East-west fusion : While considerable attention was being paid to the birth of modernism in Europe in the early 20th century, Japaneseborn Yasuo Kuniyoshi was breaking significant ground in the United States.
Posted on Monday, November 3, 2008
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, “ Little Joe With Cow, ” 1923, Oil on Canvas, 28 x 42 in.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of five weekly features exploring the artists behind the first five modern art paintings recently announced as part of the permanent collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. When it comes to American art at the beginning of the 20 th century, an exhaustive amount of research has been focused on those who traveled to Europe and played a part in early modernism. Those featured in the first three stories in this series — Stuart Davis, Romare Bearden and Lyonel Feininger — are prime examples.
But art historians are just beginning to invest significant time into the lives and work of a number of Japanese-born artists who took up residence in the United States during that same period.
“ To this point, there’s really been very little discussion in terms of Japanese artists coming to America in the early 20 th century and it’s kind of boggling, ” said Sylvia Yount, curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Va. “ There was this whole group of Japanese artists working in the United States — 50 to 60 of them, possibly — that’s completely lost in our history. No one knows much about them. ”
Yount has spent the past year researching two Japanese artists who started working in the United Sates in the early 20 th century for a book on VMFA’s American art collection. The lesser known of the two is Bumpei Usui, the creator of a painting in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s growing permanent collection. The other, Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1893-1953 ), stepped out of the shadows on his own. His impact on early modernism in the United States has been publicized through various retrospectives around the globe.
With Kuniyoshi’s popularity having soared posthumously in his native Japan in the 1970 s and 1980 s, the vast majority of his work now resides in the east. But, in assembling Crystal Bridges’ collection, founder Alice Walton secured Kuniyoshi’s 1923 oil painting, “ Little Joe With Cow. ” With that, those who pass through Crystal Bridges — scheduled to open in Bentonville in 2010 - — will have an opportunity to marvel at one of the earliest and most successful meldings of culture in modern art.
“ He is one of the first artists to bring east and west together in his work, ” stated art historian Tom Wolf in the forward of his book, “ Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Women. ”
And while some private collectors and institutions such as The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D. C., The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn., and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in California have managed to keep some of Kuniyoshi’s work on display in the west, they offer a heavy dose of his “ women” and “ still life” works. In developing his reputation as a master of distortion of space and figures, Kuniyoshi also became fascinated with cows, as is evident in Crystal Bridges’ “ Little Joe With Cow. ”
During his research of Kuniyoshi, Crystal Bridges chief curator Chris Crosman came across a quote from the late artist that explained this fascination: “ I thought it was decorative as well as ugly, and so I painted cows constantly until I was exhausted, ” Kuniyoshi said. “ The horse is a splendid animal, but the cow is irregular. You can make more out of it. ”
Born in Okayama, Japan, Kuniyoshi immigrated to the United States in 1906, arriving first in Vancouver, B. C. on July 27 and in Seattle, Wash. a few days later. According to a timeline published as part of a Yasuo Kuniyoshi retrospective that toured the United States, Japan and Canada in 1975-76, the artist spent is first winter working in a railroad roundhouse.
By 1907, Kuniyoshi was taking night classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and moved to New York City in 1910, where he joined the progressive Independent School, alongside Stuart Davis, who went on to become one of the pioneers of American abstract art.
In 1922, Kuniyoshi earned his first one-man exhibition at The Daniel Gallery in New York City. But while his work steadily grew in popularity in the United States, Kuniyoshi’s life was, at times, far from easy.
“ In Kuniyoshi’s work, we can see his dual identity which comes from his circumstances as an immigrant to the U. S. from his native land, Japan, ” Naruhisa Hirose, assistant curator of the Okayama Perfectural Museum of Art in Japan, told the Daily Record. “ He was a minority member of American society and this made him confront the problem of alienation. Thus he constantly worked on this theme. Through such deep insight into human existence, he created sympathetic works accepted by people with various backgrounds. ”
Alienation loomed large for Kuniyoshi in the early 1940 s. He temporarily separated from his wife, Sarah Kuniyoshi, and with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 14, 1941, the Okayama-born artist was suddenly viewed as an enemy by many living around him.
According to Yount, American law at the time prohibited Japanese immigrants from becoming American citizens. That law stood until 1953, the year of Kuniyoshi’s death. But until that day, he remained heavily involved in arts-related political organizations, serving as the first president of Artists Equity and cofounder of The American Artists’ Congress.
Today, Kuniyoshi is best remembered for his work with the female figure, as his paintings moved away from the sexually submissive poses common in the 19 th century. Wolf wrote that Kuniyoshi’s women infused personality, creating a richer and more complex subject.
Crystal Bridges’ “ Little Cow With Joe ” pushes the envelope of early modern art even further, representing what Crosman describes as “ one of Kuniyoshi’s largest and most important pieces. ”
“ Kuniyoshi is a rare case (of a Japanese artist ) who built a successful career as a painter in the West before World War II, ” Hirose said. “ The only comparable figure is Tsuguharu Fujita, who was active in Paris at the time. ”
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