Bert Winther-Tamaki

Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art

Tsuchi

Art in the Encounter of Nations is the first book-length study of interactions between the Japanese and American art worlds in the early postwar years. It brings to light a rich exchange of opinions and debates regarding the relationship between the art of the two nations. The author begins with an examination of the Japanese margins of American Abstract Expressionism. Taking a contrapuntal approach, he investigates four abstract painters: two Japanese artists who moved to the United States (Okada Kenzo and Hasegawa Saburo) and two European Americans whose work is often associated with Japanese calligraphy (Mark Tobey and Franz Kline). He then looks at the work of two young scions of the calligraphy and pottery worlds of Japan -- Morita Shiryo and Yagi Kazuo -- and argues that their radical innovations in these ancient arts were, in part, provoked by their sense of a threat posed by Euro-American modernity. The final chapter is devoted to the career of Japanese American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, whose feeling of affiliation was directed to both the U.S. and Japan in shifting ratios through a series of public and private places, each posing unique opportunities for exploring national distinctions.

Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years

Art in the Encounter of Nations

Louise Allison Cort

Bruce Altshuler

Ryū Niimi

This volume presents the ceramic oeuvre of Isamu Noguchi and includes other major ceramic artists from postwar Japan, analyzing the conflict between modernity and tradition and the search for cultural identity.

A Close Embrace of the Earth

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics

Bert Winther-Tamaki

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