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Title: Tsuguharu Fujita’s “Marvelous creamy white”

Abstract: Japanese artist Tsuguharu Fujita (藤田嗣治, 1886—1968) is a member of the “Paris School” in the early 20th century. He created a kind of oil painting that properly blended water with oil. Fujita demonstrated that both oily and water-based paints can be applied on the same painting by drawing thin lines with ink on an ivory-like creamy white background. In Fujita’s technique, the canvas was mostly covered in creamy white, which was called “marvelous creamy white” by art critics in Paris. His unique oriental painting style drew tremendous admiration from Paris. Fujita was the first Asian artist to succeed in Europe, showing to Europeans the charm of “Japanese style oil painting”. Unlike other Japanese students who simply brought the oil painting techniques they learned in Europe back to Japan, Fujita instead immersed himself in the art revolution in Europe with his own inventions. Through the Fujita phenomenon, we can see the relationship between early 20^th century Japanese, Chinese, and European art, and the European attitude towards accepting foreign influence.

Tsuguharu Fujita, “Nude Lady in the Bedroom”,

oil painting on canvas, 130cm ×195cm  1922

Municipal Museum of Modern Art in Paris Collection

Title: “The Work Didn’t Exist Before its Publication” – Architectural Journals During the Transitional Period (1979 – 200X)

Abstract: This paper explores the history of Chinese architectural journals since 1980 as a key form of cultural production through which foreign information was channeled and local responses spawned in the architectural world. As the country saw a rapid unfolding of political liberalization and economic reform, it was uncertain how the same energy would pan out in the field of architecture and be directed towards envisioning and catalyzing a nationwide modernization. Focusing mainly on World Architecture 世界建筑and Time+Architecture 时代建筑 from 1980 to early 2000s, I argue that the development of a new, post-socialist architecture cannot be fully understood without an investigation of its relationship with the printed media first. In numerous cases, ideas were first tested out and sharpened in these journals years before they were materialized in the building form. The emergence of these new journals not only accelerated the search for architecture’s autonomy in the post-socialist China by allowing new conversations to grow without the previously prevalent Mao-ist ideology and rhetoric, but also provided a “contact zone” for Chinese intellectuals and architects to encounter, debate, digest, and at times misappropriate the changing cultural landscape shaped by the increasingly globalizing architectural community beyond China. By foregrounding issues around translation, criticism, self-censorship, and the changing operation and strategies of the media itself and reflecting on topics such as early reception of I.M.Pei, a debate between modernism and postmodern architecture, and a reconsideration of the relationship between architecture and art, I hope this paper can shed new light on the conflicting value systems and diversity of cultural responses that were at play in the transitional era.

Cover of World Architecture, 1981, vol.2, no.2. Featuring the interior of I.M.Pei’s East Building, National Gallery of Art (1978) with Alexander Calder’s Untitled (1976)

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact Dongshan Zhang at dongshan@uchicago.edu

Best wishes,

Dongshan

Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia is proud to present our schedule for Spring 2019

Sessions of this quarter will take place on Fridays 4:30-6:30pm (unless otherwise noted) in a variety of locations at the Cochrane-Woods Art Center(CWAC).

April 12, Yan Jin, MAPH Student

Humanities Division, University of Chicago.

“Reflective Surface and Reflection: The Qianlong Emperor’s Mirror Table Screen.”

*In CWAC 153

May 8, Nancy P. Lin, PhD candidate

Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

“Going Outdoors: Keepers of the Waters and Experiments in Site-Based Art Practice in the 1990s.”

(Joint-event with RAVE, in CWAC 156, Wednesday, 4:30pm – 6:00pm)

May 17, Zhiyan Yang, Ph. D Candidate

Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

“’The Work Didn’t Exist Before Its Publication’ – Architectural Journals During the Transitional Period (1979 – 200x).”

*In CWAC 152

May 22, [Special Session]Zhang Jianyu, Professor

Renmin University, China.

*In CWAC 152

*Wednesday,4:30pm-6pm

*The talk will be delivered in Chinese

May 24, Pan Li, Professor

Visiting Scholar, Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

“Tsuguharu Fujita’s ‘Marvelous creamy white.'”

*5pm

*In CWAC 152

Ma​y​ ​28​, ​Stanley Abe​, ​Associate Professor of Art and Art History​

Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke ​University.

“Imagining Sculpture.”

*In CWAC 153

*Tuesday, 4:30pm-6pm

We look forward to your attendance and hope you will share this with all who might also be interested in joining our community. Please direct questions and inquiries to Dongshan Zhang at dongshan@uchicago.edu.

Dongshan

Visual and Material Perspective On East Asia is proud to present Jeehey Kim, Postdoctoral Instructor, Department of Art History, University of Chicago, this Friday, March 1^st . Please notice the unusual time of the event: 5pm at CWAC 156.

Here are out speaker’s title and abstract:

 “Commemorating the Dead through Photography in East Asia.”

 “One can find ancestral portrait paintings of East Asia in museums, exhibitions, and even antique shows on television. Then, where are funerary portrait photographs to be found? They are at home, funerals, annual memorial services, as well as in national memorial halls, courts and protests on street. My project started with a question of “when and how was the commemorative use of portrait painting transformed into photographic medium in East Asia?” This paper draws upon my dissertation titled “Death and Photography in East Asia: Funerary Use of Portrait Photography,” which compares the practice of funerary photo-portraiture in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam by examining the basic concepts underpinning it. I argue that funerary portrait photographs signal the absent presence of the deceased, testifying to the existence of invisible ancestral spirits. The first part of this paper explores how the commemorative use of one’s likeness gave birth to funerary portrait photography, while the rest addresses the ways in which funerary portrait photography structures national identity and collective memory in East Asia.”

(The event is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago)

If you need assistance, please contact Dongshan Zhang: dongshan@uchicago.edu

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Dongshan

Visual and Material Perspective On East Asia is proud to present Yueling Ji, Ph. D student from Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, this Friday, February 8th. The time and venue is as usual: 4:30pm at CWAC 156.

Title: “Queering the Sino-Soviet Alliance Posters”

Abstract:

During the 1950s and under the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, artists from China and the USSR made a number of Sino-Soviet alliance posters. The posters typically portray the physical intimacy between a white Soviet man and a Chinese man. They hold hands, embrace each other, and care for the boys of the two countries. These posters resurfaced in internet communities of the early 2010s, as activists and fan artists from Philadelphia to Shanghai picked up on the visual language of mixed-race same-sex intimacy and kinship. The images were repurposed as a sort of communist homoerotic art, and widely circulated online as gay rights activism.

My project aims to track the two lives of Sino-Soviet alliance posters. Following the end of the Second World War, Sino-Soviet alliance posters ambitiously campaigned for masculinity, patriarchal lineage, and family building under socialism. But the unexpected role of Sino-Soviet alliance in gay rights activism today suspends the heterosexuality of historical socialist states, producing a fictional coalition between Cold War communism and Western liberalist sexual politics. It is with such a retroactively projected heritage that I hope to investigate socialist and neoliberal conceptions of family, sex, and race, and reevaluate the homonormativity of sexual politics today.

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact Dongshan Zhang at dongshan@uchicago.edu

(This program is sponsored by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies)

4:30pm at CWAC 156.

Title: “Risō Sculptures in Meiji Japan: Takenouchi Hisakazu’s Gigeiten and the Nihonga Style”

Abstract: This paper is a work-in-progress that attempts to examine Takenouchi Hisakazu’s 竹内久一 (1857–1916, alt. Takeuchi Kyūichi) wooden sculpture Gigeiten 伎芸天 (The Divinity of the Arts, Gigeiten, 1893) as one of the first riso 理想 sculptures, a distinctive characteristic that is strongly associated with nihonga paintings and intellectual Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉覚三 (alt. Okakura Tenshin 岡倉天心, 1862–1913). Takenouchi, influenced by Okakura, attempted to integrate the Western sculptural style to the already-existing “traditional” style in Japan. This approach and idea was supposed to become an “ultimate” style that Japan could call its own. While this style did not succeed in becoming permanent in Japan, I argue that the Gigeitenwas not only a sculpture but also a “vision” for Japanese sculptural art going forward. For this presentation, as I am still in the process of researching certain aspects that relate to the risō and nihonga paintings, I will present on how I first came to study this concept as a whole, as well as presenting on my current progress in my research.

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact Dongshan Zhang at dongshan@uchicago.edu

(This program is sponsored by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies)