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- Convenors:
-
Jaqueline Berndt
(Stockholm University)
Khanh Trinh (Museum Rietberg Zurich)
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- Stream:
- Visual Arts
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 5, Auditório 3
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Long Abstract:
Focusing on various modern media such as photography, lithography, and cartoonesque drawings, the individual papers in this panel share an interest in aesthetic and cultural modernity. All of them venture on methodological approaches that decentralize representation, be it through the pursuit of systems of in/visibility on the example of spirit photography, the linkage of the then-new genre of “portrait” and its verbal designation to specific ways of display and thus seeing, or the historical rediscovery of 1920s “manga” discourse, which is more or less invisible in contemporary art and comics criticism. While the first two papers are interconnected by photography and notions of seeing, the nigao-e surfacing in the second paper forms a bridge to pre-war, and by now obliviated, notions of “manga.”
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I discuss the newly emerged ideas of "seeing" after the introduction of photography in Japan, by taking early examples of Meiji spirit photography as a case study and locating them within the tensions between visual modernity and pre-modern systems of vision and knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
Japanese encounters with photography since 1848 transformed previous patterns of vision and visuality. These transformations were far from straightforward. Similarly, the concept of vision, or "seeing", also experienced substantial, yet conflicting changes. Whereas the massive sales of carte-de-visite photographs as a popular commodity of modern material culture had contributed to the flood of images, the exceptionally long-lasting use of unique ambrotype in Meiji Japan was not only triggered by the emotional and culturally perceived moral code of one's visibility in Meiji Japan, but also formed a counter movement against the massive visual overstimulation of Meiji modern visual culture.
To investigate these complex issues surrounding the transformed and contested notions of vision and "seeing" after the introduction of photography in Japan from another perspective, I utilise early examples of Japanese spirit photography as a case study. I aim to discuss the conflicted relationships between spirit photography allegedly capturing invisible spirits and contemporary discourses on photography's vision. My discussion revolves around in particular the tensions between visual modernity and pre-modern systems of vision and knowledge, as well as the shifting ideas of "seeing" within Japanese society. By paying a heightened attention to socio-cultural repercussions of the encounter with photography's technological vision, I aim to find an alternative approach to contextualize and reframe the history of early Japanese photography.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores the approaches to "portrait" in the works of Yokoyama Matsusaburo (1838-1884). It begins by destabilizing the category of "portrait" historically and demonstrates properties of looking he explores in multiple media, arguing for more self-reflexive approach in visual arts.
Paper long abstract:
In Waeigorin shūsei, a Japanese-English dictionary first published in 1867, there is no entry for the English word "portrait," suggesting that the word was not useful or pertinent for its intended audiences. Five years later, in the second printing of the same dictionary, an added entry of portrait appears. Here, "portrait" is defined in Japanese as eizo, nigao. Eizo in contemporary Japanese would be translated as pictures, while nigao would be likeness of a person or caricature. We can infer from this particular example that by 1872, portrait practice must have become more common than 1867, enough to be added to English-Japanese interactions. In my sampling of other English/Japanese dictionaries from early Meiji, it is fifteen years later, in 1887, that we find an entry where the English word portrait is equated with contemporary and more familiar Japanese word, shōzō. What this simple exercise signals is the fact that shōzō and competing terms continued to vie for currency throughout the first two decades of Meiji.
This presentation situates few key works that we might today consider "portrait" by Yokoyama Matsusaburo (1838-1884) within this unstable context. Considering his works in stereoscopic photography, lithography, and oil painting, I explore his work on two levels: 1) Yokoyama's manner of representation, his manners of showing, and 2) modes of displaying his works, his chosen manners for seeing. My contention is that the process of consolidating the genre of portrait in Meiji is intimately related to establishing and practicing a particular mode of looking and a kind of interaction with picture of an individual. In this light, the intended purposes of these works, such as official governmental documentation, private commission, notes, and experimentation, play just important part as the representations themselves. We begin to see the process through which the intension, the gesture, and the purpose of looking emerged as ways of navigating and understanding the changes in the world that seemed both uncertain and unfamiliar in early Meiji Japan. Conversely, his works demands us, historians of visual culture, to re-calibrate the assumptions we take for granted in exploring the unstable visual field.
Paper short abstract:
Manga, defined theoretically and historically c. 1920, stressed freedom of format and expression. Thematically, it might include reportage, sharp critique, or horror. It sought to dissolve all boundaries between popular and fine art. 1920s manga complicates present histories of the visual arts.
Paper long abstract:
Different definitions of manga tend to clash around narratives of origin. Today scholars reach back to late 18th century popular illustrated fiction kibyōshi or even further back to the 12th century chōjū-giga scrolls, while fans seeking familiar stylistic conventions and formats will insist that modern manga began with Tezuka―and usually emphasize his borrowings from Disney. Almost never are the forms that arose during Meiji and Taisho brought into play. Yet “manga” (called such) began to be published in a variety of periodicals, newspapers, and soft and hard-covered books from about 1900. Between art and literature, reportage and poetic fantasies― manga was defined by the influential Okamoto Ippei in 1924 as an “art of the people” (民衆畫) and a way “to dig at the times and human emotions” (世態人情を穿つ). Manga histories, by means of their stated parameters and their lineage of antecedents, helped articulate the ideals by which the new medium anticipated the future.
My paper interrogates two of the earliest histories― by Ishii Hakutei (1918) and Hosokibara Seiki (1924) as well as the very influential how-to by Okamoto Ippei, the leader of the Tokyo Manga Circle (published in full in 1928)―for what these essays say about manga's emotional expression, humor, satire, contemporaneity, freedom, and resistance. The future potentiality of this new medium that arose in the early decades in Japan was squashed by a combination of political and aesthetic forces in the course of the 1930s. Yet the myriad of ways that this "manga" (unrecognizable as such today) was realized materially in these forgotten years complicate much present discourse on manga, art, as well as ideas on artistic modernity in Japan.