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• 1 media/guo xuehu 1928 scenery near yuanshan.jpg media/guo xuehu 1928 scenery near yuanshan.jpg 2019-11-18T17:20:14-05:00 Studying Art in Colonial Libraries 106 Magdalena Kolodziej image_header 4897 2021-10-04T17:00:17-04:00 Tōkyō 35.7500, 139.5000 35.71718, 139.77271 35.71926, 139.77226 35.6935, 139.66234 Taipei 25.0383, 121.5641 25.04086, 121.51122 25.07891, 121.52651 25.04346, 121.52242 25.04537, 121.52253 25.07075, 121.52048 25.0551, 121.51003 25.1039, 121.53027 Seoul 37.5333, 127.0000 37.5658, 126.97514 Kyōto 35.0000, 135.7500 35.01141, 135.79448 Ōsaka 34.6667, 135.5000 Tainan 22.9908, 120.2133 Sakurajima 31.58333, 130.6500 Richmond 37.93575, -122.34774 Fujian Province 26.48368, 117.9249 1927-1943 Magdalena Kolodziej Guo Xuehu

  On October 28, 1927, the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition opened in Taipei. It attracted a large crowd of 28,119 visitors in only ten days (Taiwan sōtokufu bunkyōkyoku shakaika 1934, 74). This juried salon for contemporary painting catered to interests of the Japanese colonial government and settler-artists. It projected an image of Japan as a benevolent colonizer, captured the attention of local audiences, functioned as part of the cultural assimilation policy, and provided Japanese artists in Taiwan with a highly publicized opportunity to promote their art. In addition, the salon attracted some Taiwanese Chinese artists. The young, largely self-taught painter Guo Xuehu (1908-2012) was one of them. (For a database with reproductions of all the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition works click here.)

  In fact, Guo Xuehu became one of only three Taiwanese Chinese whose works were accepted to the tōyōga divison at the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. By 1932, he had established his position as a successful emerging artist in Taipei's art circles. In an essay penned in response to a Taiwan-wide competition for library users' stories, he looked back at his artistic debut and singled out the library as his “unparalleled teacher.” The essay received the second prize and was published in the Japanese language newspaper Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, turning him into a role model for other artists in Taiwan, who were not able to afford studying with an instructor or enroll in an art school in Japan. (Compare: Yen 2007, 103; see also Liao 2002, 216-217). For an English translation of the essay click here.

  This module explores artistic infrastructures and the circulation of artistic knowledge in the Japanese empire by focusing on Guo Xuehu's essay. By the early 1930s, artists in Japan were becoming aware of Taiwan's art scene and many painters traveled to the island in pursuit of subject matter. Similarly, Japanese art world began to loom large in the imagination of young aspiring painters in Taiwan, which included Japanese settlers and Taiwanese Chinese. Some of these aspiring artists would leave Taiwan for Japan in pursuit of an artistic education and career.

  Today, Guo Xuehu is considered to be a master of twentieth century painting in Taiwan. However, he is largely absent from the narratives of Japanese modern art. The national approach to Japanese modern art history obscures the involvement of Japanese artists in the imperial expansion as well as the presence of Korean and Taiwanese artists within the purview of the empire. By highlighting the intimacy between the Taiwanese and Japanese art worlds, this project helps us envision the Japanese art world in the 1930s on new terms. In this way, it is part of a larger body of scholarship that is committed to reshaping our understanding of space and boundaries of Japan as a multi-ethnic nation and a multi-national state in the interwar period (see, e.g., Oguma 2002; Morris-Suzuki 1998; McDonald 2017).

  I argue that in the interwar period Japan's was an imperial art world (teikoku bijutsukai), intimately intertwined with the art worlds of Korea and Taiwan. The spaces of art exhibitions, ateliers, art schools, personal networks, and newspaper pages constituted this imperial art world. Circulation of information, goods, and people within the Japanese empire stimulated its emergence. It expanded as a spatial entity and a powerful idea. Artists, be it Japanese painters, settler-artists, or colonial subjects, came to understand and negotiate their own place within it. As producers of representations, they also shaped its image. An approach to Japanese modern art history that omits the empire is simply untenable.

  This module consists of three interlocking pathways that coalesce around Guo Xuehu's prize-winning essay. Each pathway explores the intimacy between Japan's and Taiwan's art worlds through a different scale and infrastructure:

  1. the practice and discourse of art education (information/knowledge);
  2. the institution of the library and books (environment, vehicles);
  3. and, the career of an individual artist (figure).

  Each pathway introduces relevant primary sources and questions as a material for discussion and research projects in a university classroom.
  
  Click here for a list of references and suggestions for further readings for this module, which is also available from the module's Conclusion page.

• 1 media/guo xuehu 1928 scenery near yuanshan.jpg 2019-11-18T17:20:13-05:00 Guo Xuehu's Prize-winning Essay 52 Taiwan Government-General Library; Taiwan nichinichi shinpō; Xie Yonghua plain 2021-10-04T17:14:17-04:00 25.0383, 121.5641 Taipei 25.04086, 121.51122 25.04537, 121.52253 1927-1932 Magdalena Kolodziej Taiwan Government-General Library Kabayama Elementary School, location of the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition Guo Xuehu Taipei Fine Arts Museum

  In December 1931, the twenty three-year old Guo Xuehu submitted an essay in Japanese to a contest organized by the Taiwan Government-General Library, in which he extolled the benefits of library use for aspiring artists. (You can find English translation here.) The library staff was well aware of his professional path and may have well encouraged him to participate in this contest.

  In the essay, Guo Xuehu describes the development of his professional career as a painter and the difficulties he encountered in achieving the two credentials necessary to become a professional artist:

  1. acquiring art education;
  2. and, receiving social recognition through exhibition participation.

  Guo's successful if unexpected acceptance to the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition launched his career in 1927 at the very young age of nineteen. Yet, a one-time success was not enough. He needed to prove himself as an artist of true ability by securing admission of his works to the salon in the following years. In this pivotal moment, he turned to the Government-General Library for art education.

  The essay highlights the importance of looking at art as part of artistic training. First, Guo Xuehu explains how he became a scroll mounter to “come in touch with great paintings.” Second, he details how he was able to look at many artworks in reproduction at the library, including those in special collections (tokubetsusho):

  …I looked mostly at books featuring new Eastern Painting (atarashii tōyōga), read about painting theory, copied old masterpieces, and studied new painting techniques.

  While the essay does not reveal in detail the names of artists whose works he was looking at so carefully, scholars have suggested (perhaps based on later interviews with the artist) that he had studied acclaimed works of artists in Japan active during the Meiji and Taishō periods, as well as masterpieces of Chinese painting from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties (Taipei Fine Arts Museum 1989, 17). Access to paintings, whether in original or in reproduction, facilitated copying and acquiring the knowledge of painting techniques. The practice was not new. Yet, the advent of public exhibitions and an increase in the quality of reproductions expanded access to art to a larger number of aspiring artists, who lacked affiliation to established ateliers or art schools.

  Guo Xuehu's essay won the second prize in the contest and was published alongside the first prize winning essay in the major Japanese-language newspaper in Taiwan, Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, in January 1932. The first prize went to an entrepreneur Xie Yonghe. Both winners were Taiwanese-Chinese men in their twenties with modest family backgrounds, who attributed their professional success to their persistent library use and expressed themselves fluently in Japanese. Their respective essays paint a very positive image of the library, and by extension of the colonial government. Both essays suggest that the users discovered the library in a seemingly serendipitous manner and that the library transformed their lives by providing them with instruction and access to information, which they were otherwise unable to obtain.

  Guo Xuehu is an unusual case of an artist who achieved prominence and a longstanding professional success without attending an art school or affiliating with an established artist. His insistence on the importance of looking at art and striving towards professional recognition at the official salon suggest emergence of shared practices and assumptions about artistic professionalization Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, Guo's interest in older Chinese art overlapped with those of many Japanese artists, who mined the artistic pasts of East Asia for a mode of expression suitable to the modern times (see also Wong 2006).