Japan’s Van Gogh? Analogy and revision in the case of Shikō Munakata
2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02666286.2023.2195839
ISSN1943-2178
Autores Tópico(s)Art, Politics, and Modernism
ResumoAbstractAfter a fortuitous encounter with a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s Six Sunflowers in 1920s Japan, then teenager Shikō Munakata (1903–75) famously pledged to become “Japan’s Van Gogh.” Instead, Munakata would become a woodblock printmaker celebrated in a purposely non-analogical manner not only as “the world’s Munakata” but also, later, as “Japan’s Munakata,” amongst numerous other variations. Conveyed through successive (dis)analogies, the story of Munakata’s artistic development makes clear certain national paradigms entangled in the historization of Japanese modern art. In this case study, I trace the varied ways in which Munakata and others construct, propagate, and modify analogy in an active and, at times, unwitting process of historicization across several contexts, including Munakata’s own visual and textual legacy, the writings of his contemporaries and art historians, and the interpretive approaches of museums. This article focuses on key insights from historiographical research and a site visit to the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art in Aomori, Japan. This example is unusual and significant in that an analogy proposed by the artist himself (Japan’s Van Gogh) is adopted and modified by others in a way to which Munakata responds in different ways throughout his life. In comparing the intentions and contexts that underlie each instance, I discuss ruptures in how Munakata’s life and work are interpreted in writings about the artist. I emphasize that analogies need not be static; they are also strategically inconsistent, malleable, and thus revelatory of their underlying conventions.Keywords: modern art in JapananalogyEast–West dichotomyShikō MunakataVincent Van Goghdisanalogy AcknowledgmentsThis article draws on my research in Japan for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded project Analogy and the Structures of Art History in the Global Era, led by Professor Mark Cheetham at the University of Toronto. I thank Professor Cheetham for encouraging my work within this project. Many thanks to Professor Aida Wong for drawing my attention to Shikō Munakata and for guiding my initial data collection and analysis. Thanks also to Hana Nikčević for her thoughtful edits. I am grateful for the opportunity to present an early version of this article at the 2020 Universities Art Association of Canada Conference.Notes1 Allison Agsten, “Shiko Munakata,” Hammer Museum, https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2011/05/shiko-munakata (May 19, 2011, accessed on July 15, 2021).2 Munakata varies his declaration between texts and at different times. I note these Japanese-language variations throughout this article within the contexts in which they appear. Translations of wadaba Gohho ni naru (ワだばゴッホになる) in secondary materials vary: “[I will] be a Van Gogh” (e.g. “Munakata and the Disciples of Buddha,” New York: Ronin Gallery, 2017); “I’m gonna be another Van Gogh” (from a plaque at the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art). At times Munakata simply states Gohho ni naru (“become Van Gogh”); e.g. Shikō Munakata, Bangokudō (Tokyo: Chūōkōronshinsha, 1976), 39.3 “ワ(私)だば、バン・ゴッホのようになりたい”; Shikō Munakata, Wadaba Gohho ni naru (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1997), 40. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.4 Munakata, Wadaba Gohho ni naru, 41: “ゴッホは本当の画家だ”5 Gennifer S. Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905–1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 20–21.6 Erin Schoneveld, Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-Garde (Leiden: Brill, 2019).7 Hideo Osabe, Munakata Shikō no genfūkei (Hirosaki: Tsugarushobō, 2015), 124–25.8 Alicia Volk, “A Unified Rhythm: Past and Present in Japanese Modern Art,” in Japan & Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era, ed. Christine Guth, Emiko Yamanashi, and Alicia Volk (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2004), 39–55, at 44.9 “「ようし、日本のゴッホになる」、「ヨーシ、ゴッホになる」―そのころのわたくしは、油絵ということとゴッホということを、いっしょくたに考えていたようです。わたくしは、何としてもゴッホになりたいと思いました。… 何もかもわからず、やたら滅法に描いたのでした。ゴッホのような絵を―。そして青森では、「ゴッホのムナカタ」と言われるようになっていました”; Munakata, Bangokudō, 39–40.10 Masaomi Unagami, Munakata Shikō: bijutsu to jinsei (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1976), 176–81.11 Osabe, Munakata Shikō no genfūkei, 126.12 “わたくしにも描けそうなものだと軽く思ったのでした。こんなまずいものを描いて有名な展覧会に通るならば、そうして受賞するなんてやさしいことだ、東京の画壇などおそるるに足らない、東京くみしやすしと思って陳列館を出たのでした。青森ゴッホは、絵の外側だけを見て、中側を観ていなかったのでした”; Munakata, Bangokudō, 49.13 Osabe, Munakata Shikō no genfūkei, 372.14 “Nihon no Gohho ima izu ko?” The Asahi Shimbun, January 6, 1954, morning ed., 7.15 Unagami, Munakata Shikō, 101.16 Shikō Munakata, Itaga no hada (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1956), cited in Unagami, Munakata Shikō, 100–101. Unagami also notes that Munakata was upset by comparisons between Yamashita and himself, though the contexts of these comparisons are unclear.17 Amongst the multiple examples of these double standards that Volk provides in an extensive overview of the artworlds straddling Japan and Europe in the Taisho period and early Showa era, Volk includes a striking quotation by the French critic Michel-Gabriel Vaucaire, who attributes the success of Fujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968) to his ability to “[pass] for a French painter in the eyes of the Japanese and for a pure Japanese among Westerners”; cited in Volk, “A Unified Rhythm,” 47.18 Munakata, Wadaba Gohho ni naru, 67.19 “バン・ゴッホのことも考えました。コッホが自分の大好きなタンギー爺さんを描いて、その背後に広重や英泉、歌麿などの浮世絵をそっくりそのまま写しとっている絵があります。あのゴッホでさえ、日本の版画を神様にして扱っているではないのか(わたくしは、お手本のことを神様というクセがありました)。… わたくしは、そう思うと、矢もタテもたまらなくなりました。版画！！”; ibid., 68–69.20 Shikō Munakata, Yorokobi no uta, ed. Munakata Hanga Bijutsukan (Tokyo: Nigensha, 2003), 84.21 Michael Sullivan, “Japan: From the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the Present Day,” in The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 119–69, at 162.22 Ignacio Adriasola, “Japan’s Venice: The Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the ‘Pseudo-Objectivity’ of the International,” Archives of Asian Art 67, no. 2 (2017): 209–36, at 217, 209.23 Hideo Takumi, Munakata Shikō san (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984), 23.24 As quoted in Charles S. Terry, “The Western Element in Munakata,” Japan Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1958): 90–93, at 92.25 Ibid.26 Sōetsu Yanagi, “Munakata Shiko: Child of Nature,” Japan Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1958): 83–94, at 87.27 Arthur Danto, “Munakata in New York: A Memory of the ’50s,” The Print Collector’s Newsletter 10, no. 6 (1980): 184–89, at 185.28 For example, as post-war Japan sought to rebuild and regain diplomatic and economic favor with the United States, the Museum of Modern Art, working alongside the United States Information Agency, sent strategic exhibitions of abstract expressionism with a rhetoric of expressive freedom to Tokyo; Weisenfeld, Mavo, 256–57.29 Allen Hockley, “The Zenning of Munakata Shikō,” Impressions, no. 26 (2004): 76–87.30 Marvin Lichtner, “Ebullient Artist from Japan,” Life, September 21, 1959, cited in Hockley, “Zenning of Munakata Shikō,” 78.31 “Tradition and Innovation,” Kröller-Müller Museum, https://krollermuller.nl/en/timeline/tradition-and-innovation (accessed on July 15, 2021).32 Munakata, Bangokudō, 263–64.33 I translate an excerpt from Shinpei Kusano’s poem Wadaba Gohho ni naru (1973) as quoted in Munakata, Bangokudō, 323–24. The Japanese is as follows:わだばゴッホになる。とわめいた。ゴッホにならうとして上京した貧乏青年は しかし。ゴッホにはならずに。世界の。Munakataになった。34 Tomoko Mamine, “Displaying ‘Globality,’” Third Text 27, no. 4 (2013): 502–9.35 Hideo Takumi, Munakata Shikō san, 25.36 Osabe, Munakata Shikō no genfūkei, 300.37 Ibid., 300–2.38 Ibid., 300.39 The Abeno Harukas Art Museum translates the title “わだばゴッホになる 世界の棟方志功” as “Munakata Shiko: the World Renowned Artist,” suggesting that the comparative framework using Van Gogh in the original Japanese was not thought to be legible or compelling for a non-Japanese audience.40 “Munakata and the Disciples of Buddha,” Ronin Gallery, March 2017, 19.41 “Aomori no Gohho? Meiyo shimin ‘Munakata Shikō’ no rekishi,” Inakamon, https://inakamon.jpn.com/wp/aomori-munakata-shiko/ (April 24, 2019, accessed on July 15, 2021).42 “Shiko Munakata,” Jaded Space, https://jaded3space.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/shiko-munakata/ (November 22, 2011, accessed on July 15, 2021).43 Shigemi Inaga, “Is Art History Globalizable? A Critical Commentary from a Far Eastern Point of View,” in Is Art History Global?, ed. James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2007), 249–79, at 253.44 Shigemi Inaga, “The Impossible Avant-Garde in Japan,” Comparative and General Literature, no. 41 (1993): 67–75.45 “セザンヌならセザンヌの前と後、ゴッホの前と後、それからピカソの前と後、世界が違って見える。それと同じように、志功さんを見た後前と後では世界の見方が違って見える。そういう絵描き、版画家ですね”; Hideo Osabe, “Munakata Shikō no sekai,” in Munakata Shikō Kinenkan: 40 nen no ayumi (Aomori: Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art, 2016), 19.46 Susan Stanford Friedman, “Why Not Compare?” PMLA 126, no. 3 (2011): 753–62, at 760.47 Kikurō Miyashita, Sono toki, seiyō de wa: Jidai de kuraberu Nippon bijutsu to seiyō bijutsu (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2019).48 Mark A. Cheetham, “Analogous Histories? Textual/Visual Constructions of the Past and Present,” in History and Art History: Looking Past Disciplines, ed. Nicholas Chare and Mitchell B. Frank (New York: Routledge, 2021), 173–86, 180.Additional informationNotes on contributorsLana TranLana Tran is a doctoral student and Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholar in Art Studies and Curatorial Practices at the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. Lana attained a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto in 2019, where she held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her doctoral research considers the socio-cultural representation of place in contemporary Japanese art projects.
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