Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Art Education and Professional Development

This pathway outlines major steps of artistic professionalization in prewar Japan and Taiwan. Presence of Japanese painters in Taiwan and of Taiwanese painters in Japan, and the circulation of artistic knowledge through magazines, books, and exhibitions reflected and shaped the emergence of a shared assumptions about artistic training in the empire. Moreover, as daily newspapers celebrated acclaimed artists and reported on young emerging artists competing in art exhibitions, the painterly profession became appealing to the younger generation.

This popularity of painting as a modern profession brought about the expansion of opportunities for studying art, adjusted to the needs of amateurs and aspiring professionals. These included: studying art from books and reproductions, attending night classes, becoming a student in a private atelier, and attending a specialized art school. Exhibitions became the testing ground for emerging artists and a further mechanism producing the hierarchies of the art establishment.

However, these professional opportunities were not distributed evenly throughout the empire. In her discussion of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, art historian Yen Chuanying has argued that the Taiwan salon functioned as a popular event and cultural propaganda, providing only limited benefits for participating artists because the colonial government did not establish an art school or an art museum on the island (Yen, “The Art Movement in the 1930s in Taiwan,” 52. Yen, “Nankoku bijutsu no dendō kenzō,” 367-368.). In other words, aspiring artists in Taiwan had to rely on self-studies (hence the importance of the library!) and instruction at private ateliers. With a plethora of exhibitions and art schools, Tokyo became an attractive destination, available mostly to well-off students. 

In general, painters in early twentieth-century Japan tended to specialize in one of the two modes of painting: 1) nihonga, painting on paper or silk with ink and mineral pigments, or 2) seiyōga or yōga, oil painting and watercolor (Nihonga encompassed also literati painting, known as bunjinga or nanga). The official exhibitions in Tokyo accepted submissions to the two respective divisions, nihonga and seiyōga. With the launch of the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition in 1927, a similar categorization emerged in Taiwan. The equivalent of nihonga in Taiwan came to be known as tōyōga. LINK TO THE DISCUSSION OF TOYOGA IN THE LIBRARY CATEGORIES 

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