Japanese Art History Research Articles

Amatsuchi Kosaku: Reconsidering Postwar Japanese Art History from a Perspective of Ecology

This paper discusses Amatsuchi Kosaku, an artist collective that formed in the late 1980s and continued its unique activities until the early 2000s. Because Amatsuchi Kosaku was based in Shizuoka, it was excluded from the normative narrative of Japanese art history, which has been constructed around artists and artist collectives working in metropolises like Tokyo and Kyoto. This paper examines the “metropolitan-centrism” in the Japanese art history, and reconsiders the artistic practice of Amatsuchi Kosaku, from the perspective of “ecology,” a concept that has been the focus of much attention in recent contemporary art discourse.

일본 문화재 지정 체계 안에서 다도구의 위치

In the Japanese tea ceremony, tea tool science has been systematized enough to become a specialized academic field. Therefore, the evaluation and classification of tea utensils are also delicate. On the other hand, the artistic evaluation of the tea ceremony in Japan is not necessarily shared with art historians and historians. Japan has designated its cultural properties of high artistic, historical, and academic value as important cultural properties and national treasures. The process of designating cultural properties must involve a council consisting of professional degree holders. Therefore, one can see the evaluation that tea utensils receive in Japanese art history by analyzing the current status of tea utensils designated as important cultural properties. The results show that under the current Japanese system, there is a slight difference between the evaluation of tea utensils by academia and the evaluation of tea ceremonies. Nevertheless, as can be seen in some cases, there are also places where the tea ceremony aesthetics can be understood.

Lee Ufan's ambivalent otherness and art historiography

AbstractThis article aims to reexamine the relationship between the artist Lee Ufan and nationalist art history through his idea of “ambivalent otherness,” which he defined as both “suffering” and “power.” Traditional art history is established upon a nationalist framework that emphasizes the artists' nationality, leading to the marginalization of national others at the border. As a zainichi Korean, Lee has undergone the “suffering” of being excluded by the art world and art historiography. However, he transformed it into his source of “power” to challenge art historiography based on nationality. This study analyzes the art criticism of “Japanese Contemporary Art History” written by Minemura Toshiaki and Chiba Shigeo in the 1970s and 1980s and highlights the ruptures that the artist's in-between identity wrought on nationalist art history. This shows how both the Mono-ha movement and the artist were marginalized in the construction of “Japanese Contemporary Art History.” Furthermore, this study scrutinizes how Lee attempted to rewrite art history using Mono-ha art theory and a perspective committed to “overcoming coloniality” from the postcolonial in-between position, by reinterpreting Lee's article on Chosŏn minhwa, written amidst an aesthetic controversy across the border between Japan and Korea.

Translating the Beauty of Japan: Lafcadio Hearn’s Art Writing

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) is well known for his essays about Japan but his analyses of Japanese art have been overlooked, no doubt because he had no formal training in art history. This article examines the features of Hearn’s art writing. It discusses how Hearn framed aesthetic questions within formally complex essays that often blended criticism and fiction, and how he interacted with the increasingly specialized field of Japanese art history that was then starting to take shape in the West. It argues that Hearn’s art writing contributed to making Japanese art comprehensible to readers at the turn of the century by translating and explicating its own distinctive beauty.

Transwar Art in Japan

This article focuses on the question of periodisations in Japanese art history through a consideration of the long-running careers of four successful but politically and aesthetically diverse artists: Domon Ken (1909­­­­­­­­‒1990), Okamoto Tarō (1911‒1996), Yoshihara Jirō, and Katsura Yuki (1913‒1991). The arc of these artists careers across the prewar, war, and postwar periods upsets popular periodisations in Japan’s art history that assert the postwar as a time of rupture and renewal. My focus is meant to challenge this ‘postwar paradigm’ while elucidating these artist’s negotiation of ethics and plurality during drastically different political eras. How does a reading of their work reveal continuities before and after the war, and what are the political stakes of these continuities?

Sun Through Broken Screen: Murakami and Gutai

Sun Through Broken Screen: Murakami and Gutai

Transkulturel kunsthistorie. Om epistemologi og appropriation af japansk kunst i Danmark

The article discusses transcultural art history with Danish examples about Japanese art. This includes an introduction to the concept of transculturation, and how the concept is used in art history research. The core of the argument concerns two interrelated aspects of Danish art historiography: the role of ethnography and the myth of modernism as a Western phenomenon. For the first of these aspects, I analyse the only existing Japanese art history in Danish language, published in 1885. For the other aspect, I analyse recent interpretations of the Danish painter Anna Ancher and her alleged use of formal elements from Japanese woodblock prints. I thereby wish to connect the theoretical issues of transculturation with analyses of transformative and constituent exchange of objects, phenomena and ideas, and point out the potential of the concept of transculturation as both theory and method. An investigation of transcultural connections between Japan and Denmark will contribute to writing a new art history on global interactions.

The Reception of Netsuke in the West since Japonisme

Abstract This essay was developed while translating the article by Matsuo Tomoko, Senior Curator at the Chiba City Museum of Art which was originally published in 2001 (see Appendix). While Matsuo’s article focuses on the historiography of netsuke in Japan, this essay discusses the historical reception of this form of art in the West from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the twenty-first century. It is hoped that the essay and the translation together provide a critical perception on netsuke, which has rarely been discussed within the narrative of Japanese art history.

Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan by Chinghsin Wu

Reviewed by: Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan by Chinghsin Wu Alison J. Miller (bio) Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan. By Chinghsin Wu. University of California Press, 2019. x, 236 pages. $70.00. From the first pages of Chinghsin Wu's study of the Japanese modern painter Koga Harue (1895–1933), the reader is aware of the delicate balance the author strikes as she navigates the terrain of global art history. In his short career, Koga painted in styles that were visually similar to those found in European modern art. Wu argues that like many Japanese artworks of the early twentieth century, Koga's paintings appeared to have the same form as their counterparts in Europe, but they expressed different concepts and theories. In Parallel Modernism Wu utilizes theories of quantum entanglement and parallel universes drawn from quantum physics to argue that Japanese modernism possessed its own internal reasoning and that grouping modern paintings based on style alone leads to inaccurate and biased interpretations. Through careful visual analysis, thorough archival research, and a skillful amalgamation of the sources used by the artists, including poetry, religion, art magazines, and mass media, Wu deftly exposes a lesser-known narrative in the history of modern art. The crux of Wu's argument, and where this book makes its greatest contribution, is in the analysis of the meanings found in Japanese cubism, expressionism, and surrealism, primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. The chapters follow the arc of Koga's life, from his start in watercolor and the Pacific Art Society, to his development in cubism and expressionism, and to his later works in surrealism. Unifying his art historical training with his personal biography, Wu takes Koga's story beyond chronology and biography by integrating art theories as well as an account of translated texts, exhibitions, and artistic discourse in publications of the era that show how Koga and his peers were working through both their form and their content in a public arena. Wu denies "isms" based on stylistic similarities, making the point that analyzing paintings in this fashion has led to Japanese art being classified as unoriginal or derivative, and possibly misidentified when Japanese paintings fail to conform to European standards. Rather, throughout the book, Wu advocates for translation as a theoretical framework: the translation of both texts and visual styles as undertaken by Japanese modern artists.1 Furthermore, Parallel Modernism builds upon the expanding field [End Page 244] of Japanese modern art history and takes on the important tasks of expanding the dialogue into mediums that are understudied, in this case watercolor, and to artists who have received little attention in English.2 Chapter 1 provides a history of Koga's youth and the start of his career, with an overview of his initial influences. In these early years, Koga began to move away from the Meiji romanticism and academism that was popular at the time, instead turning toward artistic individualism. Chapter 2 deconstructs cubism in Japan, tying Koga's cubism to religious themes. This chapter works well in showing how Koga fused classicism and cubism. Koga was particularly interested in El Greco and viewed European classical art as fresh and not in conflict with cubism, which Japanese artists viewed as lacking in content. Koga united the two disparate styles in his early works, solving what was viewed in Japan as an absence of meaning in cubism. In this chapter Wu skillfully navigates a variety of incongruent artistic vocabularies and movements and brings them together to form a narrative that helps the reader to understand the visual environment Koga was working in. Chapter 3 addresses expressionism and parallels between Koga's artistic approach and that of the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee. Here Wu considers Koga's works that are the closest in form to another artist: Koga outright copied some of Klee's compositions, but Wu argues that Klee allowed Koga to "resolve a problem that he had already been grappling with" and that Klee provided a way forward for Koga's watercolors (p. 101). Chapters 4 and 5 provide the most convincing arguments and the most important contributions of...

20세기 초반 서구 학자들의 중국회화사 정점기 규정

Most Chinese painting histories written in the West in the early 20th century define the Tang and Song dynasties, especially the Song dynasty, as the pinnacle of Chinese art. In general, the rules of canon in art history are agreed upon by the interaction between academic achievements and art mechanisms such as art museums, art markets, and art education. However, in the early 20th century, Chinese art was not sufficiently distributed or educated in Western society. Therefore, understanding how scholars’ viewpoints were formed under these conditions is an example of what the discipline of art history depends on in a specific situation.<BR> Japan was the first country to publish the history of Chinese art, including the history of Chinese painting. What is noteworthy is the fact that the viewpoint of Japanese academics has changed from Tang-Song in the late Meiji period to the Yuan zenith theory of the early Taisho period, and there was a political intention behind this background. Although Western researchers had no political intentions, they were greatly influenced by Japanese publications such as Histoire de l’art du Japon and the Japanese and English versions of Kokka . Accordingly, in the early Chinese painting history in the West, the view of the Song dynasty as the apex was dominant. And it is inferred that the reason why the Yuan zenith theory was not accepted in the West was due to Western art history which viewed the Renaissance as the apex, and the prejudice against literati painting. In other words, it can be said that the Western Chinese painting history in the early 20th century was formed by the insufficient data for knowledge accumulation, the cultural power of Japanese art history academia, and the prism of Western art history.

THE TRADITIONS OF JAPANESE CERAMICS

The article focuses on an important topic - the traditions of Japanese ceramics. Its relevance lies in the importance of solving the problem of identifying artworks: whether they are fake or original. Incorrect attribution of an item can lead to severe legal and material consequences and significantly affect the reputation. Differences between the terms “a copy” and “a forgery” with the assessment of positive and negative aspects of falsification are revealed. Highly qualified specialists with certificates and diplomas are required to identify and attribute art. The article shows the main requirements they must have. It also highlights and covers the characteristics and central problem of Western art, describes the ideology of Eurocentrism, according to which Europe, or the West, is the highest stage of human civilization; the rest of the world is considered primitive and undeveloped. A vivid example of an error in identifying a work of art by the Getty Museum - the sculpture Head with Horns and several cases of creating grandiose first-class forgeries in the art of Japanese ceramics are presented in the article. The works of such artists as Kato Tokuro, a ceramic artist whose works have won the highest artistic award in Japan and are widely recognized among collectors and curators of the West, Kagami Shukai, and Kato Koju have been studied. The article describes the Setoceramic tradition and its significance for common cultural art. It was created by the great Kato Shirozaemon and got its name from the name of the city in Japan, famous for its pottery. The article shows the importance of traditional methods in Japanese ceramic art history. Hence the desire of masters to follow ancient patterns and techniques. The article also describes the features and reveals the differences between traditional and Studio ceramics. The characteristics of the Asian approach, which aims to reproduce cultural values in an unchanged form, parallel with the development of progress in other areas, are studied. The article’s main task is to teach how to detect an obvious forgery by analyzing genuine ceramic products’ characteristic features. For this purpose, significant analysis of the distinctive features of authentic ceramic products is given. Several techniques and methods for determining the authenticity of the exhibit are presented.

전람회와 서적 : 일본에서의 ‘일본 현대미술사’ 연구의 역사적 전개

전람회와 서적 : 일본에서의 ‘일본 현대미술사’ 연구의 역사적 전개

전람회와 서적 : 일본에서의 ‘일본 현대미술사’ 연구의 역사적 전개

전람회와 서적 : 일본에서의 ‘일본 현대미술사’ 연구의 역사적 전개

Recuperando el discurso sobre su propia Historia del Arte

Uno de los procesos más interesantes que se puede documentar por medio de la participación de los Gobiernos japoneses en las exposiciones universales de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX es el papel que tenía en las relaciones internacionales el peso de la tradición cultural de cada nación manifestada a través de obras artísticas. Japón entendió muy pronto este aspecto de la política internacional y progresivamente configuró un discurso propio sobre la historia del arte japonés estableciendo una delimitación con las interpretaciones que desde Occidente se hacía de la misma. En este artículo se intentará observar las diferentes circunstancias de participación por parte de Japón en estas efemérides prestando especial atención a aquellos documentos o acciones que las autoridades japonesas publicaron o realizaron para dar a conocer su patrimonio. La mejora de las condiciones materiales de Japón repercutió especialmente en su representación en estas, pero desde un principio existió la apuesta por participar siempre en estos eventos. Se evidencia así la prioridad para el Gobierno japonés de ser visto en compañía del resto de las naciones y, a ser posible, de las potencias más desarrolladas. La razón última de esta perenne necesidad de retratarse continuamente frente al mundo radica en la insistencia del resto de potencias desarrolladas occidentales de emplazar el papel de Japón dentro del mundo en una categoría inferior, menos desarrollada y que consideraba, por ende, su arte en la misma posición de inferioridad.&#x0D; Dentro de esta evolución, la participación en la Exposición Colombina de Chicago del año 1893 marca un hito al ser la primera ocasión en que se expone a un público extranjero un discurso consistente e hilado de una historia del arte japonés materializado en un pabellón arquitectónico considerado uno de los puntos álgidos de su producción artística. Se daba el primer paso para un definitivo viraje en la posesión del conocimiento y articulación sobre el arte japonés que se consolidaría en la Exposición Universal de París de 1900.

‘기상(奇想)의 계보’ : 미술사의 대중화, 혹은 일본미술사 새로 쓰기

‘기상(奇想)의 계보’ : 미술사의 대중화, 혹은 일본미술사 새로 쓰기

«Японский стиль» (ваё:) скульптуры эпохи Хэйан: к истории термина

In this article the term wayō (和様 “Japanese style”) of the Japanese art history is analysed: its etymology, meaning and usage in general and in relation to Japanese sculpture of Heian period (794–1185), in particular. With reference to the contemporary Japanese authors addressing the same questions, it has been possible to establish that, unlike other types of cultural objects (marked as “Japanese” or “non-Japanese” back in the past), sculpture of particular periods was said to express “Japanese style” only in Modern times, originally in politicised contexts. However, being semantically rich and multi-layered, the concept of wayō gradually became the instrument of indicating Japanese identity as part of the discourse on the traditional. For this reason, I argue that the Russian translation and usage of the term “iaponskij stil’” (“Japanese style”) is inadequate, especially with the attribute “national”. Instead, I suggest using the transliteration wayō or, alternatively, “Jōchō-style” or “Fujiwara-style”, providing commentaries on the concept and term by modern and contemporary Japanese authors.

Conformity and Invention: Learning and Creative Practice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japanese Visual Arts

Research Article| April 01 2018 Conformity and Invention: Learning and Creative Practice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japanese Visual Arts David Raymond Bell David Raymond Bell David Bell is associate professor at the University of Otago, College of Education, in Dunedin, New Zealand. He teaches graduate and postgraduate programs in teacher education, specializing in the visual arts, art history, and education theory. He has also taught Japanese visual culture courses and published extensively on ukiyo-e (floating-world picture) subjects. His research interests embrace pedagogies for aesthetic learning, Japanese art history and aesthetics, and museums as sites for learning between cultures. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Aesthetic Education (2018) 52 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.5406/jaesteduc.52.1.0001 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation David Raymond Bell; Conformity and Invention: Learning and Creative Practice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japanese Visual Arts. Journal of Aesthetic Education 1 January 2018; 52 (1): 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jaesteduc.52.1.0001 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Aesthetic Education Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao by Michael Lucken

Reviewed by: Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao by Michael Lucken Meghen Jones (bio) Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao. By Michael Lucken; translated by Francesca Simkin. Columbia University Press, New York, 2016. vi, 248 pages. $60.00, cloth; $59.99, E-book. The subject of imitation in Japanese arts is well-trodden scholarly ground. Various significant publications in recent years have explored the premodern histories of copying (utsushi), physical reproductions (mosha), and imitation (mohō) within Japanese culture more generally.1 Not confined to issues of pedagogy or artistic transfer, Michael Lucken’s Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao challenges fundamental assumptions, over time, about the nature of Japanese imitation and creativity in order to define key characteristics of modern Japanese art and visual culture. In confronting head-on the notion of the Japanese as imitative, Lucken unravels the complex discourse of imitation and creativity to reveal much more than a mere refutation of the stereotype. The premise of the book is that the dialectic of imitation and creativity is a by-product of enlightenment and colonialist paradigms. That established, Lucken describes the field of modern Japanese visual art as having a plasticity with which [End Page 117] imitation and creativity are pursued, a quality distinct from the Western polarity of imitation and creativity. He argues that modern Japanese visual arts occupy an ontological space eschewing pure subjectivity in favor of leaving “residual components,” and the book explores this aspect within the modern mediums of oil painting, film, photography, and animation. Michael Lucken’s contributions to scholarship on twentieth-century Japanese art, visual culture, and critical theory are well established. Professor and director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), one of the eight higher education institutions comprising Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, his publications have addressed a variety of issues relevant to the interpretation and analysis of modern Japanese art and visual culture.2 Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao is Lucken’s long-awaited first single-authored book in English.3 It is a translation and modification of Les fleurs artificielles: création, imitation et logique de domination (Presses de l’Inalco, 2012Presses de l’Inalco, 2016). Like his previous studies, it concerns a topic of relevance to virtually all scholars of modern Japan and presents a compelling method of interpretation, thus its readership will be wide. Considering the substantial attention that has been given to the subject of imitation in Japan, and the rebuking of it, some may wonder if the perception of Japanese arts as imitative still looms. Lucken acknowledges that, today, many outsiders see Japan as not a center of imitation but rather a source of intense creativity in the form of manga and anime, and that Japanologists routinely critique the stereotype of Japan as a nation of imitators. But, he asserts, “among the petty bourgeoisie and general public” the stereotype persists (p. 15). Lucken also cites Western influences on Japanese art as the cause of the relative lack of modern Japanese art in major European and U.S. public museum collections, where he describes it as “rarely to be seen and seldom highly valued” (p. 33). This statement deserves discussion; for example, permanent exhibition rooms of Japanese art at the British Museum have recently featured art and material culture from prehistory to the present, including twentieth-century manga. Furthermore, institutional stances decrying the value of modern Japanese arts as mere imitations of [End Page 118] Western art no longer serve to narrow, as they once did, the foci of scholarly inquiry. On the contrary, according to the most recent College Art Association listings available, at U.S. and Canadian institutions in 2015 there were in progress or completed 29 dissertations on Japanese art history topics—12 on ancient to premodern Japanese art history subjects, and 17 on Meiji-era to contemporary subjects.4 Thus, a significant gap exists between popular perception and current scholarship on modern Japanese art and imitation. This book serves not simply to sustain or...

日本美術史における「様式」展開

日本美術史における「様式」展開

Introduction

Introduction Reiko Tomii (bio) Founded in 2003 by Miwako Tezuka and myself, PoNJA-GenKon is a scholarly listserv for a wide range of people interested in postwar Japanese art history, from graduate students to scholars, from collectors to museum and other art professionals, with English as our shared language. The acronym is taken from Post-Nineteen forty-five Japanese Art History Discussion Group / Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (現代美術懇談会). Over the past decade, as an active forum for exchanging ideas and information, PoNJA-GenKon (ポンジャ現懇 in Japanese) has grown to more than 200 registered members (www.ponja-genkon.net). In essence a virtual presence on the Internet, we have however, made a conscious effort to embrace and encourage new research in a more concrete and physical form by organizing and co-organizing panels, symposiums, and conferences. This effort has resulted in six such programs (see Table), followed by the most recent symposium that celebrated our tenth anniversary in September 2014. It is gratifying to report that "Ponja" today signifies shorthand for both the group itself and our field of study in reflection of our continuing presence and contribution to the disciplines of art history and museology. The 10th anniversary symposium embraced the traditions that had begun with our very first program in 2005. We have collaborated with other academic and museological institutions to create a forum for discussion; we have collaborated with specialists outside the field (mainly as discussants), in order to expand our communicative reaches; we have incorporated artist-practitioners in our programing (often through video/film screenings and live performance presentations) in recognition that the foundation of our study has been built upon these artists' creativity; and we have presented a wide range of topics, perspectives, and methodologies offered by both graduate students and professionals (see Program Summary and Abstracts). The tenth anniversary has offered us a rare moment of reflection. Looking back, we can see two momentums that propelled the evolution of Ponja in the English-speaking [End Page 248] sphere. The first centers on Alexandra Munroe's landmark exhibition in 1994, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, and especially its English-language publication (published by Abrams), which has come to serve as a textbook for the subject. This publication was a substantial expansion of the initial English-Japanese bilingual exhibition catalogue issued by the Yokohama Art Museum, which originated with the exhibition before it traveled to the United States. I myself was immensely inspired by this publication (for which I served as a de facto editor as well as a contributor), as were more than a handful of graduate students, who would later tell me the impact the book and the exhibition had on their work. Munroe's work forms the basis for what I call the first wave of Ponja scholarship, along with my subsequent work on 1960s art in Japan (including my contribution to the 1999 and 2001 exhibitions Global Conceptualism and Century City), and the work of early colleagues such as Bert Winther-Tamaki (including his 2001 book, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years). The second momentum of Ponja scholarship surrounds the expansion of the field by the scholars and graduate students inspired by the first wave. The early signs of vitality were observed with Midori Yoshimoto's 2005 book, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York. By the early 2010s, the second wave surged, with a series of exhibitions and publications: Ming Tiampo's 2011 book Gutai: Decentering Modernism, Mika Yoshitake's 2012 exhibition and catalogue Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, and Tiampo and Munroe's 2013 exhibition and catalogue Gutai: Splendid Playground. This understanding of Ponja's development has informed the title of the tenth anniversary symposium: "For a New Wave to Come: Post-1945 Japanese Art History Now." In order to create a new momentum for continuing expansion of the field, we have sought to identify developing research and ideas. In curating the program, we have emphasized two aspects of postwar Japanese art history, and by casting a wide net, we have endeavored to expand on the hitherto understudied period of the...