| Contents |
Introduction: The Bunten, Bijutsu, and the winds of change. Japanese modernism and the early Avant-garde. Expanding the scope of Shirakaba studies -- The art magazine: Emergence of the art magazine. Coterie magazines and the birth of Shirakaba. The materiality of Shirakaba. Shirakaba ideology: artistic autonomy and the cult of the individual -- Conversations with European modernism: Paul Cézanne. Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Heinrich Vogeler and Auguste Rodin -- Shirakaba and modernism in Japan: The "conventions of painting" debate. "The revolutionary artist" -- Revolutionary art, revolutionary artists: Takamura Kōtarō, Umehara Ryūzaburō, and Kishida Ryūsei -- From the Avant-garde to the institution: the evolving exhibition practices of Shirakaba: Alternative exhibition spaces. Shirakaba-sponsored art exhibtions. Envisioning a Shirakaba Museum -- The legacy of Shirakaba. |
| Abstract |
Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism examines the most significant Japanese art and literary magazine of the early twentieth century, Shirakaba (White Birch, 1910-1923) and its founder, the Shirakaba-ha (White Birch Society). Erin Schoneveld's book explores the fluid relationship that existed between the different types of modern visual media, exhibition formats, and artistic practices embraced by the Shirakaba group. It provides a new comparative framework for understanding how the avant-garde pursuit of individuality during this period stood in opposition to state-sponsored modernism and how this played out in the emerging media of art magazines and artistic collectives. Schoneveld argues that the Shirakaba group and Shirakaba magazine's embrace of Post-Impressionism through the life and work of artists such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin offered them a key rhetorical strategy in the evolving discourse of modern Japanese art. Their strategic alignment with artists who they believed represented the revolutionary aesthetics of individualism and artistic self-expression during the early twentieth century assisted in concretizing Shirakaba's own humanist ideology. Schoneveld analyzes key moments in modern Japanese art and intellectual history by focusing on the Japanese artists most closely affiliated with the Shirakaba magazine, including Takamura Kotaro, Umehara Ryuzaburo, and Kishida Ryusei. Drawing upon extensive archival research that includes numerous articles, images, and exhibitions reviews from the Shirakaba, as well as a complete translation of Yanagi Soetsu's seminal essay, "The Revolutionary Artist" (Kakumei no gaka), Schoneveld demonstrates that, contrary to the received narrative that posits Japanese modernism as merely derivative, the debate around modernism among Japan's early avant-garde was lively, contested, and self-reflexive. |
