DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Chiura Obata: American Modern:
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Description of Pictures: Chiura Obata: American Modern
November 27, 2019 – May 25, 2020
Chiura Obata (1885–1975) ranks among the most significant California-based artists and Japanese American cultural leaders of the last century. Obata’s seemingly effortless synthesis of different art traditions defies the usual division between “East” and “West.” Chiura Obata: American Modern presents the most comprehensive survey of his rich and varied body of work to date, from bold California landscape paintings to intimate drawings of his experiences of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
ShiPu Wang, professor of art history at the University of California, Merced, is the guest curator for the exhibition; Crawford Alexander Mann III, SAAM’s curator of prints and drawings, is coordinating its presentation in Washington, D.C. The exhibition’s presentation at SAAM is the final stop of a five-museum tour and the only venue east of the Rocky Mountains. It was previously on view in Santa Barbara, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, and Okayama, Japan.
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OBATA_191130_012.JPG: Chiura Obata: American Modern
Chiura Obata (1885–1975) ranks among the most significant California-based artists and Japanese American cultural leaders of the last century. Born in Okayama, Japan, Obata immigrated to San Francisco in 1903. By then, he was integrating Western practices into his art-making, and continued experimenting with new styles and methods throughout his seven-decade career. Today Obata is best known for majestic views of the American West, sketches based on hiking trips to capture what he called "Great Nature." Every work is grounded in close observation, rendered with calligraphic brushstrokes and washes of color.
Teaching and community engagement are Obata's second legacy for American art. As a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a founder of the East West Art Society, a Bay Area artists' collective, he facilitated cross-cultural dialogue, despite widespread prejudice against Asian Americans. In 1942, when World War II fears and Executive Order 9066 forced Obata and more than one hundred thousand West Coast Japanese Americans into incarceration camps scattered across the western United States, he created art schools in the camps to help fellow prisoners cope with their displacement and loss.
After the war, Obata returned to his callings as a painter, teacher, and cultural ambassador with scars that brought new emotional force to his work. The works in this retrospective take us on an epic journey in which peaks, valleys, storms, and sunlight may reflect universal challenges to becoming a successful artist as well as the particular struggles and dreams of America's minority and immigrant communities.
OBATA_191130_015.JPG: "I dedicate my paintings, first, to the grand nature of California, which, over the long years, in sad as well as in delightful times, has always given me great lessons, comfort, and nourishment. Second, to the people who share the same thoughts, as though drawing water from one river under one tree."
-- - Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_018.JPG: Son Chiura Obata Reading
Rokuichi Obata, 1928
OBATA_191130_038.JPG: Grade-school practice book, 1890s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_042.JPG: Maiden of Northern Japan, 1931
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_053.JPG: Teenage practice book, 1890s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_067.JPG: On April 18, 1906, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco, where Obata had been living since his arrival in the United States in 1903. The quake and subsequent fires killed more than three thousand people and destroyed 80 percent of the city. Obata later recalled making firsthand drawings of the traumatic event:
The Great Earthquake happened a little after 5:00am. My chimney came down and dropped into the room. After that I knew something really serious had happened. I also knew by then that you have to face anything Nature gives with your whole body and spirit. So... I grabbed as many sketchbooks as possible, and I walked in the direction of the downtown to see what was the situation... I wanted to describe, as a third person, how the earthquake affected people.
OBATA_191130_114.JPG: Obata relied on employment within the Japanese American community during his early years as a professional artist in the United States. Beginning around 1918, he created paintings for use as covers and interior illustrations for JAPAN, a travel magazine published by Toyo Kisen Kaisha (Oriental Steamship Company) for its American audiences and customers. Since 1912, Obata had also worked regularly as an illustrator for San Francisco's two Japanese-language newspapers, Shin Sekai (New World) and Nichibei Shimbun (Japanese American News).
OBATA_191130_121.JPG: Untitled (Ikebana in a Glass Vase), Mar. 16, 1937
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_129.JPG: Untitled (Magnolia in a Blue Square Vase), about 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_136.JPG: Untitled (Variety of Flowers and Floor Tiles), about 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_139.JPG: Untitled (Aloe and Daffodils), Mar. 16, 1937
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_151.JPG: An Illustrated Handbook of Japanese Flower Arrangement, ca 1940
Haruko Kohashi Obata
OBATA_191130_161.JPG: Japanese Woodblock Print and Calla Lilies, 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_165.JPG: An Artistic Family
OBATA_191130_169.JPG: Haruko Obata (1892-1989), Ikebana artist, wife of Chiura Obata, Berkeley, CA, 1950s
OBATA_191130_172.JPG: Gyo Obata (b. 1923), architect, son of Chiura and Horuko Obata, HOK offices, St. Louis, MO, 1983.
OBATA_191130_181.JPG: Autumn Weeds, about 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_183.JPG: Untitled (Narcissuses in a Boat), Feb. 12, 1938
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_190.JPG: Evening at Carl Inn, 1929-30
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_228.JPG: Untitled (Art Class at UC Berkeley), Nov. 20, 1934
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_231.JPG: Artist and Teacher
OBATA_191130_243.JPG: Some of Chiura Obata's tools and materials: a paint box, an ink tray, pigment bottles, brushes, stamps, and minerals used in preparing the pigments. He often mixed his paints using water collected from streams during summer hiking trips in the Sierra Nevada.
OBATA_191130_305.JPG: California Alma Mountain, Maeda-san's Fruit Farm, Aug. 3, 1922
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_309.JPG: Alma Mountain, Temporary Residence, Aug. 4, 1922
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_313.JPG: Alma, Aug. 6, 1922
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_317.JPG: "Above the borderline of nationality everybody must feel a deep appreciation toward Mother Earth."
-- Chiura Obata, "Natural Rhythm and Its Harmony," 1933
OBATA_191130_319.JPG: Point Lobos, 1948
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_324.JPG: Sumi-E
OBATA_191130_328.JPG: Untitled (Monkeys), about 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_336.JPG: Untitled (Bears), about 1930s
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_467.JPG: Scenes of Point Lobos Sketchbook, June 1933
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_471.JPG: Evening Mist at Big Lagoon, July 22, 1924
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_475.JPG: Requa (California), July 23, 1924
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_479.JPG: Coos Bay (Oregon), July 23, 1924
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_486.JPG: World War II and Displacement
OBATA_191130_489.JPG: Departure from Berkeley, First Congregational Church, Berkeley, Apr. 30, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_494.JPG: Talking Through the Wire Fence, July 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_499.JPG: Street Scene from the Grandstand Looking at the Barracks, May 31, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_504.JPG: Gathering in the Laundry Room, Tanforan, 5pm, Sept. 22, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_508.JPG: Women Knitting, Sept. 22, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_513.JPG: In the Train, 11am, Sept. 24, 1942
Chiura Obata
After five months at Tanforan, the Obatas and other prisoners were transferred by train and bus to Topaz Relocation Center in a remote, desolate region of the Utah desert. Obata's sketches capture glimpses of the journey, arrival procedures, and daily life in the camp.
OBATA_191130_520.JPG: Welcome Speech by Mr. Ernst for the Newcomers, 8pm, Sept. 24, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_528.JPG: Examination Time, 9:30am, Sept. 29, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_532.JPG: At Topaz Hospital, Apr. 6, 1943
Chiura Obata
While Obata was walking from the communal showers back to his barrack one evening, someone struck him with a metal instrument on his forehead over his left eye. He received ten stitches and was hospitalized for nineteen days, which led to the permanent release of the Obata family from the camp for their safety in May 1943. Obata later attributed the attack to the bleak conditions in the incarceration camp: "In this Relocation Center, the general colorless scenery -- the whitish gray of the barracks, no green vegetation growing -- can cause even a person in a splendid state of mind to weaken to rumors, which are constantly present... this abnormal state of life can contribute to such dreadful acts."
OBATA_191130_537.JPG: Arrival from Delta, Sept 29, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_541.JPG: The Welcoming Band, 10:10am, Oct. 1, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_546.JPG: Newcomers from Santa Anita, Oct. 8, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_554.JPG: Page from Topaz Times (Barracks), Dec. 24, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_556.JPG: Page from Topaz Times (Turkeys), Nov. 26, 1942
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_560.JPG: Our Toilet Congress. Where Rumors Come From, 1943
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_563.JPG: Rapid Stream in Snow-Covered Oak Park Canyon, Jan. 1, 1943
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_567.JPG: Beauty of Struggle, 1953
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_570.JPG: Study for Beauty of Struggle, 1951
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_576.JPG: Dust Storm, Topaz, Mar. 13, 1943
Chiura Obata
OBATA_191130_581.JPG: Topaz War Relocation Center by Moonlight, about 1943
Chiura Obata
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2019 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
a four-day jaunt to Massachusetts (Boston, Stockbridge, and Springfield) to experience rain in another state,
Asheville, NC to visit Dad and his wife Dixie,
four trips to New York City (including the United Nations, Flushing, and the New York Comic-Con), and
my 14th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Utah).
Number of photos taken this year: about 582,000.
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