The Nelson Atkins’s current special exhibit is Hokusai: Waves of Inspiration from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Husband and I saw it at the beginning of this month, and I highly recommend it. I was familiar with Hokusai before we went - I’m not sure anyone is unfamiliar with him, though whether or not they know his name (or names?) is going to vary. Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave) is one of those pieces that has infected and permeated our culture so thoroughly that I don’t think we can disentangle from it, nor would I want to. The Great Wave is one of those pieces of art that sits in a person forever, and always has some new aspect to lose yourself in - the curls of the foam, Mt Fuji in the background, the boats… which is evidenced by the numerous parodies of the piece that have come into the world. An estimated 8000 original copies, of which 200 still exist.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai
One small morsel of information about Hokusai sat with me and resonated throughout the exhibition - that Hokusai frequently changed his name to fit with the art he was making at the time. I have throughout my own art career felt more kinship with different names depending on what I was doing, in addition to wanting to separate my artist identities based on the medium at the time. The importance of an artists name isn’t something I’ve come across being discussed frequently - the only one who comes to mind if Marie Cassatt, who was born Mary but changed her name to Marie to sound more french for better art sales in an age when her sex was working against her.
My own struggles my my name started early, with kids in kindergarten teasing me for my last name - DeMars. Realistically, I was just a weird kid and they would have teased me for any reason, my name just became an easy target - but being called a martian really upset me, so much so that my mother looked up the meaning of it to assuage my fears that it was the worst; and for a time after that I just introduced myself to everyone as “Michelle Marie of the Sea”. But from that point on, that name was mine in the most visceral sense of the word - I owned it, it belonged to me.
The rest of it has not been so easy to capitulate with.
For the longest time, Michelle DeMars has felt too informal and ordinary - really having mroe to do with my own self image and the use of it in day to day term; while Marie DeMars felt too formal and bourgeoisie, in addition to feeling intensely uncomfortable telling everyone who’d know me for more than a minute “Please call me Marie now, I reject the other name”. And also I didn’t reject the other name, it was still mine.
When I started dancing, the whole idea of dance names dominated the conversation of how to present yourself as a performer - because for a middle eastern dance, audiences expected a middle eastern name despite a majority of the performers being a bunch of white ladies searching for culture and exoticism in the fallout following 9/11. There was a whole schtick of a dance teacher bequeathing a dance name before your first recital - one of my own tried to name me Shadan because I was “gazelle-like”, which also felt awkward and not me - but I used it as a second name for a long while because “that’s what you did” and I was terrified of upsetting my teacher by rejecting this name (who also in retrospect sort of ran her classes like a cult) - and she ended up being upset I wasn’t using it as a primary name anyhow so it didn’t even matter. Later I changed to my middle and last name - primarily because I was a white girl, and my white girl name was perfectly fine for a white girl bellydancing. And from that point on I had two sets of people in my life - people who knew me as Michelle, and people who knew me as Marie.
Eventually these people met, and despite my terror of awkwardness - it was fine. Most people call me Michelle now - and it’s my automatic response when introducing myself. My name as a whole feels more me than parts of it separated from each other - but any piece of it alone also works. There is a part of me that wishes my parents had given me my grandmothers first name instead of her middle, but it’s been 43 years and that ship has long since sailed.
In a more modern sense, maybe all artists struggle with this in a way with online handles and domains - do you use your name or some catchy quip or phrase? Which will be more memorable? Which will resonate more with your target audience? Which will still be relevant in 10 years time? Or five? Or even one?
In any case - it’s comforting to know that even someone as skill, transformative, prolific and influential as Hosukai also struggle with something as mundane as what to call himself. And also that exhibit is really amazing and if you’re in the KC area you should totally check it out.
