pockets, she shouted, and then shooed me toward the door. Aloysius lowered his hands and stared at the manager. She, in turn, folded her arms, raised one long pale blue finger, and stood directly in front of the three easels.
The Irish setter in the window, how much?
The setters are not for sale.
The Woman in the Garden, how much for that watercolor? Aloysius moved behind the easels and read out loud the name of the artist. Yamada Baske, how much for the Japanese Woman in the Garden?
Very expensive, what do you want?
Aloysius told the gallery manager that we wanted to meet the watercolor artist named Yamada Baske. She turned in silence, rocked on her oxfords, and waited for us to leave the gallery.
Aloysius announced that our uncle owned a newspaper, and he would surely buy the Woman in the Garden. Suddenly her manner changed. She cocked her head to the side, smiled, and pretended to be friendly, unaware, of course, that the newspaper was published on the White Earth Reservation. Yamada Baske was Japanese, she said, and he taught art in Minneapolis.
Aloysius revealed that he was a watercolor artist. She smiled and again folded her arms with one finger raised as a gesture of doubt. One of our teachers at the government school raised her finger, but the gesture was more about derision than doubt. My brother opened his art book and presented several of his most recent abstract blue ravens, but not the ones he had painted earlier that day at the library.
Harmonia slowly turned the leaves of his watercolor book, examined each blue raven, and then announced that Yamada Baske, or Fukawa Jin Basuke, was an instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. Naturally we were surprised to learn that the art school and the Society of Fine Arts were located on the same floor of the Minneapolis Public Library.
The same conductor was on the return streetcar and asked us about the art gallery. Aloysius told him about the window display, the bright fruit and red setters, and then described the watercolor scene of a beautiful Japanese woman in a garden of lilies.
What does she look like?
Her face was turned to the lilies.
So, why was she beautiful?
The elegance of her hands and feet crouched by the lilies, my brother explained to the conductor, but he was not convinced. We were touched by the mood and subtle hues of the watercolor. The Woman in the Garden was the only picture that was enticing and we wanted to be in the garden scene with that sensuous woman.
Yamada Baske was standing at an easel with a student when we entered the studio. He smiled, bowed his head, and then turned to continue his discussion on the techniques of painting subtle hues of color, traces of reds and blues in watercolors. Baske told the student that the wash of blues was a natural trace of creation, a primal touch of ancient memories. The blues are a procession, he explained, and the turn of blues must be essential, the epitome and trace of natural hues of color.
Aloysius was inspired by the chance discussion of colors, the hues of blue, and once again he flinched and turned shy. My brother was a visionary artist, and that was a native sense of presence not a practice. He had never studied any techniques of watercolor as a painter. So, when he heard an art teacher describe his own natural passion as a painter he became reserved and secretive.
The contrast between visionary, mercenary, and gallery art was not easy to discuss with a learned painter. My brother created blue ravens as new totems, a natural visionary art, and for that reason the scenes he painted were never the same, and are not easily defined as a practice by teachers of art. There were no histories about blue ravens, no learned courses on new native totems. My brother was an original artist, and the images he created would change the notions of native art and the world. His native visions cannot be easily named, described, or compared by curators in art galleries.
Aloysius mounted several of his blue ravens on the empty easels in the studio. Yamada Baske studied the raven pictures from a distance, at first, and then he slowly moved closer to each image on the easels. He described the totemic images as native impressionism, an original style of abstract blue ravens.
Baske was reviewed as an impressionist painter, and exhibition curators observed that he had been trained in the great traditional painting style of the Japanese. Later, in the library, we read that his watercolors conveyed a traditional composition, “but rendered with the airy, misty technique of the impressionists. In some ways this reflects completion of a circle of influence given that the impressionist movement was deeply influenced by Japanese art, particularly watercolors and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.”
Aloysius created blue ravens, an inspiration of natural scenes and original native totems, and one day his watercolors would be included in the stories told about abstract and impressionist painters. My brother would create the new totems of the natural world in visionary, fierce, and severe scenes.
Baske was truly impressed by the pictures of the blue ravens. He moved from easel to easel, and then mounted more pictures to consider. He commented on the mastery of the blue hues, the subtle traces of motion, the natural stray of watercolor shadows, and the sense of presence in every scene of the ravens.
The blue ravens are glorious, visionary, a natural watercolor creation, said Baske. He raised one hand and waved, a gesture of praise over the