Paper short abstract:

This paper adopts the premise that "modernism began in the magazines and the magazines in which it began were shaped by modernity to" offer a new approach to understanding the critical role that art journals like Shirakaba (White Birch, 1910-1923) played in the evolution of modern Japanese art.

Paper long abstract:

Founded in April of 1910, Shirakaba (White Birch, 1910-1923) redefined modern art for a new generation of Japanese artists and writers. One of the first art magazines to reproduce the works of Rodin, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse, Shirakaba provided a critical framework for discussing European modernism. Subverting established hierarchies of artistic production and exhibition, Shirakaba served as an avant-garde platform to advocate individuality and subjective expression.

This paper adopts the premise of Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman that, "modernism began in the magazines and the magazines in which it began were - all of them - shaped by modernity" to offer a new approach to understanding the critical role that periodicals like Shirakaba played in the evolution of modern Japanese art. As material objects, art magazines presented readers with a range of new experiences that went beyond the visual to ones that stimulated touch and smell, offering new modes of circulation and contact that created a deeper physical connection between artists, the work of art, and the viewer/reader. Through an analysis of Shirakaba's material qualities such as layout, content, format, and technologies of production I will argue that art magazines - more than other printed materials like newspapers and books - represented the ephemerality of the moment and became important sites for artistic practice by providing a cultural space in which artists and writers could construct new social and aesthetic networks of exchange and display in Taishō Japan.