Yasuo Kuniyoshi

H. Abe

Yasuo Kuniyoshi is a Japanese who went to the United States and became one of

the best painters in America. He is not well-known in Japan, but thanks to the great

collection of Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum maintained by Benesse Corporation, his works

are getting familiar. This essay is intended to introduce the life of Yasuo Kuniyoshi

along with his paintings considering the social background of the period he lived.

He was born on October 1st, 1889 in Okayama Pref. His father, Ukichi, and

mother, Ito were running a grocery store and they were wealthy before Yasuo was born.

Though you can't find any artist among his relatives, Yoshio Ozawa, a writer, says he

imagines that Yasuo was born in the family with some artistic environment, because he

could find several sketches by talented person among the non-displayed collection of

Benesse Corporation.

In 1904, when he was fifteen years old, Yasuo entered a high school of technology

and began learning dyeing, but two years later, he quit school and left Japan to the

United States. He reached Seattle by way of Vancouver in Canada. He decided to go,

because he heard many stories about the successful Japanese in America. Yasuo said, "I

didn't worry about money. I expected that I could find money on the streets" (Ichikawa

et al. 36). This was the image that Japanese had at that time, but the truth was

completely different. There was a social anxiety about the increasing number of

Japanese immigrants taking the job of Americans. Japanese were called "Yellow Perils"

and the movement occurred to drive them out. He worked as a cleaner at a railroad

company, a floor polisher and a bell boy at a hotel.

Before winter came, he went to Los Angels and entered a tuition-free public

school to learn English. While he couldn't understand English, the only tool of

communication was drawing. Amazed by the drawings of Yasuo, one teacher

recommended that he go to an art school. He followed his advice and became an

evening class student at the Los Angels School of Art and Design. He sill had hard time

earning a living, but he was happy to be an art student.

It was three years after he came to the United States that he began to think about

his future. He came to America not to be an artist but to be rich. Drawing for him was

the communication tool before he had enough English ability. He wanted a job to get a

lot of money. What he found was to be a pilot. Yasuo said, "The fame which spreads at

once. To fly in the air. A conviction that this will become a great business. All of these

aroused my imagination, and I became a student at the school of airplane" (A Critical

18) He had a good fighting spirit, but seeing several students dye while they were

practicing, Yasuo was terrified and escaped from school. He was at a loss what to do.

He had already quit the art school. He thought and thought and finally decided to be a

painter in New York, the center of the American art.

Winter in 1910, Yasuo was in New York. With the advice of Mr. Kawabe, a

painter in New York, he became a student of the National Academy. But the class was

not so different from the one he took in Los Angels, and he lost interest. He quit the

Academy, and attended for a short time the Henri School conducted by Robert Henri,

one of the anti-academism members of "The Eight." Because of the lack of money, he

couldn't continue his study. It was 1914 when he started studying painting again at the

Independent School of Arts, where he found the new wave of the American art world

influenced by Armory Show in 1913, the first large-scale modern European art

exhibition in America.

In 1916, when he was twenty seven, he began to participate in the evening class

of the Art Students League, where he had many friends. Among his classmates are

Lloyd Goodrich, who became the curator of the Whitney Museum, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

In the League, Yasuo was greatly influenced by the instructor, Kenneth Hayes Miller.

He noticed Yasuo's technique and wanted to add spirit to it. He taught how to watch

paintings, and Yasuo began to recognize the meanings of line and form which he didn't
pay much attention before. According to Miller, with his instruction, Yasuo's paintings

changed "from the movement of hands to the expression of heart." To Yasuo, Mr. Miller

was "the man who changed my artistic viewpoint and gave me a direction and motive I

didn't have before" (A Critical 34).

He exhibited two of his paintings at the first exhibition of Society of Independent

in 1918. Yasuo's works didn't get so much reputation, but the important thing is that

they got the attention of Hamilton Easter Field. He was one of the executive committee

members, collector, painter and a patron. He offered Yasuo a room of an apartment

house and invited him to his summer house in Ogunquit, Maine.

When Kuniyoshi was thirty, he married Katherine Schmidt, a classmate of the Art

Students League. He began to work as a photographer to earn a living. Mr. Field

offered them an apartment house which he owned in Brooklyn.

In 1920, Yasuo quit studing at the Art Students League and struggled to find out

his own style. What he found at last was to use limited colors of brown and bird's eye

view. This view is often used in the primitive American paintings and Eastern paintings.

One day, he went to an antique store and saw a landscape. It was line drawing with

limited colors. He was very much interested in the view point of the drawing. It was the

bird's eye view.

He applied for several exhibitons. In 1921, he entered for the Exhibition of the

Latest Movement under the sopnsorship of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts,

and one of his paintings was accepted. What he did next was to meet Charles Daniel

who owned Daniel Gallery. First, two of Kuniyosh's works were exhibited and later, he

made a contract of a first private exhibition.

In his first show, he put the same importance on paintings and drawings as

independent media of art. This means that he had pride not only in his painting

technique but in his line drawing. The show was successful and he could publish his

collection of paintings.
 After fourth private exhibition at Daniel Gallery in 1925, the artist and his wife

went traveling around Europe. They spent most of the time in Paris, and Kuniyoshi

began painting with model for the first time. With twenty one works completed, he had

another private exhibition at Daniel Gallery in March, 1926. His works were influenced

by cubism, to which newpapers and magazines gave favorable criticism. But Yasuo was

in a hard time trying to solve the problem he faced between the expression of reality

and vision. His pace of work became extremely slow at this time.

He deceded to live permanently in Paris and left America in 1928. But he

couldn't sell his work because he was not popular there. In addition, he couldn't speak

French. After twenty two years living in America, he had a little trouble speaking and

writing Japanese. He could use Enligh very well but he was afraid of losing both English

and Japanese ability by living in Paris. At last, he decided to return to New York.

Back in America, Kuniyoshi build a house in Woodstock and stayed there in every

summer. He tried every possibility of black and white world by intensive works of

lithograph. Then, gradually, he beganto use colors until at last he could make so called

"Kuniyoshi White" by careful mixture of colors. He had completely got out of the

influence of cubism and established his own style of painting.

Kuniyoshi had a chance to come to Japan. It was in 1931 when Mainich

Newspaper asked him to hold a private exhibion in Japan. With twenty nine oil

paintings and sixty lithographs, he came to Japan. But his art works were hardly sold,

because he was not famous in Japan, and most importantly, Japanese art world was

different from that in America. He noticed that "Group was the most important thing.

Japanese artists work as a member of a group" (A Critical 140).

In America, he lead a successful life. He got a life-long contract with Downtown

Gallery, a job at the Art Students League, Joseph E. Temple Gold Medal by the

exhibition of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the second prize at the

exhibition of the Los Angels County Museum. He got anther job at New School for
Social Research in 1936.

Kuniyoshi spent a lot of time teaching. He liked to teach in liberal atmosphere of

the League and New School. His speech was enthusiastic and inspired students filled in

a room. He answered questions of the students carefully with easy explanations, and

"insisted on the importance of maintaining the democracy when they became

professional artists" (YASUO 117).

It was during this time when one of the greatest paintings of woman figure, Daily

News, was painted. In Daily News, a woman sits on a chair with a tobacco between her

right index and middle fingers, and a newspaper in her left hand, resting her right elbow

on her thigh. Her eyes are half-open looking somewhere in the distance. Dominating is

such a melancholy atmosphere. The blue- green background sets the figure off, and at

the same time makes a gloomy contrast with the brown floor. Kuniyoshi's outstanding

usage of color appears in using the background color of blue-green even in painting a

pale-yellow figure.

Curiously enough, he painted many woman figures with a newspaper. For

example, Daily News (1935), Cafe (1937), Waiting (1937,1938), I'm Tired (1938). As a

background of the period, in 1933, the Nazis was founded. Japan and Germany

withdrew from the League of Nations. In 1935, Germany declared its rearmament. It

seems that Kunioshi shows us the depressed mood in his mind by letting the figure hold

a newspaper which tells us the growing tension of the world.

Every women Kuniyoshi painted look alike. This is because after he drew with

charcoal on canvases, he waited several months before he began to paint. He used a

model when he drew, but not when he painted. About his women figures, the artest

said, "I have never painted one particular woman. I am interested in painting what

woman is. I think that women have a decorative quality and that it is natural to admire

them. I paint the 'universal woman' whom I think woman should be" (Flying 141)

In 1935, the art galleries run bu New York decided not to accept the art works by
foreigners. Critics began to take nationalities of artests into consideration when they

analyze their works. But the situation for Kuniyoshi was different. He was elected

president of "An American Group" in 1939. He got the first prize at the Golden Gate

International Exposition in San Francisco, and the second prize at the Carnegie

International Exhibition. However, newspapers complained of his second prize and

gave sympathy to Marc Chagall, who was the third prize winner.

As soon as the Pacific War broke out in 1941, Yasuo went to the police

accompanied by his friend. He was house-arrested, but with the statements of Art

Students League and an American Group saying his contribution and loyalty to the

American Society, he became free except that he couldn't go out at night and that he

needed permission when he went out of New York.

In 1944, when the war was coming to an end, he became the first prize winner at

the Painting Exhibition of the United States run by Carnegie Institute. New York Times

commented, "This is the best painting he has ever done. Beautiful composition and

incredible brush work. The judges made a correct decision"(A Critical 206). Since he

had long wanted to get the first prize at this exhibition, Kuniyoshi was very glad.

Next year, he completed the painting called Headless Horse Who Wants to Jump.

On the wilds, a headless wooden horse is trying to jump. On the saddle are a bunch of

grapes and a poster he painted during the war. Behind the horse, you see a paper which

reads "WE FIGHT." A roll of toilet paper is hung on the front leg of the horse. In the

distance stands a church. One critic said he was on the edge of the surrealism. But

considering the artist's situation, you can understand that he wanted to express crazy

Japanese army with the horse. A bunch of grapes represents blood, a toilet paper is

America itself. With the poster, he tries to stop the war. A little church in the distance is

his hope. This painting clearly shows his standpoint against Japan.

After the war, the mainstream of American art world lies in abstractionism.

Kuniyoshi, who put symbolic meaning in the shape of the objects, started reexamining
the meaning of his color, and his paintings drastically changed from 1948. He stopped

using Kuniyoshi White and mahogany oriented color harnony. Instead, he preferred to

use hues with casein as a painting media. The subject he chose were circus and mask.

The value was much higher than before and it drove anxiety. By doing this, he put

greater meaning on colors itself. Critics were puzzled by the changes because they were

unable to see where the artist was going.

Kuniyoshi's physical condition became poor in 1950, and in 1952, he was in

hospital to have a complete medical examination. He was a stomach cancer. After

having an operation, he recovered very well. It was in 1953 when he heard that he could

become an American citizen if he handed in necesary forms. He called a lawyer at once.

Kuniyoshi's condition became worse. His lawyer collected all the necessay papers

and what he needed was only a signature of the artist. Kuniyosh; however, didn't have a

power to hold a pen. On May 14,1953, Kuniyoshi closed the door of his 65 years of life in

the New York Hospital as a Japanese.

Works Consulted

Ichikawa, Masanori., et al, eds. Japanese Artists Who Studied in U.S.A. and the

American Scene. Tokyo: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1982

Ikeda, Masuo, ed. Kuniyoshi Yasuo / Art and Life. Tokyo: Japan TV Broadcast, 1989

Ozawa, Yoshio. Flying and Returning / East and West for Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Okayama:

Japan Bunkyo Publishing, 1996

---. A Critical Biography of Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Tokyo: Fukutake Publishing, 1991

---, ed. Art of Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Okayama: Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum, 1996

YASUO KUNIYOSHI / A Course of Glory Followed by A Neo-American Artist.

Okayama: Fukutake Publishing, 1990