Japanese Artists in New York City
- Artistic Traces from the 1910s to the 1940s -
Introduction
The first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 is probably best known for the controversial “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp. At this non-juried, non-prize-awarding exhibition, Japanese artists who were active in New York at the time also exhibited a number of works. Some of these artists, such as Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Isamu Noguchi, have become quite well known and are featured frequently in art museums to this day. When Kuniyoshi and Noguchi were working in pre-WWII New York however, there were always around twenty Japanese artists at any given time in the city.
This exhibition will introduce the footprints of many of these artists, spanning from the 1910s to 1940s, through images of their works, catalogs of art exhibitions, and art columns from English and Japanese newspapers. It will also explore the relationship between Japanese artists in New York and the American art scene of the time, and attempt to situate their creative endeavors in context as well as clarify the intentions of their work.
About this Exhibition
Many of the artists featured in this exhibit are unknown Japanese who were active in the United States. For this reason, many of their works are unaccounted for today and their activism and creative activities have therefore been buried in history. Although Japanese artists in prewar New York, such as Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Eitaro Ishigaki, have been attracting more attention in recent years, there has been little research conducted on art columns in either English or Japanese-language newspapers of the time. This exhibition is the first of its kind to introduce the differences in views and historical background between art from the American and Japanese communities in prewar New York. It will present images of works from over twenty museums and archives in the U.S. and Japan, as well as exhibition catalogs and newspapers. The exhibition is the result of years of careful research by guest curator Mai Sato.
The Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York will digitize these materials for preservation within its archive. This will not only aid in confirming which works of art still exist, but will also clarify the composition of scattered works that can only be found in exhibition catalogs of the time. It also introduces Japanese-language materials into a field where English-language research has been dominant, which has made it possible to present Japanese artistic activities of the time period from both Japanese and U.S. perspectives.