Asian/American/Modern Art

by Cornell, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780520258648
• ISBN10: 0520258649
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-12
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

This beautifully illustrated volume, companion book to the exhibition of the same name, presents the first comprehensive survey of work produced by artists of Asian descent in America during the first seven decades of the twentieth century. Featuring examples across many media and extending beyond ethnicity,Asian/American/Modern Artbrings into focus an underrepresented and vital group within American art. Introduced by historian Gordon H. Chang and cocurator Mark Dean Johnson, with contributions by cocurator Daniell Cornell and Karin Higa, Sharon Spain, and ShiPu Wang, the book follows the exhibition's multiethnic and multidisciplinary approach. Rather than defining an Asian American art aesthetic,Asian/American/ Modern Arthighlights the stylistic tensions and artistic influences apparent in the work of major artists including Chiura Obata, Yun Gee, Ruth Asawa, Isamu Noguchi, Nam June Paik, and Carlos Villa. Two areas of emphasis, the modernist matrix of the early twentieth century and the post-World War II period wherein artists developed new approaches, support the book's recurring themes of war and peace, urban life and community. This powerful book represents a major rewriting of American art history to include a population of artists whose significant contributions to twentieth-century American art have been, until now, largely ignored. Copub: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 6
Introduction	p. 9
The Search for Roots, or Finding a Precursor	p. 15
Performing Diaspora: The Body and Identity in the Work of Asian American Artists	p. 23
Journeys into Abstraction: Asia, America, Europe, and the Art of Yun Gee, Alfonso Ossorio, and Isamu Noguchi	p. 31
Catalogue of the Exhibition	p. 43
Looking Both Ways: Asian American Pre-World War II Figurative Hybridity
Japanese American Pictorialist Photography
War and Peace
Urban Life and Community
Philosophy and Religion
Nature and Sexuality as Abstraction
Ink and Line
Bibliography	p. 158
Acknowledgments	p. 160
Index	p. 162
Lenders to the Exhibition	p. 166
Photograph Credits	p. 167
Contributors	p. 168
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