Weather Vane and Objects on a Sofa
Yasuo KUNIYOSHI
(American, born Japan, 1893 - 1953)
Weather Vane and Objects on a Sofa
Date1933
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 34 × 60 in. (86.4 × 152.4 cm)
frame: 46 × 71 1/8 in. (116.8 × 180.7 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Wright S. Ludington
Object number1942.30
Subject(s)
- still lifes
- fruit
Collection
- 20th century American
- American
Sub-Collection(s)
- Japanese
- American
On View
Not on viewLabel TextThough he lived and worked in the United States, Kuniyoshi was never allowed to become an American citizen due to the prevalent xenophobia between the World Wars, which culminated with the Japanese internment camps in 1942. His art, by his own description, was an attempt to fuse his experiences in the West with the Eastern sources of his native Japan, which he left as a teenager, barely seventeen years old. One of the most sophisticated avant-garde artists practicing in New York, Kuniyoshi synthesized European modernism with his highly personalized lexicon of motifs. This painting, done after a revelatory trip to Paris, amounts to a symbolical statement of his artistic evolution. On the uptilted sofaーlikely sourced from his many trips to antique shops and flea markets in upstate New Yorkーwe are presented with a reproductive print after a famous painting by the Spanish artist, Goya, a copy of the major art periodical in Paris, Cahier d’art, a concave face mold used to create sculptural replicas, a folk art weathervane in the shape of a galloping horse, several pears and what look to be the globular shapes of (perhaps, Japanese) eggplants. The flatness of the composition and hard-edged, independent modeling of each object recalls the early work of Miró, while there is a Chagall-like sensation of objects floating in an anonymous space, as if in a dream.
Utagawa KUNIYOSHI 歌川国芳
first issued ca. late 1830s