Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

72 Reiko Tomii
6. For example, Urasaki Eishaku, Nihon kindai bijutsu hattatsu-shi [The history
of the development of modern Japanese art] (Tokyo: Daichokai Shuppan-bu, 1961)
is a pioneering work on the Meiji-era yoga groups. For the organizational genealogical
trees, see for example “Kindai Nihon bijutsu no nagare” [Lineages of modern
Japanese art], found at the end of Kindai Nihon bijutsu jiten [Who’s who in Japanese
modern art] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1989).
7. For the early history of modern institutions, see Nihonga: Transcending the Past,
Japanese-Style Painting, 1868–1968, exhibition catalog (Saint Louis: Saint Louis Art
Museum, 1995).
8. Bijutsu nenkan [Art annual], special issue, Bijutsu techo [Art notebook], no.
119 (December 1956): 118–19. For the convenience of artists, the listing gives galleries’
addresses as well as rental fees. The fee section of commercial galleries customarily
reads “no rental” or “gallery-organized (garo kikaku) exhibitions only.”
9. For important oil painters’ organizations, see Takashina Shuji and J. Thomas
Rimer, Paris in Japan: The Japanese Encounter with European Painting, exhibition catalog
(St. Louis: Washington University, 1987).
10. For Mavo and Sanka groups, see Gennifer Weidenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists
and the Avant-Garde 1905–1930 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2002).
11. A full member of Nika since 1941, Yoshihara Jiro was instrumental in its
reorganization as a head of its Kansai branch.
12. For example, forty-four regional collectives and twelve independent-type
exhibitions from 1947 onward are listed in “Nihon retto: Zen’ei gurupu gaido
mappu” [Japanese archipelago: A guide map to vanguard groups], special feature of
“Chiho no zen’ei” [Regional avant-garde], Bijutsu techo, no. 296 (April 1968):
85–86.
13. Omuka Toshiharu, “Kokushoku yoga-ten kara Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai e” [From
Black Color Yoga Exhibition to Liberal Artists Association], in Onosato Toshinobu:
Chusho no paionia/Pioneer of Abstract Painting, exhibition catalog (Takasaki: Museum
of Modern Art, Gunma, 2000), 13. The title of this article, too, indicates the
important place collectivism had in Japanese modernism.
14. Kitamura Yoshio, “Bijutsu dantai no kiki” [Crisis of the art organizations],
and Miki Tamon, “Gadan wa naze kawattaka?” [What changed the establishment?],
Bijutsu techo, no. 304 (November 1968): 70–80 and 81–87.
15. For art and politics around 1970, see Reiko Tomii, “Thought Provoked: Ten
Views of Tokyo, Circa 1970 (1967–73),” in Century City, exhibition catalog (London:
Tate Modern, 2001), 200–221.
16. Miyakawa Atsushi, “Anforumeru igo” [After Informel], Bijutsu techo, no. 220
(May 1963); translated and quoted in Reiko Tomii, “Historicizing ‘Contemporary
Art’: Some Discursive Practices in Gendai Bijutsu in Japan,” Positions 12, no. 3
(Winter 2004): 621.
17. See Tomii, “Historicizing”; for its general background, see Tomii, “Thought
Provoked.”
18. Miyakawa Atsushi, “Han-geijutsu: Sono nichijo-sei eno kako” [Anti-Art:
Descent to the mundane], Bijutsu techo, no. 234 (April 1964); translated and quoted
in Tomii, “Historicizing,” 621.
19. “Mono-ha” is not the name of a formally organized group, but an art-historical
grouping of artists who shared concerns with raw materiality and spatial exploration
in the late 1960s through the 1970s. The term did not enter literature until