Yuki Katsura
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Yuki Katsura (桂ゆき, Yukiko Katsura, Katsura Yuki, 10 October 1913 – 5 February 1991) was a Japanese artist whose career spanned from the pre-war to the post-war eras. During her artistic trajectory of six decades, Katsura employed painting, mixed media collage, and caricature responding to aspects of the Japanese society and the established canon of Japanese art during the 20th century. Influenced by both Japanese traditions and Western movements, Katsura engaged with a handful of both figurative and abstract references and typologies including allegories, folkloric iconography, color field painting, as well as real-life scenes of critical events in mid-century Japan.[1] Her diverse approaches, engagement with critical issues, and adherence to personal independence together made her a pioneer of avant-garde art in Japan before and after the war.
Biography
Born in a middle-class family in Tokyo, Katsura grew up absorbing both the prevalent Japanese social norm imposed upon girls, including that from within the family, and the more individualistic and independent mindset manifested in Western cultural products such as books and music brought home by Katsura's father, a Europe-educated professor of engineering at the Tokyo Imperial University. In 1926, Katsura enrolled at a girl's school. Her initial desire to study Western-style oil painting (yōga) was rejected as the practice was considered unacceptable for women. Instead, Katsura began to study Japanese-style painting (nihonga), an idiom that was more closely bound to traditional culture and values and thus, suitable for female students.[2] The training in nihonga provided exercises in observation and brushwork as a foundation for Katsura's subsequent training. Yet throughout the time, Katsura's determination of pursuing oil painting had not diminished at all. Against her family's refusal, she enrolled in the studio of Kenichi Nakamura in 1931, and subsequently, that of Saburōsuke Okada, before entering the Avant-Garde Western Painting Research Institute led by Seiji Tōgō and Tsuguharu Foujita in 1933.[3]
During her time at the Avant-Garde Western Painting Research Institute, Katsura was exposed to new European art, including Dada, Surrealism, and Fauvism. These innovative visions both nurtured and challenged Katsura as she soon realized that merely absorbing from these Western modern idioms was not insufficient. Since then, Katsura began to forage for her own unique style. One way of achieving it was to draw upon her own life experience as a young woman in Japanese society. Katsura discarded the confines of oil paintings by assembling fabric, leaves, cork, and other nonart materials to create abstract assemblages, reportedly without knowing that her practice had a defined name of collage.[4] The artist sought to communicate directly with the textuality of these material experiments, establishing herself as a pioneer in Japanese modern art.[5] In 1935, with the support of painter Kinosuke Ebihara, Katsura had a solo exhibition in the Ginza district of Tokyo. In 1938, she participated in the Nikaten, the annual exhibition of the Second Section Society (Nikakai), and at the invitation of Jiro Yoshihara and Takeo Yamaguchi, became a founding member of the Ninth Room Association (Kyushitsukai).[6]
After World War II, Katsura formed affiliations with newly established organizations such as the Association of Women Painters (Jyoryū Gaka Kyōkai) and the Japan Avant-Garde Artists Group (Nihon abangyarudo bijutsuka kurabu). The Association of Women Painters provided exhibition opportunities for women artists who worked in various styles.[7] In 1948, she joined the Night Society (Yoru no kai), organized by Tarō Okamoto to foster ties between avant-garde art and literature.[8] While Katsura carried on with her abstract practice, her closer involvement with literature likely prompted her to engage writing as another major way of expression and turn to the folkloric tradition of Japan for artistic inspirations. Katsura's rising interest in folk stories and iconography also aligned with the general quest of the post-war Japanese society of reconsidering what a national identity entailed.[9]
Starting in the 1950s, Katsura explored to a greater extend ideas that were more socially and politically relevant, such as female liberation, patriotism and nationalism, and the political nature of the body.[10] Between 1956 and 1961, Katsura traveled frequently, living in Paris and New York as well as spending several months at a remote African village. The sudden decision of leaving Japan resulted from the artist's will to reconsider her identity as an artist. Katsura had sensed that her life as a professional artist had become too stable and rigid, and very much dependent on the established construct of art institutions in Japan. She longed for fresh, unpretentious experiences and a second life when she can “become a blank sheet of paper [and] confront the unknown.”[11]
Books
A Woman Alone in a Primitive Tribe: The African American Experience (On'na hitori genshi buraku ni hairu Afurika Amerika taiken-k), 1962
The Great Travels of the Fox (Kitsume no dairyokō), 1974
References
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- ^ Alicia Volk, “Katsura Yuki and the Japanese Avant-Garde,” Woman’s Art Journal, Autumn 2003-Winter 2004, Vol. 24, No. 2, p.3
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Ibid, p.4; Taka Ishii Gallery, “Yuki Katsura,” 2018, https://www.takaishiigallery.com/en/archives/24451/
- ^ Volk, p.4; Ichinomiya City Setsuko Mikishi Memorial Art Museum 2007, pp. 72-75.
- ^ Volk, p.4.
- ^ Taka Ishii Gallery, 2018
- ^ Midori Yoshimoto, “Women Artists in the Japanese Postwar Avant-Garde: Celebrating a Multiplicity,” Woman's Art Journal, Spring-Summer, 2006, Vol. 27, No. 1, p. 27; Volk, p.6.
- ^ Volk, p.6; Guggenheim Museum, Collection Online, “Taro Okamoto,” https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/taro-okamoto
- ^ Namiko Kunimoto, “Katsura Yuki’s Bodies of Resistance.” In Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), p.34-38.
- ^ Kunimoto, 2017, p.38-48, 54-65.
- ^ Volk, p.6