Behind the Print | John Yau – Wanted: A Lavish Biopic Of Sessue Hayakawa, I

In March 2023 John Yau and Richard Hull spent several days at Manneken Press working on a series of monotypes, our first opportunity to host a collaborative team. Yau and Hull have been friends for many years and have engaged in collaborations with others but never with each other. The occasion for this project is an upcoming exhibition that will pull together John Yau’s collaborations with many artists over the past three decades. “Disguise The Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations” will be mounted by the University of Kentucky Art Museum in early 2024 and will include several of the monotypes from this session.

John Yau is perhaps best known as an art critic, writing for the online arts publication Hyperallergic, but poetry is his true metier. Richard Hull is a Chicago-based painter whose work is clearly influenced by the Chicago Imagists who were his teachers and mentors. Manneken Press has published Hull’s editions and monotypes since 2015. Their plan was to make a series of prints loosely based on the format of “wanted” posters from the old Wild West. For the “Wanted” monotypes Yau wrote pithy phrases to use for the text areas, and Hull used these as prompts for his abstracted head and shoulder portraits.

For “Wanted: A Lavish Biopic Of Sessue Hayakawa, I” Yau wrote the text on the backs of two transparent rectangular plates using a black marker,. He then flipped the plates over so that the text read in reverse and used R&F Paint Sticks to add color to his text phrases. Meanwhile, Hull created his image on a square plate using both archival water soluble crayons and paint sticks thinned with an oil medium. When they were finished the three plates were placed together on the press bed. A sheet of damp Arches Cover paper was placed over the plates and run through the press. After printing the initial impression a second “ghost” or cognate impression was pulled on a fresh sheet of paper, a pattern that was followed throughout the series.

Each of the prints in the “Wanted” series contains a message. Some call for more attention to lesser known/under recognized artists, and “Wanted: A Lavish Biopic Of Sessue Hayakawa, I” falls into this category. Sessue Hayakawa was a Hollywood film actor of the early 20th C. Hayakawa achieved considerable fame in his early career as a romantic lead. But due to the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States his options diminished to the point where he could only land roles in which he was typecast as the villain. Hayakawa was able to revive his career post-WWII with the support of fellow actors, including Humphrey Bogart, and he can be seen in such movie as Bridge On the River Kwai and Swiss Family Robinson.

Despite this Hayakawa is relatively unknown to contemporary audiences. Yau’s text calls attention to Hayakawa’s name and talent, and Hull’s image of a fractured yet radiant figure is suggestive of the racism that withered his legacy.