Yuki Ogura: The Other Side of Modern

Women Bathing - I

Anyone visiting the present exhibition at Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art might initially think they are getting a raw deal. Instead of focusing on what many would consider the essence of Japanese modern art, that is the heroic saga to assimilate and catch up with 20th century Western art, this exhibition instead features works by one of Japan's top traditional Nihonga painters, Yuki Ogura who died two-years ago at the advanced age of 105.

Although sedate, flat-looking pictures of ladies wearing kimonos and delicate studies of flowers that hark back to the Edo period may seem out of place in a MOMA, it should be remembered that Nihonga, despite its overt traditionalism, was the other side of the great art odyssey that started when the Japan's Edo period isolation ended.

While many talented, young Japanese artists eagerly embraced the styles of Western art and traveled overseas to explore and learn, an equally strong counter movement developed under the leadership of the art critic, Tenshin Okakura, and the American orientalist, Ernest Fenollosa. This resulted in the founding of the Nihon Bijutsu-in (Japan Art Institute), which consciously rejected Western artistic trends and tried to promote a purely Japanese aesthetic.

To distinguish themselves from Western-style or Yoga painters, Nihonga painters confined themselves to traditional materials such as Indian ink and powdered mineral pigments applied to paper and silk mounted on board, wall scrolls, or folding screens. Also, at the time when Ogura first started painting in the 1920s, they relied on an equally narrow range of motifs, such as scenes of Japanese nature, usually with a seasonal theme, nationalistic symbols like Mount Fuji, and pictures of limpid young ladies in traditional dress, as exemplified by the works of Shinsui Ito.

This emphasis on the idealized Japanese female reminds us that Nihonga, as with so many areas of Japanese culture, was very much a man's world. It is therefore surprising, that even though Ogura was the first woman to be accepted into the Nihon Bijutsu-in in 1932, most of her work continues this male obsession. While feminine forms abound, there are very few male figures to be found. Those that do appear, either have their back turned, like the foreign priest in A Joyous Baptism (1936), are part of the background, as in My Family (1959), or are androgynous spiritual beings as in Bodhisattva in Motion (1968). Indeed, one painting that I initially took to be a frank frontal view of a short-haired man turned out on closer inspection to be a 1962 self portrait!

Many of Ogura's female figures clearly adhere to the conventions established by such Nihonga masters as her teacher, Yukihiko Yasuda. For example, Silent Thoughts (1936) shows an elegant, poker-faced lady. The focus on shapes rather than movement so typical of Nihonga creates a feeling of stillness, as if the picture were somehow holding its breath. We are left to infer her mood from subtle visual clues, like the way she discretely touches a book. Apparently, she's just read something that has given her pause for thought.

A work like this conjures up an alternative reality of a Japan that never came into contact with the West. But despite the artistic apartheid of Nihonga and Yoga, ideas and inspirations did occasionally cross the barrier. Even before Japan's WW II defeat led other Nihonga artists to question their artistic isolationism, Ogura was willing to experiment, introducing new, everyday themes and startling compositions into her works.

The most refreshing of these is Women Bathing - I (1938), which shows two ladies enjoying the daily ritual in a large tiled bath. We look down at this intimate scene from an almost dizzying angle. But what makes this painting special is the way Ogura uses the rigid geometry of the wall tiles to give a sense of perspective and balance to the picture and then plays against this by using the refraction of the water to distort the bath tiles under the surface. This both captures the quality of the water and creates a tilting effect that recalls the feeling we get leaning back in the bath.

Although paintings like this brought her some success, her full importance to Nihonga only emerged after the war, when Nihonga had, to a large extent, been discredited by its association with wartime nationalism. Her less rigid style and everyday subject matter struck a warmer note, helping Nihonga to find the new visual vocabulary it needed to redefine itself as a more approachable art form.

She also played an important role in breaking down some of the barriers between Nihonga and Western art. The composition of paintings from this period, like Young Woman (1951) and Ko-chan Resting (1960), reveal the strong influence she received from a major 1951 exhibition of Henri Matisse's painting held in Japan. These two paintings both show women in relaxed, naturalistic poses, giving them a refreshing, earthy quality that contrasts markedly with the doll-like atmosphere of earlier Nihonga works.

Although Nihonga lacks much of the excitement and dynamism of Yoga, this exhibition should convince you that Yuki Ogura is very much an important part of the story of Japanese modern art. However, if you still feel shortchanged, you can always check out the MOMA's extensive permanent collection of Japanese modern art upstairs.

"Yuki Ogura: A Retrospective" – ran until Oct. 6, 2002, at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

C.B.Liddell
Japan Times
11th September, 2002