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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Art Education and Professional Development

This pathway outlines major steps of artistic professionalization in the Japanese empire. Its findings are based on research on career guidebooks, artists' writings, art publicity, and careers of individual artists. A comparison of guidebooks and actual careers—what aspiring artists were encouraged to do and how they individually proceeded—gives us much insight into a typical path to a successful career, a range of possible other ways to succeed, and the norms of the art establishment at the time. We can also find some artists who succeeded despite rather unlikely circumstances.

The presence of Japanese painters in Taiwan and of Taiwanese painters in Japan, and the circulation of artistic knowledge through magazines, books, and exhibitions reflected and shaped the emergence of shared assumptions about artistic training in the empire (Compare: Shellen X. Wu's module "Xing An: A Contested Borderland" and its path "The Science of Empire" on the globally mobile discourse of colonial social science). Moreover, as daily newspapers celebrated acclaimed artists and reported on young emerging artists competing in art exhibitions, the painterly profession became appealing to the younger generation.

This popularity of painting as a modern profession brought about the expansion of opportunities for studying art, adjusted to the needs of amateurs and aspiring professionals. These included: studying art from books and reproductions, attending night classes, correspondence course, becoming a student in a private atelier, and attending a specialized art school. Exhibitions became the testing ground for emerging artists and a further mechanism producing the hierarchies of the art establishment.

However, these professional opportunities were not distributed evenly throughout the empire. In her discussion of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, art historian Yen Chuanying has argued that the Taiwan salon functioned as a popular event and cultural propaganda, providing only limited benefits for participating artists because the colonial government did not establish an art school or an art museum on the island (Yen Chuanying, "The Art Movement in the 1930s in Taiwan," in Modernity in Asian Art, ed. John Clark (Broadway, NSW, Australia: Wild Peony, 1993), 52. Yen Chuanying, "Nankoku bijutsu no dendō kenzō," in ‘Teikoku’ to Bijutsu: 1930nendai Nihon no taigai bijutsu senryaku, ed. Omuka Toshiharu (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2010), 367-368.). In other words, aspiring artists in Taiwan had to rely on self-studies (hence the importance of the library) and instruction at private ateliers. With a plethora of exhibitions and art schools, Tokyo became an attractive destination, available mostly to well-off students.

Questions for the classroom:

In what ways did the artistic profession become diverse in prewar Japan?
What distinguished an amateur from a professional painter?
What does the use of Japanese contemporary paintings as model works at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition tell us about the relationship between the Taiwanese and metropolitan art world?
What are the possible interpretations of Guo Xuehu's essay? What are the omissions and silences in this essay?

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Guo Xuehu's Early Career and Paintings 51 Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition; nihonga; seiyōga; tōyōga; art historians image_header 5113 2021-02-02T00:19:03-05:00 Magdalena Kolodziej
Born in 1908, Guo Xuehu belongs to the first generation of artists in Taiwan who grew up under the Japanese colonial rule and who achieved professional recognition at the annual Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (est. 1927). He traveled for the first time to Japan in 1931, visiting museums, temples, and artists in Kyoto and Tokyo. He returned to Japan in the 1950s and then moved there permanently in 1964. In 1978 he settled in Richmond, California. He passed away in 2012. "The Art of Kuo Hsueh-Hu: Kuo Hsueh-Hu Seventy Years of Painting," ed. Taipei Fine Arts Museum (1989), 25. "The Age of Elegance/Shidai de youya: A Centennial Exhibition of Kuo Hsueh-Hu/Guo Xuehu baisui huiguzhan zhuanji," ed. National Museum of History (2008).
The word "artist" doesn't have apparent spatial connotations like the word "migrant." Yet, artists often travel or resettle in search of art education, subject matter, or art markets. More importantly, artists shape and mediate our understanding of place by representing landscapes and people in their art. Art historians evoke place when referring to an artist's country of origin, nationality, or ethnicity. They (we!) often unselfconsciously reinforce these spatial categories when working within an established canon.
Furthermore, art historians divide artworks into location-derived categories. For example, painting in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has been divided into two categories: nihonga and seiyōga. Both of these categories evoke spatial entities, "Japan" and "the West" respectively. Artists and bureaucrats in Japan established these two categories in response to West's cultural imperialism. Institutions such as exhibitions, art associations, and art schools, upheld this division of painting into nihonga and seiyōga. However, the spatial associations of these two terms work to obscure rather than illuminate the actual artistic practice. Nihonga and seiyōga paintings share many stylistic and thematic similarities and the boundaries between them were often fluid. Artists in Japan debated the meanings of each category and many artists engaged in both media. Both categories reflect a Japan-centric view of global art in the time of empire.
This pathway examines Guo Xuehu's early career to illuminate how the artistic infrastructures of the Japanese empire influenced his early development as an artist and how, in turn, his work shaped the boundaries of nihonga. Guo Xuehu submitted his paintings to the tōyōga division of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. The term tōyōga evokes the spatial category of "the East" or "the Orient." However, paintings displayed in this category in Taiwan excluded literati painting. Instead, they centered nihonga works as the present and future of East Asian art and a worthy counterpart to oil painting. Ultimately, by promoting nihonga in the colony, Japanese artists lost their putative monopoly on nihonga and it became a creative medium for some Taiwanese-Chinese artists.
Moreover, this pathway demonstrates what it took to become an artist in the Japanese empire in the 1920s and 1930s. Guo Xuehu did not follow a typical path to artistic success because he was largely self-taught. Yet, as a an artist with an excellent exhibition record, he became successful in Taiwan's art establishment.
Questions for the classroom:
- What are the points of convergence and the respective silences in the histories of modern Taiwanese and Japanese art?
- How would Japanese modern art history look like if it featured Guo Xuehu as one of its protagonists?
- Why would art historians of Japan include him in their history? Or shouldn't they (we)?
- At what point has nihonga stopped being an artistic medium particular to Japan and Japanese artists? How can we conceptually describe this process?
The Taiwan Government-General Library and Its Art-related Collections 46 Taiwan sōtokufu toshokan; 1915 image_header 5113 2021-01-28T21:39:55-05:00 Magdalena Kolodziej
The colonial government of Taiwan opened its library in 1915 in Taipei. The colonial government in Korea opened its library in 1925 in Seoul. Some historians have suggested that the relatively late establishment of both Government-General Libraries reflected the discriminatory policy of keeping the colonized people from going beyond their station in life. (Kawata Ikohi, “Ajia shinryaku to Chōsen Sōtokufu Toshokan (1),” Jōkyō to shutai, no. 140 (1987): 87-88.) Others pointed out that the activities of both libraries were part of the general turn in both colonies towards a cultural rule following the March First Movement in Korea in 1919 and the appointment of civilians instead of military to the post of the Government-General. (Katō Kazuo, Kawata Ikohi, and Tōjō Fuminori, Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan: Ajia ni okeru Nihon kindai toshokanshi (Tokyo: Shakai hyōronsha, 2005), 84. Ujigo Tsuyoshi, “Kindai Kankoku toshokanshi no kenkyū: shokuminchiki o chūshin ni,” Sankōshoshi kenkyū, no. 34 (1988): 5-6.) The policies of cultural rule aimed at assimilating the colonized population and fostering pro-Japanese attitudes.
Next to public schools teaching Japanese language, public libraries constituted a crucial part of the cultural infrastructure of the expanding empire. They were extremely active in comparison to their counterparts in mainland Japan and attracted some of the most capable library staff from Japan. (Katō Kazuo, Kawata Ikohi, and Tōjō Fuminori, Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan: Ajia ni okeru Nihon kindai toshokanshi (Tokyo: Shakai hyōronsha, 2005), 12-14.) They catered to Japanese settlers and the colonized, a growing number of whom could read Japanese (The Taiwan Government-General Library also had some books in Chinese and Western languages). The knowledge of Japanese language varied among the colonized subjects based on their level of contact with the Japanese population, class, education, and the year of birth. By 1941, 57% of population in Taiwan was being or had been educated in Japanese language, which was the highest literacy rate in any colony. (Faye Yuan Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003), 142.) In her discussion of Korean writers publishing in Japanese in the prewar period, literary scholar Aimee Nayoung Kwon reminds us that such seemingly "natural" command of the Japanese language was a result of violence of imperial censorship and assimilation policies. (Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Modernity in Korea and Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 190-191.) Such policies intensified after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when the colonial government began promoting the "imperial subject movement" (kōminka) to Japanize everyday customs and ultimately draft the the colonized into the military. Fujii Shōzō, "The Formation of Taiwanese Identity and the Cultural Policy of Various Outside Regimes," in Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945, eds. Liao Binghui and Wang Dewei (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 70.
This pathway examines user statistics and art-related holdings of the Taiwan Government-General Library to illuminate the role of the library and books in the making of the nascent imperial art world. As discussed in the "Art Education and Professional Development" pathway, studying from books constituted the most informal method of art education and was relatively available.
Questions for the classroom:
- What was the role of class, gender, and ethnicity/nationality in access to the Taiwan Government-General Library?
- What do classification schemes used by librarians in their user statistics and catalogues tell us about their vision of a colonial society?
- How do books, journals, art postcards, and reproductions as vehicles of artistic knowledge impact the knowledge being transmitted?
How-to-paint Books
The selection of traditional painting manuals (gafū) with images to be used for copying practice and more recent largely text based how-to-paint books at the Taiwan Government General Library speaks to the educational aspirations of the library. The subsection of the 812 Japanese and Chinese Painting dedicated to painting techniques had 13 books in 1917, and by 1927 acquired additional 15. Among them were two Japanese translations of the widely renowned Chinese painting manual from the early Qing dynasty, Kaishien gaden (En. Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, Ch. Jieziyuan Huazhuan), as well as three different "How to paint nihonga" books by contemporary Japanese artists. The increase appears modest, yet it does suggest a steady interest.
Similarly, the 814 Western Painting section had a total of 13 technique-related books in 1917, and acquired additional 23 by 1927. Their subject matter ranged from how to paint in oils, watercolor, pencil drawing, and crayon, to how to handle composition, human figure, and landscape. The library owned Yamamoto Kanae's extremely popular Aburae no egakikata (How to paint in oil), as well as two publications by the renowned watercolor artist, long-term resident of Taiwan, and exhibition juror, Ishikawa Kin'ichirō: Shasei shinsetsu (New text on sketching, 1914), and Shindai gajutsu (Painting techniques for the new times, 1926). Many prominent artists in Japan and some artists of the middle ranks penned how-to-paint books. This activity must have provided additional income and was an extension of their work as art instructors in public schools and private ateliers.
How-to-paint books made artistic knowledge more accessible and targeted a range of audiences. Some explained the basics to amateur painters in pursuit of hobby and pleasure. Others catered to young aspiring artists, giving advice on the development of an artistic career and the steps necessary to establish oneself professionally. Yet others provided highly technical information about pigments and painting techniques relevant to professional artists. Overall, these how-to-books were largely text based and focused on advice. They did feature some reproductions or a few drawings, yet they did not include workbook-like materials for a hands on practice. The authors seemed aware of the limitations of the book medium in artistic transmission and thus focused on encouragement and explaining practical matters, such as necessary equipment or what constituted basic drawing skills and subject matter.
A pamphlet published on the occasion of the Library Week at the Taiwan Government General Library in 1932, Saikin ōku yomareta ryōsho 200-shu (Selection of 200 popular books), suggests that how-to books were especially popular among the library's users. Except for Tōyō bijutsu no chishiki (Knowledge of Eastern art) and Sankō sekai bijutsu yomihon seiyō hen (Reference reader in world art: Volume on Western art), all other positions listed in the arts section were how-to books on the various techniques of printing, sketching, oil painting, and photography, headed by Ōta Saburō's Aburae no egakikata (How to Paint in Oil).
These Japanese language how-to-paint books helped popularize in the colonies new (some would say "modern") worldviews regarding artistic professionalization, such as the importance of attending an art school and establishing a stellar exhibition participation record. By doing so, they must have brought into sharp relief the limited opportunities for artists in Taiwan in comparison to metropolitan Japan. Also, even as the how-to-books often focused on one specific technique or medium, overall they reinforced the conceptual categorization of painting into nihonga and seiyōga in accordance with the recent custom in Japan. The putatively universal image of the artistic profession had in fact implicit imperial geography. Compare: Irina Holca, "Insularity and imperialism: the borders of the world in the Japanese and Taiwanese kokugo readers during the Taishō era," Japan Forum 28, no. 1 (2016): 68.
Art-related Collections
Books and other printed media served as vehicles within Japan's imperial art world, transporting the knowledge of artistic practices, artworks, and the art milieu itself throughout the empire. The art-related books available in the public libraries constituted the most informal level of artistic education, available to anyone with some Japanese language skills. Authors of advice books and critics encouraged aspiring artists to look at artworks and visit the library. Although learning from books alone would not make one an artist, it kindled the imagination of young readers and provided access to reproductions.
By March 1939, the Arts section of the Taiwan Government-General Library had 6,450 volumes, 199 in western languages and 6,251 in Japanese and Chinese. Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan, Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan gairan Shōwa 13nendo (Taiwan Sōtokufu Toshokan, 1939), 3. The fine arts related chunk of the collection covered topics ranging from pre-modern to modern art in Japan, China, and the West, yet was especially strong in Japanese art. In addition, some of the Japanese language books in the collection were recent translations from European languages, for example: John Ruskin's Lectures on Art (originally published in 1870; translated by Sakuma Masakazu, Geijutsu kōwa, 1924), Konrad Adolf Fiedler's Über den Ursprung der Künstlerischen Tätigkeit (originally published in 1887; translated by Kaneda Sunao, Geijutsuteki katsudō no kigen, 1921), or Ascanio Condivi's Biography of Michaelangelo (translated by Takata Hiroatsu, 1922; originally from 1553).
Furthermore, the collection of the Taiwan Government-General Library featured many books relevant for amateurs and aspiring artists, such as exhibition catalogues, books with reproductions (gashū), and a large selection of how-to-make-art and how-to-look-at-art books. It also had books about contemporary masters in Europe and Japan, including essays and memoirs penned directly by the artists.
Guo Xuehu emphasized this self-study-oriented and comprehensive character of the library collection in an article from 1955, in which he described his debut as an artist:
…[the library] could be a better solution comparing with any other schools since it offers rich collections of specific books for a self-study student… People usually give compliments to the alma mater or praise the great personality of their teachers, and even exaggerate the times spent abroad for research. If all these can raise their social status, I would like to mention my school library that contains dozens of thousands of people [sic]. Translated into English in: Lin Ming-hsien, ed. New Visions/Meili xinshijie: Collected Papers on the Historical Significance of Taiwan’s Gouache Paintings/Taiwan jiaocaihua de lishi yu shidai yiyi xueshu yantaohui lunwenji (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 2008), 26.

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