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

The modern still life

The still life came to embody modern life with its cosmopolitan consumer print culture and the basic process of learning how to paint itself. In his Aburae no egakikata (How to Paint in Oil), Ōta Saburō (1884-1969) described the still life as the “ABCs” for a beginning painter, suggesting that by learning how to paint a mere vase, one could learn how to paint anything (Ōta Saburō, Aburae no egakikata (Tokyo: Sūbundō, 1930), 53). He explained the basics of form, color, shading, and composition and then proceeded to describe the conventional subject matter of still lifes, such as flowers, fruit, and fish, concluding with a section on incorporating other utensils (kibutsu),

When you get paints and a solvent in an art supply shop, then go to a bookstore and buy a magazine, drink black tea in a café, and read the evening newspaper on your way home on the train. You will have a still life ready by the morning of the next day. (Ibid., 122.)  

By carefully picking and choosing, the painter could creatively enhance the conventional still life repertoire with objects hinting at his (typically his not her) modern lifestyle and perform his artistic persona through the work.

ADD photograph from Bijutsu 1939.6 with the inquiry from a painter in Korea about still life

By the late 1920s, covers of Japanese language art magazines such as Atorie (Atelier), Yōga kenkyū (Research in Western Painting), Zōkei geijutsu (Plastic Arts), and Bijutsu (Fine Arts) begin to appear as a motif in a number of still lifes on display at the official salons in Seoul and Taipei. The emergence of such still lifes paralleled the increase of imported magazines into the two colonies, as well as their availability in the official libraries and private hands (ADD IMAGE: Kim Chunghyŏn, Still life, 1933?), as artists often assembled their own private collections of books, art journals, and images.

Pan Li-Shui’s (1914-1995) Gagu (Painting implements) on view at the fifth Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (1931) references this intra-imperial circulation of images and its role within the artistic process by depicting a traditional album, exhibition catalogues, and sketchbooks. In particular, the catalogues of the fourth Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (1930) and the eleventh Imperial Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition (1930), with their distinct covers, feature prominently in this work, propped to the left of the jar holding brushes. (For a more detailed description of this work see Liao, “Taiwan kindai gadan no ‘rōkarukarā’: Taiwan Bijutsu Tenrankai no tōyōgabu o chūshin ni,” 219 REREAD THIS TEXT AGAIN; ADD IMAGE). They also hint at the position of the artist at the crossroads of the Japanese and the Taiwanese art worlds as well as at the role of public art exhibitions in securing professional recognition.

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