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

Prize-winning Landscapes

Guo Xuehu's hours spent studying at the library and sketching around Taipei paid off. In 1928, his painting titled "Scenery Near Yuan Shan" (Maruyama fukin) received a special award at the second Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition. Moreover, the Government-General purchased the work at a very high price of 500 yen (The Art of Kuo Hsueh-hu: Seventy Years of Painting. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1989, 207).

The viewer's eyesight takes in the lone worker, maize, sunflowers, and fields in the lower part of the painting, then travels through the hilly park, finally to discover an iron Truss bridge and street lamps towards the left. A small flock of birds draws the viewer's attention to the landscape on the other site of the bridge, not represented in the painting. These are the grounds of the Taiwan Shrine (Taiwan jinja). Taiwan Shrine was constructed in 1901 to enshrine the spirit of the imperial prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa. Kitashirakawa died in Tainan in 1895 during the military campaign to occupy the island (Allen, 164). The whole area of the park and the shrine was developed in the early years of colonial rule. Even the maize and sunflowers are not local plants but possibly crops introduced by the Japanese. The white boundary tablet in the lower side of the painting indicates that the land has been measured and defined by ownership (New Visions, 29-30). The lush greens evoke the natural beauty of a landscape. Yet, it is a clearly man-made site, imbued with historical and political significance.

Art historians have pointed out that the coloring of this painting is similar to the painting style of a Japanese juror and settler artist, Gōhara Kotō (1887-1965). Guo Xuehu is said to have admired Gōhara's set of three hanging scrolls on view at the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, depicting birds and flowers (for black and white reproductions click here) (New Visions, 248). In 1929, Guo Xuehu began studying with Gōhara and joined the Sendansha (Sandalwood Society, 1930-36), an exhibition group founded by Gōhara Kotō and another established nihonga settler-artist, Kinoshita Seigai (1887-1988).

Guo Xuehu's paintings demonstrate technical mastery of complex compositions and great attention to detail. The artist explored different techniques and styles: he produced works in lush greens and drip-in technique reminiscent of Rimpa painting ("Scenery Near Yuan Shan," 1928; "After the Rain," 1931), applied perspective and vivid colors to capture a bustling urban scene ("Prosperity of South Street," 1930), and carried out an unconventional experiment with ink and paper to convey a mysterious evening mood ("Solitude," 1933). In his depiction of the Dihua Street in the Da Dao Cheng's Yon-lo District, he deliberately chose to depart from naturalistic depiction by extending the buildings upward and foreshortening the depth of the street to convey prosperity of shops on this street with many signboards in Chinese and Japanese (New Visions, 35-36). He achieved balance between naturalism and an overall decorative quality of the painting surface in a way that spoke to Japanese jurors and audiences familiar with nihonga (Compare Yen on "Scenery Near Yuan Shan" YEN p. 103).

The official salon and the library brought Guo Xuehu into the orbit of Japan's imperial art world. The Culture and Education Bureau, Tainan Public Hall, and Navy Officer's Department would purchase his salon works. His paintings were accepted to all annual salons in Taiwan. Moreover, Guo Xuehu received special awards in 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932; the Taiten Prize in 1930 and 1931; the Tainichi Prize in 1932; and, the Asahi Prize in 1935. Starting from 1933, his works were exempted from review (mukansa). Most of his salon works were landscapes.

Art historians have pointed out how the early development of landscape painting in Taiwan went hand in hand with colonization and exploitation of the island (Yen, 250). They have also likened the ability to represent a landscape in art to conquest, as it allows the artist to manipulate the image freely (Kikuchi, ed., 45). Maps, travel writing, postcards, photographs, and paintings during the colonial rule have represented a particular kind of Taiwanese landscape. These representations reflected and shaped the stereotypical image of Taiwan as Japan's colony, with unspoiled nature, picturesque sites, exotic natives, and colonial urban development (Kikuchi, ed., 14-15). Moreover, these images of beautiful Taiwan belied the colonial exploitation of the island (New Visions, 135). As Hsin-Tien Liao has pointed out, they promoted tourism, transformed the landscape into a consumer product, and encouraged an exoticizing gaze (Kikuchi, 55-56).

Young artists in Taiwan grew up looking at these representations. Also, they received their artistic education from Japan-trained teachers and competed at the salon, with Japanese artists judging their works. Jurors emphasized so-called "local color," demanding that art in Taiwan depict local subject matter and display distinct native characteristics (See discussion on this topic here, in relation to model works). At the same time, they assessed the paintings of artists in Taiwan based on their mastery of metropolitan painting styles. In this way, young Taiwanese artists had to negotiate contradictory demands. More importantly, they were expected to represent colonial difference and exoticism for the metropolitan audiences, as well as collective experience of and for the colonized. Literary scholar Aimee Nayoung Kwon has coined the term "conundrum of representation" to describe these contradictions (Kwon, Intimate Empire, 10-13). Kwon's work focuses on Korean writers writing in the Japanese language during the colonial period. I suggest that colonial painters, including Guo Xuehu, faced the same conundrum as their literary counterparts. Focusing on Taiwan's lush nature and sites of great importance in the island colonial history was how Guo Xuehu negotiated these contradictions.

His double prize-winning "After the Rain" (1931) depicts the Zhishan Cliff (J. Shibayama). In 1896, six pioneer Japanese teachers were assassinated there. And so, the flourishing garden and park in the painting rest atop a site of sacrifice for the imperial cause and of anti-colonial resistance. A pathway through the carefully cultivated fields leads the eyesight into an elevated area of the park, with two distinct rooftops visible amidst foliage: that of a memorial shrine established to commemorate their deaths, and a local temple. The two buildings were in fact situated apart from each other, yet the artist depicted them in close proximity. The memorial shrine was completed only in 1930, a year before this painting. The juxtaposition suggests a peaceful integration of Japanese and Taiwanese elements (Compare: YEN p. 103. New Visions, 254).

In 1935, Taiwan Government-General Library gave Guo Xuehu a special award of 500 yen. This award was given out only once a decade and provided enough money to sustain a small family for a year. The same year, his painting "The Junk" (Janku) on view at the ninth salon won the Asahi Award and was purchased for the exorbitant amount of 1500 yen by the Taipei Police Station (Ex. cat. 1989 p. 208). Within the span of less then ten years, Guo Xuehu established himself as a professional artist.

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Model Works
Sketching from nature and studying acclaimed works of the past and present constituted the two key methods of acquiring painting skills for both nihonga and seiyōga painters in early twentieth-century Japan (Compare: Fujishima Takeji, Geijutsu no esupuri, (Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2004), 221-22). Exhibition jurors, established artists, and authors of advice books emphasized that aspiring artists should study masterpieces through copying. At the same time, they suggested that each artists should aim to develop their own original expression.
Copying has had an important place within the artistic training both in European academy and in Japan. During the Tokugawa period, artists of the Kano school used to copy so-called funpon (model paintings). Funpon were wide-ranging collections of images that reproduced original paintings faithfully or in rough sketches in smaller size. They were zealously guarded and enabled transmission of artistic styles and subject matter within the workshop. (Add ref: Yukio Lippit, 238-239. Virginia Weston...).
By the early twentieth century, looking at original paintings and experiencing their size, color, and texture required access to private collections or visiting art exhibitions. The Tokyo School of Fine Arts and the Japan Art Association (Nihon bijutsu kyōkai) frequently included “model works” (sankōhin, literally "objects for reference") in their exhibitions for study purposes. Furthermore, with the launch of the Ministry of Education Fine Arts Exhibition in 1907 in Tokyo, artists in Japan began voicing even stronger demands for establishment of a modern art museum. By canonizing recent art, this museum would also function as a source of model works.
Similarly, Japanese settler-artists in Taiwan and colonial bureaucrats believed that representative examples of modern Japanese art could guide local artists and educate the art public. Therefore, the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition was accompanied by a special exhibition of over twenty nihonga and oil paintings on loan from Tokyo as model works (The Korea Fine Arts Exhibition also featured Japanese modern art as models).
Painter, art teacher, and long-term resident of Taiwan, Ishikawa Kin’ichirō (1871-1945), described his emotional experience of viewing these works at the first official salon in Taiwan:
The model works displayed are an oasis of art for art connoisseurs and the study of [art]. Having come in contact with these fine works, I feel that art by great masters draws you in without effort, just like that, quietly, like the gentle flow of water. It feels like being completely embraced by serenity (ADD REF).
Some model works, such as Araki Jippo's painting, left such a lasting impression that critics recalled it years later in their reviews (Arai Hideo, “Hogarakani rappa ga naru (jō) Taiten o megurite,” Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, 20 October 1935, P.M. ed., 7.). Since it is impossible to identify Araki's painting which traveled to Taiwan in 1927, we can only speculate how the technical virtuosity of this renowned bird-and-flower salon artist must have appealed to contemporary viewers.
In the subsequent salons, the organizers abandoned the practice of organizing a special display of models perhaps due to lack of funding. Instead, they encouraged the invited jurors from Japan to bring their own works for the purpose of displaying them as model works. The Japanese language press in Taiwan often advertised in advance the subject matter and size of the jurors’ works and, upon the exhibition’s opening, reproduced and reviewed them in detail. On average, each juror would bring just one or two works. For example, Araki Jippo, who traveled to Taiwan as a juror for the 1935 salon, bought this work with him.
Japanese settler-artists expected much from the jurors' works. They repeatedly stated how difficult it was to see good paintings on the island and requested that jurors visiting from Japan bring their most representative and stimulating works with them. In his touching review of Umehara Ryūzaburō’s Sakurajima, on view at the Taipei salon in 1935, painter Tateishi Tetsuomi (1905-1980) recalled the sadness he had felt not being able to see the acclaimed work of his former teacher when it was first displayed in Tokyo at the Kokuga exhibition and the joy of finally having the opportunity to view the painting in person in Taipei (Tateishi Tetsuomi, “Taiten o miru (2),” Ōsaka asahi shinbun Taiwanban, October 29 1935, 5.). Even though, in total, only a small number of model works from Japan were displayed at the Taipei salon, Japanese settler-artists attached great importance to them.
What is more, Japanese settler-artists and critics in Taiwan often complained about the jurors' model works in the press. The most often repeated criticism was that the work was small, not representative of the artist’s oeuvre, lacking educational merits, or that it could guide only beginners and would leave true art lovers dissatisfied. By and large, the artists did not complain about the specific styles or subject matter represented in the jurors' works. They just desired to see masterpieces rather than average paintings that the juror in question happened to have had on hand in his atelier as he was embarking on his trip to Taiwan (Yes, all jurors at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition invited from Japan were male). Some suspected, and rightly so, that the Japanese jurors did not take the Taiwanese art world seriously (Taiwan kyōiku 1933 November Taiten zakan pdf 6). The very idea itself of learning by looking at good models was was not contested.
Also, education through models was conducted on a more local level. For example, some paintings by artists from the Tainan Prefecture which had previously been on display at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition were on view as models at the Tainan Prefecture Schools Art Exhibition in 1934 (Taiwan kyōiku, 1934, March, "Taihoku tsūshin" page 127).
The use of Japanese modern paintings as model works at the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition reinforced a worldview according to which the geographic distance between the metropole and the colony equaled a gap in artistic progress. Moreover, it gestured to the desire of molding the future art in Taiwan on artistic models from Japan and with Japanese settler artists as major protagonists. Inasmuch as many jurors and salon organizers in Taiwan continuously championed so-called "local color" in works on display, suggesting that art in Taiwan should depict local subject matter and posses native characteristics, the implicit assumption was that such art should be simultaneously "Japanized" and able to speak to imperial audiences. Indeed, many paintings at the Taiwan salon depicted Taiwan's landscapes and customs considered exotic from the colonizer's viewpoint, especially the aborigine population of the island. With time, some art critics in Taiwan began to question these demands for local color as vague (See Liao 2002: 202). Settler-artist and juror Shiotsuki Tōhō suggested that since the distance between Japan and Taiwan had shrunk so much, and since the young artists in Taiwan studied past and present art from all over the world, it would be impossible to expect them to produce artworks as if Taiwan were in isolation. He did, however, hope that the specific geographic conditions of the island would contribute to the eventual emergence of a distinct art (Tōho’s text “Dai 8-kai Taiten no mae ni” from Taiwan kyōiku reprinted in Yen and Tsuruta, eds., Feng jing xin jing, 278-83.).
The popularity of the local color discourse in the 1930s reflected a larger shift within the empire towards an understanding of Japan as a nation of diverse cultural regions. Historian Kate McDonald describes it as geography of cultural pluralism. She suggests that it came up in response to the anti-colonial movements and functioned as a way to sustain the hierarchy between the metropole and the colonies (Kate McDonald, Placing Empire, 17, 85, 159).
The question of local color in the art of colonial Korea and Taiwan has been widely debated and studied. Recently, scholars have turned to highlighting the inherent contradictions of this discourse (New Visions, 146. See also: Aimee Kwon, Imperial Intimacies; Kolodziej dissertation.).

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