Confronting modernity : Shirakaba and the Japanese avant-garde / Erin E. Kelley.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Kelley, Erin E.

Contributor:

Davis, Julie Nelson, 1963- advisor.

Dombrowski, André, committee member.

Kano, Ayako, 1966- committee member.

University of Pennsylvania. History of Art.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--History of art.

History of art--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--History of art.

History of art--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

2 volumes (xxiii, 435 pages) : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

2012.

Summary:

This dissertation examines how the avant-garde pursuit of individuality during early twentieth century Japan constituted a confrontation over state-sponsored modernism and how these confrontations played out among emerging technologies like print media. I analyze key moments in modern Japanese art and culture by focusing upon the careers of three Shirakaba Society artists--Takamura Kotaro (1883-1956), Umehara Ryuzaburo (1888-1986), and Kishida Ryusei (1891-1929)--and their struggle to form distinct identities not defined through a collective style or national ideology. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Japanese government was keenly aware of the political, economic, and social potential of yoga or "Western-style oil painting" in creating a modern national identity. Using the medium of the art journal as their tool of intervention, the Japanese artists and writers affiliated with Shirakaba (White Birch, 1910-1923) reframed the debate on modern painting and sculpture by subverting government established styles and exhibition formats that reinforced the cultural and political objectives of Japan's nation building efforts. These activities opened a critical space that allowed Japanese artists to explore and complicate the established narratives of the emerging avant-garde: on a personal level, as a member of an artistic collective, and as a citizen of the Japanese nation. By using the art journal as a lens through which to critique scholarly paradigms that frame Japan's construction of a new modernity as merely derivative, I argue that Shirakaba's dialogue with modern styles in painting and sculpture revolutionized the production and exhibition of art in Tokyo during the nineteen-teens and twenties. "Modernism," I propose, became a transnational language, style, and attitude, transformed for early twentieth century Japan.

Notes:

Adviser: Julie Nelson Davis.

Thesis (Ph.D. in History of Art) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2012.

Includes bibliographical references.

OCLC:

951552842