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Chiura Obata: An American Modern
BOOK DETAIL
Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (January 13, 2018) Language: English ISBN-
10: 0520296540 ISBN-13: 978-0520296541 Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 1 x 9.2 inches Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars5 customer ratings
Book Description
Chiura Obata (1885–1975) was one of the most significant Japanese American artists working on the West Coast in the
last century. Born in Okayama, Japan, Obata emigrated to the United States in 1903 and embarked on a seven-decade
career that saw the enactment of anti-immigration laws and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World
War II. But Obata emerged as a leading figure in the Northern California artistic communities, serving not only as an
influential art professor at UC Berkeley for nearly twenty years, but also as a founding director of art schools in the
internment camps. With a prodigious and expansive oeuvre, Obata’s seemingly effortless mastery of, and productive
engagement with, diverse techniques, styles, and traditions defy the dichotomous categorizations of American/European
and Japanese/Asian art. His faith in the power of art, his devotion to preserving the myriad grandeur of what he called
“Great Nature,” and his compelling personal story as an immigrant and an American are all as relevant to our
contemporary moment as ever. This catalogue is the first book surveying Chiura Obata’s rich and varied body of work
that includes over 100 beautiful images, many of which have never been published. It also showcases a selection of
Obata’s writings and a rare 1965 interview with the artist. The scholarly essays by ShiPu Wang and the other contributors
illuminate the intense and productive cross-cultural negotiations that Obata’s life and work exemplify, in the context of
both American modernism and the early twentieth-century U.S. racio-ethnic relations—a still-understudied area in
American art historical scholarship. Published in association with the Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UC Santa
Barbara. Exhibition dates: Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara: January 13–April 29, 2018 Utah
Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City: May 25–September 2, 2018 Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan:
January 18–March 10, 2019 Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento: June 23–September 29, 2019 Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Washington, D.C.: November 27, 2019–May 25, 2020