Radicals and Realists is the first book in any language to discuss Japan's avant-garde artists, their work, and the historical environment in which they produced it during the two most creative decades of the twentieth century, the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the artists were radicals, rebelling a...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Havens, Thomas R. H. (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	Honolulu University of Hawaii Press [2006]
Schlagworte:	ART / Asian / General
Online-Zugang:	DE-1043 DE-1046 DE-858 DE-859 DE-860 DE-739 DE-473 URL des Erstveröffentlichers
Zusammenfassung:	Radicals and Realists is the first book in any language to discuss Japan's avant-garde artists, their work, and the historical environment in which they produced it during the two most creative decades of the twentieth century, the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the artists were radicals, rebelling against existing canons and established authority. Yet at the same time they were realists in choosing concrete materials, sounds, and themes from everyday life for their art and in gradually adopting tactics of protest or resistance through accommodation rather than confrontation. Whatever the means of expression, the production of art was never devoid of historical context or political implication. Focusing on the nonverbal genres of painting, sculpture, dance choreography, and music composition, this work shows that generational and political differences, not artistic doctrines, largely account for the divergent stances artists took vis-a-vis modernism, the international arts community, Japan's ties to the United States, and the alliance of corporate and bureaucratic interests that solidified in Japan during the 1960s.After surveying censorship and arts policy during the American occupation of Japan (1945-1952), the narrative divides into two chronological sections dealing with the 1950s and 1960s, bisected by the rise of an artistic underground in Shinjuku and the security treaty crisis of May 1960. The first section treats Japanese artists who studied abroad as well as the vast and varied experiments in each of the nonverbal avant-garde arts that took place within Japan during the 1950s, after long years of artistic insularity and near-stasis throughout war and occupation. Chief among the intellectuals who stimulated experimentation were the art critic Takiguchi Shuzo, the painter Okamoto Taro, and the businessman-painter Yoshihara Jiro. The second section addresses the multifront assault on formalism (confusingly known as "anti-art") led by visual artists nationwide. Likewise, composers of both Western-style and contemporary Japanese-style music increasingly chose everyday themes from folk music and the premodern musical repertoire for their new presentations. Avant-garde print makers, sculptors, and choreographers similarly moved beyond the modern-and modernism-in their work.
Beschreibung:	Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jul 2021)
Beschreibung:	1 online resource (320 pages) 34 illus, 10 in color
ISBN:	9780824842048
DOI:	10.1515/9780824842048