beyond "oriental," beyond "european"
by naomi orenA Look at the Asian American Modern Art at the de Young
Have you ever wished that you had a time traveling gadget to explore Asian American history beyond verbose lectures and boring textbooks?
Unfortunately, time-machines have yet to be invented, but there is another great alternative to get your fix of Asian American history: the Fine Arts of San Francisco Museum’s de Young is currently exhibiting Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents. It is the first comprehensive Asian American modern art exhibit showcasing renowned masterpieces by Asian American artists from 1900-1970. This exhibit chronicles the flow of Modern art beginning with prominent early 20th century artists such as Yun Gee and Chiura Obata and culminates with Maya Lin’s exhibit Systematic Landscapes.
When entering the exhibit, the viewer is welcomed by a monumental landscape painting of the High Sierra Mountains by Chiura Obata. Emigrating from Japan in 1903, Obata’s training in traditional sumi-e has influenced his hybrid approach. He incorporates the flatness often associated with traditional Asian ink paintings with a peculiar denseness generated by the deep blues in the lake basin and the greens that surround the mountains.
Obata’s art was created during a time where “Orientals” were seen as only useful in working blue-collar jobs and limited to making a living by altering their own culture to the preferences of the dominant culture (this is the reason why American kung pao chicken is entirely different from China’s gongbao jiding). Asian American artists who employed European artistic traditions in their art were seen as inferior copycats of the “genuine” art styles emanating from Europe. Similarly, these artworks were constantly compared to hanging scroll ink paintings and traditional Japanese woodblock prints. Works like Obata’s were not quite “Oriental”, nor were they quite American. It’s a story all too familiar.
The exhibit begins with the story of immigration from Asia. The pain of saying farewell to your mother as you sail to a new country to fulfill your dreams can be vividly felt in Yun Gee’s Where is My Mother? The romanticism of the American dream is boldly defined in Obata’s rich landscapes. Walking through the second section, the story of hardship unfolds as Henry Sugimoto’s large mural-like paintings reveals the pain of toiling the soil among racist signs like “Japs Go Home” during WWII hysteria. Political criticism of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace is vibrantly abstracted in Val Laigo’s Dilemma of the Atom (1953). Dong Kingman’s humorous sci-fi panel of flying saucers soaring above warehouse workers reflects the 1950s obsession with space travel. Isamu Noguchi’s Orpheus, a gigantic aluminum screen with slight bends at particular points ending in fruit-can sized holes is another oddly divine piece that coincides with the machine fetish of the 1960s. Kusama Yayoi’s disturbing repetition of swirling yellow chains on a black background parallels the crazy-anything-goes era of the 1970s. And the list goes on….
The de Young’s exhibit is a rare occasion to see a stupendous amount of diverse Asian American Modern artists gather in one hall. In most cases, only an individual or a limited group is exhibited. Finally, we can see the progression of how Asian American artists have grown from beyond the status of “Oriental outsider” to being recognized as an integral part of American art history.