Multiple personae in contemporary art (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
The essay investigate Japanese aesthetic values based on Zen Buddhism in relationship to philosophy of experience of Kitaro Nishida and Martin Heidegger’s, their definition of art. The essay discusses matters of existence of our being and our consciousness in relation to time and to objects- pphenomenology: the philosophical study of what happens to our consciousness when our perception meets an object. The study of phenomenology points this analysis towards investigating works of art that reveal their materiality (ontology). Work ought to bring an awareness, that allows them to be “present” and to experience “subject-object duality”. I uses thin and delicate paper - directly glued onto wooden panels using animal skin glues – that is painted using traditional painting techniques to prepare the surface. Painting works project these qualities; pushing the materiality of the work into the foreground. It references post modernism concerns of minimalism and mono-ha movement, where the artists used simple material as the core of their work. In terms to paintings, it refers to Robert Ryman’s painting as “realism” and question on “what is painting?”. Key concerns are the core elements of painting: the medium, the surface, the support, the hanging system, in relationship to the installation space. I am taking this further questioning the relationship of the installation and the studio space. This research project is motivated by the belief that works of art that we produce in the present are inevitably rooted in the past. Thus, there is value in investigating the relationship of traditional Japanese aesthetic values to contemporary art.
In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugoro and Japanese Modern Art
2010
In Pursuit of Universalism is the first comprehensive, English-language study of early twentieth-century Japanese modern art. In this groundbreaking work, which is also the inaugural recipient of the Phillips Book Prize (awarded by the Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art), Alicia Volk constructs a critical theory of artistic modernism in Japan between 1900 and 1930 by analyzing the work of Yorozu Tetsugorô, whose paintings she casts as a polemic response to Japan's late-nineteenth-century encounter with European art. Volk places Yorozu at the forefront of a movement that sought to define Japanese art's role in the world by interrogating and ultimately refusing the opposition between East and West. Instead, she vividly demonstrates how Yorozu reframed modern art's dualistic underpinnings and transposed them into an inclusive and synthetic relation between the local and the universal. By looking closely at questions of cultural exchange within modern art, In Pursuit of Universalism offers a new and vital account of both Japanese and Euroamerican modernism. Volk's pioneering study builds bridges between the fields of modern and Asian art and takes its place at the forefront of the emerging global history of modern art. Reviews: “Masterfully written. . . . Alicia Volk embarks upon a fascinating journey to develop an alternative perspective for narrating the complexities of the Japanese art scene. . . . Volk’s stimulating book definitively illuminates a new horizon for the field of modern Asian art. . . . It is precisely what the discipline needs.”— Journal Of Oriental Studies “Forceful and eloquent. . . . Volk masterfully unravels the knotty strands that coalesced to shape one individual artist’s perception of self and his work within existing academic, institutional, and professional structures. . . . [The] book deserves praise for being a substantially rigorous and provocative probe into the search for universalism in a differentiated world.”—International Journal Of Asian Studies “Deserves to be read by all historians of modern art and East Asian culture.”—Journal Of Asian Studies “An impressive book, beautifully produced and sustaining intellectual rigour with its detailed, stimulating research.”— Japanese Studies “Excellent. . . . Exquisitely written.”—The Art Bulletin "Written beautifully and compellingly... Volk has made an important contribution to the growing literature on alternative artistic modernisms." --The Journal of Japanese Studies "In presenting readers with this most cogent argument for the emergence of Japanese modernism through the artistic engagement of one of its central players Volk has made a genuinely original contribution to the field."--New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies "This is an... intellectually nourishing read, in which Volk's voluminous knowledge of art movements and discourse creates a text of commanding erudition."--The Japan Times “Volk's impressive study rethinks the East-West binary often reiterated in discussions of Japanese modernism by reinserting local aspects into the universalizing tendencies of modernism itself. The book makes an important contribution to the growing literature on modern Japanese art history by providing an alternative comparative framework for understanding the global development of modernism that decenters Euro-America. Rigorously historical in her critique, Volk destabilizes our understanding of the Japanese experience of modernity through the prism of Yorozu's singular vision of the self, leaving us questioning conventional wisdom and contented to wobble.”—Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University “In Volk's affectingly stunning and deeply reflective study of the Japanese artist Yorozu Tetsugorō's work between 1910-1930, we have a profoundly historical reminder of how modernism everywhere struggled to meet the demands of the new with the readymades of received artistic practices. In this study of Yorozu's utopian universalist project, Volk has imaginatively broadened our understanding of the modernist moment and perceptively captured its global program to unify art and life, contemporary culture and history.”—Harry Harootunian, author of Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan