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• 1 media/guo xuehu 1928 scenery near yuanshan.jpg media/guo xuehu 1928 scenery near yuanshan.jpg 2019-11-18T17:20:14-05:00 Studying Art in Colonial Libraries 106 Magdalena Kolodziej image_header 4897 2021-10-04T17:00:17-04:00 Tōkyō 35.7500, 139.5000 35.71718, 139.77271 35.71926, 139.77226 35.6935, 139.66234 Taipei 25.0383, 121.5641 25.04086, 121.51122 25.07891, 121.52651 25.04346, 121.52242 25.04537, 121.52253 25.07075, 121.52048 25.0551, 121.51003 25.1039, 121.53027 Seoul 37.5333, 127.0000 37.5658, 126.97514 Kyōto 35.0000, 135.7500 35.01141, 135.79448 Ōsaka 34.6667, 135.5000 Tainan 22.9908, 120.2133 Sakurajima 31.58333, 130.6500 Richmond 37.93575, -122.34774 Fujian Province 26.48368, 117.9249 1927-1943 Magdalena Kolodziej Guo Xuehu

  On October 28, 1927, the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition opened in Taipei. It attracted a large crowd of 28,119 visitors in only ten days (Taiwan sōtokufu bunkyōkyoku shakaika 1934, 74). This juried salon for contemporary painting catered to interests of the Japanese colonial government and settler-artists. It projected an image of Japan as a benevolent colonizer, captured the attention of local audiences, functioned as part of the cultural assimilation policy, and provided Japanese artists in Taiwan with a highly publicized opportunity to promote their art. In addition, the salon attracted some Taiwanese Chinese artists. The young, largely self-taught painter Guo Xuehu (1908-2012) was one of them. (For a database with reproductions of all the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition works click here.)

  In fact, Guo Xuehu became one of only three Taiwanese Chinese whose works were accepted to the tōyōga divison at the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. By 1932, he had established his position as a successful emerging artist in Taipei's art circles. In an essay penned in response to a Taiwan-wide competition for library users' stories, he looked back at his artistic debut and singled out the library as his “unparalleled teacher.” The essay received the second prize and was published in the Japanese language newspaper Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, turning him into a role model for other artists in Taiwan, who were not able to afford studying with an instructor or enroll in an art school in Japan. (Compare: Yen 2007, 103; see also Liao 2002, 216-217). For an English translation of the essay click here.

  This module explores artistic infrastructures and the circulation of artistic knowledge in the Japanese empire by focusing on Guo Xuehu's essay. By the early 1930s, artists in Japan were becoming aware of Taiwan's art scene and many painters traveled to the island in pursuit of subject matter. Similarly, Japanese art world began to loom large in the imagination of young aspiring painters in Taiwan, which included Japanese settlers and Taiwanese Chinese. Some of these aspiring artists would leave Taiwan for Japan in pursuit of an artistic education and career.

  Today, Guo Xuehu is considered to be a master of twentieth century painting in Taiwan. However, he is largely absent from the narratives of Japanese modern art. The national approach to Japanese modern art history obscures the involvement of Japanese artists in the imperial expansion as well as the presence of Korean and Taiwanese artists within the purview of the empire. By highlighting the intimacy between the Taiwanese and Japanese art worlds, this project helps us envision the Japanese art world in the 1930s on new terms. In this way, it is part of a larger body of scholarship that is committed to reshaping our understanding of space and boundaries of Japan as a multi-ethnic nation and a multi-national state in the interwar period (see, e.g., Oguma 2002; Morris-Suzuki 1998; McDonald 2017).

  I argue that in the interwar period Japan's was an imperial art world (teikoku bijutsukai), intimately intertwined with the art worlds of Korea and Taiwan. The spaces of art exhibitions, ateliers, art schools, personal networks, and newspaper pages constituted this imperial art world. Circulation of information, goods, and people within the Japanese empire stimulated its emergence. It expanded as a spatial entity and a powerful idea. Artists, be it Japanese painters, settler-artists, or colonial subjects, came to understand and negotiate their own place within it. As producers of representations, they also shaped its image. An approach to Japanese modern art history that omits the empire is simply untenable.

  This module consists of three interlocking pathways that coalesce around Guo Xuehu's prize-winning essay. Each pathway explores the intimacy between Japan's and Taiwan's art worlds through a different scale and infrastructure:

  1. the practice and discourse of art education (information/knowledge);
  2. the institution of the library and books (environment, vehicles);
  3. and, the career of an individual artist (figure).

  Each pathway introduces relevant primary sources and questions as a material for discussion and research projects in a university classroom.
  
  Click here for a list of references and suggestions for further readings for this module, which is also available from the module's Conclusion page.