Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on the transmodern character of the Avant-Garde movement in 1920s Japan by paying attention to the exchange between Japanese, Ukrainian, and Russian artists.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will focus on the transcultural and transmodern character of the artistic "Avant-Garde" movement in 1920s Japan paying particular attention to exchange relationships between Japanese, Ukrainian and Russian artists, which transcended geographical and cultural borders. Is it possible to locate a mutual transformation by searching for possible shifts in perspectives, artistic, and written practices?

1920 the Ukrainian Cubo-futurist David Davidovich Burliuk arrived in Japan and although his two-year stay was short-lived, he was engaged in the artistic Japanese scene, organized over 10 exhibitions all over Japan, and participated in a joint publication on futurism. A few months before Burliuk's departure, the Russian constructivist Varvara Dmitrijevna Bubnova comes to Japan for an over 30-year long period. At first view, it seems that the Japanese art had no artistic impact on Burliuk as in comparison; Bubnova studied Japanese art history and went through an artistic development in changing her main medium of expression from painting to print. This paper will argue that though the two artists appear to be opposing poles, yet they are inseparably connected to each other.

In order to gather insights into the active artistic production of the Japanese "Avant-Garde" in the context of its time, the author will challenge the European art historical categories of originality, imitation, center, periphery, influence, reception, and any thought of progress and purity in art. Instead, the theoretical and methodological grounding will include concepts of diverse "Modernisms" (referring to Partha Mitter) and of "Transmodernity" (referring to Christian Kravanga) while raising the question if and how a mutual (self-)transformation between Japanese, Ukrainian and Russian artists occurred by analyzing artworks, joint exhibitions, and publications.

Paper short abstract:

The face of the Japanese actress, Hanako, has been sculptured several times by Rodin, who was fascinated by Hanako's death scene and attempted to sculpt it. Their encounter is a symbolic example of how the West and the East used each other's preconceptions for their own purposes in the early 1900s.

Paper long abstract:

Rodin was a renowned French sculptor, while Hanako (Ōta Hisa, 1868-1945) was a barely known Japanese actress arriving in Europe in 1902. Their individual arts became one in the masterpiece of The Face of Death.

Hanako, an insignificant member of a small Japanese troupe was discovered by the well-known dancer, Loïe Fuller. After Fuller saw the Japanese actress' death scene, she decided to become Hanako's impresario. Therefore, she organised each European tour of Hanako and wrote her many Japanese style dramas always ending with the cruel but utterly expressive death of the protagonist.

Hanako met Rodin at the Marseilles Colonial Exhibition in 1906. The master was fascinated by Hanako's performance and tried to form her "death face" perceived by the audience in her death scenes. This face with a weird expression is most probably a nirami, a mie pose in kabuki theatre. Rodin created numerous kinds of busts and faces from different materials trying to catch the emblematic moment when Hanako saw Death.

In my presentation I examine the short but interesting period of Hanako's Western career, focusing on her meeting with Rodin. I use their story as a unique and symbolic illustration of Japanese artists' efforts to transform themselves and their art to "match" the Western eye - and of the ways how the West was looking for verification of its preconceptions of the "strange" and "exotic" East in the early 1900s. I analyse the questions of what Rodin saw in Hanako's death face, where Hanako learnt this powerful expression and why she applied it. I draw attention to the absolute paradox of the situation in which Rodin saw something ancient and natural in Hanako's acting, while Hanako was performing in artificially Japanese style dramas written by a European dancer, trying to smuggle something traditional to her performances which were far from being ancient and natural. However, as I will argue, Hanako was only the projection surface for Rodin's idea, while their co-operation became the source of some masterpieces characterising the whole era.

Paper short abstract:

Le Corbusier's building for the National Museum of Western Art (1959) was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2016. Today, the building carries a double symbolism, representing universal applicability of modernist principles externally while signifying successful localization internally.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes the decade-long process of having Le Corbusier's building for the National Museum of Western Art (1959) in Tokyo inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The building was part of a tri-continental serial nomination at the initiative of the French government involving buildings by the renowned European architect in seven different countries. After its first inception in 2007, the initiative failed twice before finally obtaining UNESCO inscription in 2016. Before the French initiative, the Japanese national Agency for Cultural Affairs had yet to designate Le Corbusier's building as an important cultural property. However, over the ensuing decade, the museum building took on new meaning to the Japanese public, government, and local agents who vigorously pursued its world-heritage inscription. The Japanese authorities originally founded the museum in response to preconditions by the French government for returning shipping tycoon Matsukata's renowned art collection to Japanese ownership after the Second World War. The building's heritagization, first nationally in Japan, then internationally as world heritage, reveals the emergence and full consolidation of a paradoxical double symbolism that Le Corbusier's building for the NMWA represents today: on the one hand, it has become internationally acknowledged and heritagized as an outstanding testament to a universal, self-identical, and uniform global modernity while, on the other hand, it has achieved local recognition as a poignant symbol of an innate national capacity for localization and for Japan's postwar reconstruction and peaceful democratic national identity.

Paper short abstract:

Considering the enormous popularity of Japanese 'things' among the Victorian middle class, this paper proposes that the moral interpretation of the Japanese aesthetic promoted by the domestic advice literature was crucial in determining the success of Japanese decorative art in the United Kingdom.

Paper long abstract:

Since the middle of the 19th century, British intellectuals tried to reconcile the rigorous morality inherited from the previous era, namely Age of Atonement (Hilton, 1968), with the Victorian consumer culture. If still in the early decades of the 19th century austerity was the main precept, following the increase in the average income in the United Kingdom, the accumulation of decorative objects at home became possible for a wider audience. Among the compromises devised to face this new sensibility, it became customary to look for moral qualities also in interior design (Cohen 2006).

Following the London International Exposition in 1862, Japanese fine and decorative arts were mainly promoted by artists, designers and intellectuals of the Aesthetic Movement, and associated to people such as James Whistler and Oscar Wilde; individuals not always depicted as virtuous figures. Renowned for having a strict social code of conduct, Victorian society would not have been able to fully appreciate the Japanese aesthetic if it had been partly associated with immorality. This latter aspect might sound contradicting taking into consideration the enormous popularity of Japanese 'things' among the British middle class from the late-1870s. To untie this potential conflict, I examined domestic advice manuals published between 1857 and 1903, written by decorators, architects, clergymen, and middle-class women. Regarding Japanese decorative art, most of the authors underlined that Japanese artists had: a superior skill in depicting the 'true essence' of nature, demonstrating a deep understanding of it; a superior morality testified by their work ethic throughout the various stages of the artistic production. Both motivations were based upon an idealised vision of Japan, but despite that, they were more than able to legitimise the display of Japanese decorative art in cosmopolitan interiors, through which Victorian householders expressed their individuality (Neiswander, 2008).

My paper proposes that these motivations were as much important as the support of the Aesthetic Movement in determining the success of Japanese decorative art in a country such as the United Kingdom, characterised by strict social norms and moral conduct.