away from formalism and art for art's sake. The passion and enthusiasm
shown by Pang Xunqin and the Storm Society for Art (with a capital A)
was transferred to patriotic causes for which their art (small a) might beuseful. It is not surprising, then, that Pang Xunqin devoted the remainderof his life to crafts and design, aiming to develop useful and beautiful
objects for everyone, while Ni Yide became a Communist and rejectedmodernism.
Cubism, despite all efforts, never acquired a large supportive
audience in China. For that reason , it is difficult to imagine what kind of
future it might have had without the interruption of war and politicalsuppression. During the 1950s, when countries of Southeast and South
Asia had the opportunity to reexamine modernism in their postcolonial
period, China embarked on a very different path. In the drive to produce
a unified Communist culture under Mao, modernism , which wasconsidered a sign of bourgeois decadence , was all but eradicated. Li Hua
had renounced his modernist past many years earlier, but those like Zhao
Shou, who hoped to turn his painting talent to celebrating peace, wereunwelcome in the new art world.
Cubism was essentially moribund for forty years in China, from1937 until the late 1970s. Then, suddenly, as China's young artists began
experimenting with every form of modern art prohibited under Mao,
Cubism reemerged. As in the 1930s, its impact was far more limited thanthat of Surrealism or post-Impression, and its circle of artists quite small.
Nevertheless , a few significant works were produced , enabling it to briefly
reclaim its status in the modern art of China. First, the Star Star Group's(£. Jil.@i4'?) exhibitions, in the cacophony of previously suppressed

modernist styles that they exhibited in the early post-Mao dissident
exhibitions of 1979-1981, included some Cubist works (fig.5 ). Then , inthe so-called New Wave of the mid-1980s, a small group of similar works
reemerged. Perhaps most surprising, very soon after the June Fourthmassacre , a prize was awarded to the young artist Wang Guangyi (.:E/tUit)
for his hybrid Cubist-Surrealist image. It was very ironic to give the prizeat the politically and culturally conservative national exhibition to thisartist , who had exhibited in the 1989 dissident China / Avant-garde Showjust months earlier. But , in that very tense cultural atmosphere , theauthorities may have found the formalism of his Cubist work reassuring
in its lack of political content. Ironic indeed that in a politically very
restrictive era it was considered appropriate to rehabilitate this bannedbourgeois style, but even more ironic that this approval , after forty yearsof suppression , by conservative cultural authorities served as a final
punctuation mark to a history that has finally been concluded in China.

224

fig.5: Cao Li, Horses,1980,oi l on

Notes:I . LUQingzhong, "Xin huapai IU.eshuo7Dong.fangzazhi, vol. 14, no. 7 Uuly 15, 1917), pp. 99-100 as cited by
Zhou Fangmei and Wu Fangzheng, "Yijiu crling ji sanling niandai Zhongguo huajia fu Bali xihua hou dui
Shanghai huata n de yingxiang (The Influence in the 1920s and 1930s of Chinese Painters Returned From
Paris]~ in Quyu yu wa11gl110- ji11qiannianlai Zhongguomeishushiya11ji11
guojixueslm tao/unlmi /unweuji (Taipei:
National Taiwan Unive rsity, 200 I ).
2. LU Che ng, "'Xiyang meishushi7 originally published in Shanghai, 1921, Zhao Li and Yu Ding, eds.,

Zhougguolmahua we11xia11(Changsha: Hu nan me ishu chuban she, 2002), p. 427.
J. Zhang Yuguang ( I 885-1968) was one of the founders of the Shang hai Arr School in I 912 and later served
as director of the school between 1914 and 1917 and continue d to teach in subsequent years. In 1928 hebecame director of the new ly estab lished Xinhua Art School, founded by dissident professors who had
recently resigned from Shanghai Art Schoo l.
4. About the Storm Society, please also sec Ralph Croizier, "Post-Impress ionists in Pre-War Shanghai: The
Juelanshe (Srorm Society ) and the Fate of Modern ism in Republ ican China~ in John Clark, ed.,Modemity in
Asi1111
Art (Canberra: Wild Peony, 1993).
5. Yislmxunkan (Art News) Vol.1, No.5, October 1932. I quote the translation here by Donald Brix from The
Storm Society& Post-StormArt Phenomenon(Taipei: Chin Show Publishers, 1997), p.7. Possibly because theStorm Society did not have its own journal, the manifesto was published in the journal of the Muse (Moshe )Society, founded Aug. I, 1932, by Liu Haisu, Ni Yide, Wang Jiyuan, Pang Xunqin, Fu Lei, and Zhang Rogu .
This pu blication only survived until January l 933, publishing twelve issues.
6. See Zhu Boxiong and Chen Ruilin, Fifty YearsofWestem-StylePaintingin China, 1898-1949(Zhongguo
xihua wushinian, 1898-1949) (Beijing: Renmin me ishu chubanshe. 1989).
7. Li C hao,A Historyof Oil Paintingin Shanghai(Shanghai: Shanghai renmin me ishu chubanshe, 1995), p.
328.
8. See Kawakica Noriaki and Takashina Shuji,Ki11daiNihon Kaigashi(History of Modern Japanese Painting )(Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1985), pp.278-281 .
9. Kuiyi Shen, "The Lure of the West: Modern Chinese Oil Painting; in Julia Andrews and Kuiyi Shen,ACentury in Crisis:Modemity and Traditioni11the Art of Twentieth-CenturyChina (New York: Guggenhe imMuseum, 1998), pp.172-180; and Chen Ying, "The Development of Modern Oil Painting in Guangdong(Guangdong xiandai you hua de chuangjian liche ng),"in Chen Yingmeishuwenji (Guangzhou: Guangdong
renm in chubanshe, 1995), pp.65-132.
10. Qui te a few Chinese wome n claim to have studied at this school, but I am not certain this name isaccurate . Is it actua lly Tokyo Women's College art depa rtment? Or To kyo Women's Normal College art
department?
11.Julia Andrews, "The Guangzhou- Tokyo Print Exchanges of 1935 and 19367 in Cross-CulturalArtiStic
Exchangein LaterChineseandJapaneseHistory(Columbus: Inst itute for Chinese Stud ies, The Ohio State
University, forthcoming).
12. For Li Hua's recollections see: Li Hua lmaji,"'\'(lode zhuanb ian" (Tian jin: Tianjin People's Art Publishing
House, 1987), n. p., and the intro d uction to Ban/majicheng: Lu Xun cangzhongguoxiandai muke quanji(Nanjing:Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1991).

225

Session I- Presentation 3

The Discursive Space of ''Asian Cubism"
John Clark[Professor, Department of Art History and Theory, Univers ity of Sydney]

This paper will examine Cub ism in Asia via reference to "Asia" as a
discursive modality which relacivizes or resists "Euramerica: but not justas a physical place confined to one state, nor as a single cultural or visual
discourse. le will recogni ze the secondariness of arc discourses co ocher
socia l institutions and processes , but the primary role of styles in defining
arc within such discourses , and the particular transformations seen indifferent Asian contexts of reception. It will estab lish some analytical
criter ia for assessing what "European Cubism" might be to facilitate
examinat ion of the regularities to be understood in cross-nationaltransmission routes , their modalities of reception , and the endogenous
patterns of transformation.
"Asia" as a discursive modality
The title of the exh ibition and conference "Asian Cubism" calls both "Asia"and "C ubism" into play.' I int end here to chart the arc discursive spacethese terms may refer to and co see where "Asian Cubism " fies into ocher
concatenations of meaning which we may less spec ifically call "AsianModernism': By doing so we may see what is the kind of ''Asianness " sucha "C ubism" foregrounds, and ind eed where into a gen us of "AsianModernism'; or family of "Asian Modernisms: such a spec ies as "Asian
Cubism" might fie.
The following categories listed in the schema is only suggestive but
it does tell us chat "Asian" arc discours es are goin g to be articu lated
between very different entities , such as the China or the Indi a of Type 1,th e weak inter-state alliance of ASEAN in Type 2, whose members are also
mappable in Type 3 as "norma l" states, and the many sma ll but critica lly
important sma ll or quasi-state actors in Type 4, e.g. overseas Chinese
artists in the USA, Canada, Australia , France or Germany.
Schema 1: Types of Culture and "State" Unit or their Agglomeration in"Int er-National" Relacion
1. Large cu ltur al ecumenes, often associated with a sin gle language or

dominant language , based on a very large sin gle state or group of states
which transfer their cultural products and the discourses w_hichgene rate them far beyond any geographica lly restricted domain.
2. Smaller cultural continua, mini-ecumenes, surrounding inter-state

226

John Clark

alliances, somet imes with an active cultur al discourse and solidarity
uniting them.
3. Nation states acting in hegemonic contro l over their own cu ltur e but
which are in practice penetrated by global cultural phenomena yet also,
and often in contradiction , structured by various kinds of assertion
against the "outside " on the model of 19th century European states.
4. Small states , non-state cu ltur al enclaves within larger states, anddiasporas in multi-state communities , which are not in hegemony overtheir own cultural customs, capital and products , but which haverelative and interstitial freedom to assimi late or reject aspects of othercultures.
5. Various further categories of non-state units which have an international activ ity and w hich are sometimes in a hegemonic relation totheir own intra-organizational cu lture .'Secondariness of art discourses
In mapping Asian Cub ism , Euramerican Cubism as an art discursive
tendency over many years has several specific characteristics which mustbe at least sketched to provide a canonica l spec ificity to whatever"C ubi sm" as a more general tendency which includes both Asian andEuramerican Cubism , i.e. the gen us of the various species. Perhaps we canindex Euramerican C ubism 's variations via the works of Picasso from1907 to 1916/17, Italian Futuro-Cubism from the late 1920s to th e ea rly
1920s, and again the works of Picasso from the late 1920s until his final
works of 1971.
Discursive Functions of Styles
In different national contexts there are different discursive functions forparticular styles, most evident perhaps in the enormous fecundity andgenerative strength of late Academy Realism , Impressionism, and Fauvism
and-with "classicizing" exceptions -the deadly discursive closure

found in later examp les. The trajectories of three or so types of Japaneseyogaachieved between the 1860s and 1890s by the 1950s had solidifi ed
into a late yogaof a repetitive and rather tedious discursive banality,
whatever th e technical skill deployed. Other discursive functions include
the internal relativization and even radical critique of existing modernisms seen in the translation of Academy Realism into a narrative of soc ial
protest by the addition of formalist deformation in paintings of thefemale allegory of Philippine-ness. The characteristics of Asian Cubism
definable by such a series undoubtedly lead to issues that are complete ly
different from those in the Euramerican context since they are so
dependent on other-than-Euramerican

soc ial institutions and processes.

This is particularly so in the Philippines' crit iqu e of a given soc ial order
implied by the extension of a formal device -deforme , multi-viewpoint227

effect. These are unsettling to a conventional oligarchic or middle-classview of the Philippines' poor and are applied to a narrative formation
which has other-than artistic-meaning, that is the religious schema
derived from Catholicism and Saint-worship in the place of ancestorworsh ip,3 which the Philippines' series represents and even embodies.
Here what may be seen as the primary role of stylistic problematics indefining artistic representation within such discourses as Euramerican
Cubism, has been set aside or subverted in favour of a vigorous social
content . It is doubtful whether the artist-magus Picasso ever felt this drive,
save in his works on the Spanish Civil War and the Korean War.
"Euramerican Cubism"
Is it possible to characterize "Euramerican Cubism" itself before looking
in more concrete terms at some works which may tell us what Cubism
might be in different Asian contexts, and in some kind of higher-order
mapping as an "Asian Cubism "? In Euramerican Cubism we are dealing
with a changed way of viewing the world, but if only as a parenthesis it
must be observed that the change is defined in terms of the discourses
wh ich went before Cubism, and the precedence is thus set in
Euramerican terms. This is problematic in Asian contexts because manyof the prior discursive positions (in what might be broadly characterized
as professional, craftsman , or folk art which might allow for its stylistic
acceptance ) are not contingent on the prior Euramerican discourses
which were the context for the rise ofEuramerican

Cubism. In otherwords, one hypothesis about transformation and development might bethat the modality of Cubist stylistics may have allowed the discovery ofother kinds of "Asian past " which were already "in waiting " as a putative
variety of modernist visualization. 4
This crucial reservation made, how may we characterize
Euramerican Cubism as pictorial discourse? I think the schema below isof some use, and I have deliberately constructed pairs of illustration
which may show Asian artists who took up a particular characteristic anddeveloped it.
Schema 2: Euramerican Cubism
a. multi-faceted treatment of the pictorial surface intuitively or intellecrually diverted to the narrative of the artist 's viewing [Golding, 102]
(fig.1 )b. critique of the viewing position of the subject with the artist as firstviewer [Golding , 73]
c. use of subjects not habitual to the discourse to subvert it [Golding, 4042 ] (fig. 2)
d. the "primitive" grasping of form as if sculpturally pressed against the
picture plane, like a decorated mask [Golding , 54 ] (fig.3 )228

fig.1: Onchi Koshiro,A Modelof the

Human Body,c. 1920, oil on canvas

e. curiosity about unorthodox relations between previously unconsideredobjects and materials as in collage and assemblage [Golding 108] (fig.
4)

f. arbitrary local use of lighting and colour for plastic effect [Golding, 75 ](fig, 5)g. creation of a pure painting based on abstraction , where the subject ofthe painting is an ideal visual order, sometimes with mathematicalfoundation , or the act of painting itself, often with an expressive imem
[Golding, 18] (fig.6 )h. capturing of time-effects as if different momems in a trajectory wereseen simultaneously by fusing objects into different planes [Golding ,29 ] (fig.7 )(The above are my own summaries, referring to some relevant sections
fig.2: Cesar Legaspi,Motherand Child,
1954, oil on board

in Golding, 1959, 1988 ) 5
The question then arises: if there is both a formal and a genetic relation
between the Euramerican characters of Cubism and the Asian exemplars
which may be deduced as at least cognate with these characters, which
may also be their transformations , then what were the routes by which
Cubism arrived in Asian countries and how did it spread? In order tofully explain the mechanism by which Cubism was disseminated acrossnational boundaries we would have to rehearse the kinds of viewpoint
and art discourses already prevalent in a given Asian culture, in particular
the history , mostly quite similar, across various Asian countries of the

fig.3: Ang Kiukok.Cruciji"xion,
1977,
oil on canvas

acceptance of academy realism followed by impressionism and thereaction to these by young and usually self-proclaimedly avant-garde
artists. Here the emphasis of inquiry would be on art discourses per se,
and what anracted artists in Euramerican Cubism, whether in reaction toexisting academy styles or as an avatar of a new way of being withconcomitant types of perception and their representation , particularly ofvisual form and time. Here, like in the study of the transfer and transformation of Academy Realism , examination would have to be made of the
corpus of works, the range of images , the technical and intellectualy,fig.4: Katsura Yuki, Work,1936, collage
on paperunderstanding

available to a particular art culture and its artists, sinceselectivity is against knowledge or against relatively restricted access toworks or images , In some Japanese and Korean artists we see a kind of
Cubism experimented with as an extensio n of Expressionism or possibly
via access to images in the art press, as well as local , quasi-autonomoustransformations. This would be a culture-by-culture

or coumry-by-country study, to constitute a series of bases for the kind of comparative
conception which is implied by the very term "Asian Cubism''.
If we were to step beyond art discourse, we might make parallel
hypotheses about th e nature of social development in relation to a newkind of urban life which privileged the self-conscious member of the229

anonymous crowd in tune with a proleptic drive into the future , theforms and temporal consciousness of which were ruptured from those of
the past (s).6 The break would even be a more radical cut than thetentative and initial break with customs at the earliest consciousness ofthe modern to constitute the binary of th e traditional I modern.
Wherea s Cubism and associated stylistics manifest the selfreflectedly modern , and therefore what should be classified as "modernist~ Indeed it is chis secondary moment of Cubism in Asian art discourses
which might more easily lead to the re-discovery of pasts different tothose relativized by the modern itself, and to the rise of a new way ofrepre senting consciousness not as dep ende nt as hitherto on transformations or local applications of Euramerican Academy Realism. Thismodernism could be linked or seen as parallel to transformations inliterature, and we might elevate such modernisms, including ''Asian
Cubism: as one way of representing a kind of consciousness not tied tofig.5: Togo Seiji,Playingthe
Contrabass, 1915,oil o n canvas

the Euramerican modernit y of the discourses against th ey were a reaction ,and which were emplaced in a very different social context, that of the"modern" city.
Endogenous functions of Euramerican styles
The discussion of transmission routes or types of transformation

anddevelopment whilst generative of a Cubism particular to an Asian cultureof an "Asian Cubism" across cultures , would at its hermeneutic peril
ignore the variable functionality of Euramerican srylistics within each
Asian culture examined. Cubism involves at the very least multiple
viewpoints and multiple temporal perspective non-homogenous
infixing-

the former achieved bymodelling the latter by collage or juxtaposition andand these are likely to be subversive of Academic Realism.

fig.6: Onchi Koshiro,Title unknown(Gaze from a wo man), 1917, ink on

paper

Thus we might see the transformation of the Philippina beauty / Madonna
figure in the Philippines from an allegory of fertile purity to the defend erof an innocent child in the destructive anomie of slum impoverishment ,the latter figures of which are clearly a kind of visual subversion of theearlier academic manifestations.
Moreover , in the earlier acceptance and deployment of Euramerican
Impressionism and what may have been vaguely construed if not
deployed as its variant, expressionism , there seems to have been aninterpretive re-play of the earlier contrast found in Academy Realism
between a new kind of cognitive technique or int ention applied to or
represented through oil painting , and a kind of decorativism used forimportant exploration of national allegory. In the decorativism a sort ofprior literary or political ideal was implicit in the representation , whether
it was of a state ideological , critical , or socialist identificatory import . Thisfunctional adaptation because of a perceived ability of Cubist stylistic
characters to carry a rational, conceptual structure , or, and often in230

fig.7: Fumon Gyo, Deer,Youth,

S1111beams,
Crossing,1920, oil oncanvascontr adictio n, to allow an un seen emot ion its deco rative expressio n, do esseem to replicate across variou s Asian discourses. In th at co nceptu al o r
deco rative release we may see th e abilit y to discover or re-discover new
visual fields and subj ect matters, or to express th e necessarily cont estato ry
emotion al co ntent of a popul ar narrative which mi ght oth erw ise bedeviated for th ose discur sive purp oses carri ed by a social o r artistic elite.
In form al paradi gm of recepti on situ atio ns for "C ubism" in Asia it
is quit e po ssible as with earlier transfers and tr ansform ation s to distin guish Non-Colo ni al, Neo-Co lo nial, Co loni al, Qu asi-Co lonial, PostCo lonial, and Beyond th e Post-Co lonial situ ation s. These political andcu ltur al situ ations m ay so affect recepti on and tr ansform ation th at we
may alm ost describ e th em as regularized spaces of recepti on each with a
specific modality.
I just give some simpl e illu strative cases below, and accept th at
th ese do not die with th e allocated pe riod and may exist co-temp ora lly
with oth er mod alities show n. [I do not int end to map th e who le of Asia
- Pakistan to Sakh alin , Inner Mo ngolia to Bali, maybe even to Tasmani a- for all categories over 150 years!]
Schema 3: Degree of Loc al Auton o my and Reception Modalit y by degreeof self-selection of art discou rses [also in oth er cultur al fields]

Non -Colo nial

Examp leModal ity

Japan ca 1900-1945 & Japan 1953presem

Self-sel ection and transformatio n,internal constraint always
dom inates externally co nstrained

arrdiscourses
Neo-Colo nial

Colo nial

Japan 1868- ca 1900 &Japa n
1945-1953

Ind ia, Ph ilippi nes unt il 1945/47

Internally constrained local
selection under prepond erant
external con straint
Externally con strained selec tionwith som e space for internal
co nstraint

Qua si-Coloni al

C hina 1840 -1949

lncermicrent insertion of external
constraint, at times absolutely
dominant in so me areas

Post-Colon ial

C hina 1949- ca 2000

Internally unconstrained
selection whi ch itself co nstrains
rejec tion or acceptance of

external art discourses
Beyond the PostColonial

C hina 2000-pr esenc

Self-selection is increasingly
independent of external andinternal of external and internal
co nstraints, or at least has mo respace tO negotiat e betwee n them.

Th e int erpre tation of certain random observatio ns is m ade relatively
straight forwa rd by this scheme. The problem atic o f timin g wh ere styles

231are acceded to lacer or earlier transformed earlier or lacer in some parts ofAsia becomes more understandable.

Lateness or earliness is not an issue

if the discursive context is always conceived of as due to the local: timing
can be out of or in synch with Euramerica as much as in synch with otherparts of Asia. Whether or not the advent and transformationof any style,and even, hypothetically, an inter-Asian transfer as may be seen more
recently in the 1990s and early 2000s with the yochi na kawaiirashzsa(childish cute mannerismo ) transferred from Japan to East and Southeast
Asia, is marked as early or lace, can depend as much on a cognitive as an
expressive modality , chat is to say it can mark a change in consciousness asmuch as the ambient mood of a time or place. It is here chat an
overarching issue in the selection of styles or of particular characterswithin styles comes into its true significance. For it may be possible toidentify moments in particular an discourses by the advent of a style or
the use of an element from within one , such as clearly multiple viewpoints, multiple framing devices, or multiple collaged images within
Cubism. These characters may appear as the marker of a shift in a wholeart discourse, or in the relations between parts of an an discourse, such as"Cubist" devices marking the end of the Philippina / Madonna nexus in adislocated narrative of the people seen earlier, or the end the discursive
possibility of kitsch portraiture in Indonesia in the 1980s via seditious
juxtaposition.
Such a use of "Cubist " characteristics sometimes shown only
nominally by the use of notional collage as markers for transformation
has, to some extent , to operate on a different level to the still necessary
analyses of the reception stratum , whether of the anise, the educational oran exhibition institution, or the generalized and specialized audiences.
We may want to ignore at a general level what must be acknowledged at aparticular art cultural level as a fairly widespread phenomenon

through-out Asia: the formalization in local variants of say Late Impressionism orFauvism in Japan, India, or the Philippines.
Noticing that such-and-suchselection and transformation

an aspect of "Cubism" has its local

does not explain the dynamics of its

transformation. The causal explanation about why a particular characterof "Cubism" is tied to an emphasis on expression or on rationalization,
why its adoption should be in an emotive or cognitive mode , and why insome an cultures it functions in a non-narrative context but in ochers as
an intensifier of narrative , all needs a fairly complex reference to thestructure of an an discourse and the role of artistic choice within it. Does
K.G. Subramanyan appear to refer to late Picasso sculptures in wood or
ceramics because he has been to an school for a period in London , or
because he uses this knowledge as a way of re-positioning the Indian folk
in a modernist context) Does Xu Beihong avoid Western modernism since
Van Gogh , including Picasso , because he has trained with an exceedingly232conservative French academician , Dagnan-Bouveret , or because he alsoseeks to privil ege himself as a rediscover of realist possibilities within
Chinese neo-traditional painting , rather than re-discover its modernismlike formalisms? Answers to such questions , if the y are possible , depend
on interpreting the local meaning and significance of"CubisC:'
Endogenous Patterns of Transformation or "Anti-Cubist" Characters ofAsian Artworks
I will briefly conclude by interpreting various patterns of transformation
with "C ubist" characters may be seen in the work ofYorozu Tetsugor6(Japan ), Ang Kiukok (Philippines ), and Wu A-san (Taiwan ). I will also , as
an indicative control case, briefly examine the structural features anti pathetic to "Cubism" found in the ideological closure in Chinese Socialist
Realism.
A contrast between two famous self.portraits by Yorozu indicatesthe curious part-decorative , part-radicalising function of overlapping
planes lying on the image to make it more intense rather than fracturing
the space which the image inhabits to render the subject as a self split
between many times and spaces.'
Ang Kiukok works with heroic figures composed of planar designs
where the heroic worship of labour shifts under enormous and crueltectonic forces. The art turns Cubist designs to a more accurate description, it would appear, of the robotization of labour, where arms or hands
are ossified into an organicized urility. 8 But the figures are not shifted
towards the picture place and despite the cognitive sculptural drawing ,neither the three dimensionality of picture space itself nor the singularityof the artist's viewpoint are not called into questions. Here "C ubist "technique appears to be a special kind of theological figuration , particularly suited to an ideology of isolating and foregrounding privileged
subjects.
Wu A-san (Wu Xuansan ), however , seems to use "C ubist " style as away of visual exploration. This can be seen if we compare his graduation
work in a mannerism after a Picasso nude study, with the work he did
after his postgraduate studies in Spain, followed by a visit to Africa. Here
excited forms are discovered and brought to life especially because they
do not have to be narrativized or placed in some art discursive development. "C ubism " genuinely allows Wu A-san to visually empower a newly
discovered world, one known only in imagination to his native Taiwan.
The negative and control case of Chinese Socialist Realism and its
precursors in the work of Xu Beihong needs mentioning. Why one may
ask in his famous painting of labourers could Xu Beihong not twist thefigures ' bodies into multi-planar constructions , as Ang Kiukok was later
to do? Why could later 1950s paintings of revolutionary heroes notmobili ze the evident possibilities communicated by Picasso's famous233

work s on th e Spani sh C ivil War ad th e Korean War? In th e case of Xu wehave th e fear of losin g co nt rol, as if visual art where th e m anifestation of aseries of rul es which onc e mast ered or develop ed allowed control overdetermin ed subj ect m att er. On th e oth er hand Picasso's heroi c anti- war
statem ent s mov e in a compl ex symboli c space which communi catesemoti on but do es no t allow a literalist readin g, nor th e expression of aclear narrativ e.
Control , narrative m eanin g, simpl y di rect and easily legible
symboli c denot ations are what "C ubi sm" deni es and are clearly antith etical to th e m oderni st spirit it emb o di es as a stylistic di scour se. "Cubi sm"
seeks compl ex symb olism with multipl e formal connot ation s and an
ambi guous but visuall y encoded subj ectho od for th e artist. Th e latt er is
wh at describ es, in part, th e di scur sive space for "C ubi sm" in Asia.

Notes:
I. If art historians are to be allowed gur feelings, mine would be rhar"Asian Fauvism~ "Asian
Expressionism'"and ''Asian Surrealism" m ight be more productive ways to seek for var iable Asia n uptakes onformal Eu ramerican discourses after Acade my Realism, certai nly befo re the 1960s. One can easily imagine anextension to the catalogue Fauv ism and Modern Japanese Paint ing, into parallel exhibitions for the whole of
Asia. See Asano loru et al.,Faubisumuto Ni/JonKindai Y6ga{Aich i: Aichi Kindai Bijutsukan, and ocher
locations, 1992). In Englis h there is also Sakai Tadayasu, ;;WasJ apanese Fauvism , Fauviusr?~ in John Clark, ed.,Modernity in Asian Art (Sydney: Wild Peony Press, 1993). But the topic "Asian Cubism" does carry with itvarious late 20t h ce ntury implications of its own, some of which this paper wi ll seek to explore.
2. Austral ia, for example, may be thus located in Type 3a. But it has important residual affiliatio ns with 2f,
and has for the last ten years fu nctioned virtually as a cultural satra p of 1b, all the while and in contrast andsometimes also opposition, having sig nificantly c reative but officially barely acknowledged elements of subcategories of Type 4. For a fu rther explorat ion of th ese categories and the location of Austral ia in Asian Art,see my essay for the forthcoming catalogue to accompany the February 2006 Commonweal th Games in
Melbourne, Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Nat ional Gallery of Victoria, '"'An'Austra lian'
Creative Space: whe re is Australian-Asian art now?~
3. On the complex antecedence of animis t or ancestor figurations to modern academic sculpt ure and late r
reactions against it see Alice G. Guillermo, Sculpturein the Philippines.fromAnito to Assemblage(Metropolitan
Museum of Mani la, 1991).
4. There is great discussion in J apanese as to wha t Yorozu Tetsugor6 may have followed from imported texts,
images, and a few works from post- Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Fut u rism, which culminatedin his"Cub ist" work LeaningWomanof 1917 which was associated at the time by Morita Tari as "Cubist" andwith works of Picasso's early Cubist period. See Tanaka Atushi et al., YorozuTetsugor6-Tef/:kaigano taichi wo
yuriugokasbitagaka (Tokyo: Kokuricsu Kindai Bijucsukan, and other locations, 1997), p.1 19. See also inter alia,
Fa11bis11mu
to Nihon Kindai YOga,1991, p.253, and the essay by Arikawa lkuo, "Yorozu Tecsugor6 no senkusei
co dokuj isei~ in Homma Masayos hi et al.,Nihon no Ch(15/Jo
Kaigal AbstractPaintinginjapan, 1910-1945(Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbunsha & Bijucsukan Renraku Kogikai, 1992), p.14-15. It is also important that in his
Chigasaki pe riod from 1919-1927 Yorozu returned to experiment with nanga [which he had actually begunaround 1915] and thus his earlier experience with a gamut of styles, some of the characteristics of whichbecame '"'Cubisc7also allowed him a rediscovery of pares of a local - if because of its C hinese debts - no t
enti rely endogenous local discourse.
5. See John Golding, Cubism:A Historyand an Analysis,1907-1914 (London: Faber & Faber, 1959, 1988 ). Of
course, "Cubism" in the work of Picasso later in the 1930s became imimately tied up with Surrealism, even as
Picasso had already experimented with a kind of Surrealist "p rocedure by analogy" as early as 1913-19 14. See
Joh n Golding, Visionsof the Modem (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994), p.220. On Cub ism's after-life inpostwar Paris see Frances Morris,ParisPost-War:
Art a11dExistentialism,1945-55 (London: Tate Galle ry, 1993),
where (p.16 ) it becomes possible to see Cubism after Picasso o r Fauvism afte r Matisse as local, Franco-cent ric
styl istic discourses, and those of Expressionism, Su rrealism, and Abstrac tion as the interna tional Euramer ican

6. T he locus classicus for a description for such changes in Euramerica is Marshall Berman,A// that is so!td
melts into air: the experienceof modemity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). On such changes in Ch ina
there is Zhang Yingjin, The City in Modem ChineseLiteratureand Film:configurationsof space,time and gender(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996). On J apan, there are among many other texts, Elise T ipton &John Clark, eds., BeingModem i11Japa11(Hololulu: University of Hawa i'i Press, 2000 ), and Jean-Jacques
Tschudin & Claude Hamon, eds., La Modemitt a thorh,011:
La culturepopulairedam le}apon des annies vingt

234

(Aries: Editions Philippe Picquier, 2004).
7. A new perception of Japanese modernity came about with unde rstanding the break with late Meiji wh ich
occurred in early Taish6. See in particular the role of the art societies in Shimada Yasuhiro, "Fyuzankai to
S6d6sha~Kindai no Bijutsu,no.43, November 1978. On the understanding of Kishida Ryllsei as an avant·guardist, see Kitazawa Noria ki, KislndaRyi'tseito Taish6avangyarudo(Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1993). On what
th is transformation meant in hisrorical terms see the recent catalogue essay by Tatehata Akira, "Rekishi nonaka no Zen'ei" in Namba Hideo, et al.,Saik6: Ki11dai
Nihon no Kiga,biishiki no kesseito tenkail Remaking
Modernisminjapan, 1900·2000 (Tokyo: Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku & Tokyo·to Gendai Bijutsukan, 2004),
pp . HXH03. The Engllsh·lang uage caralogue,Jack ie Menzies, ed ., Modem Boy Modem Girl (Sydney: Art
Gallery of New South Wales, 1998) also includes much material on this transformation.
8. Also called the "anomie of hypermec hanical civilization" by Emmanuel Torres, a close friend of the artist,
as cited by Johnny Gatbonron in "The Private World of Kiukok" in Ang Kiukok (Taipei: Banhuiajia Hualang,1981), p.8 .

235

Session 1

Discussion

Moderator (MizusawaTsutomu): I listened to the very interesting presentations without making any presumptions on how the three panelists
would engage with each other. Professor Omuka's presentation was about
how Japan received Cubism in the late 1930s through information on the"Cubism and Abstract Art " exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art,
New York; Cubism was introduced to Japan earlier in comparison to
man y other Asian countries. The presentation described how it wasperceived in the context of art history. Professor Shen provided us withvarious stimulating new images related to modernism in Shanghai , manyof which were not well known to us. In discussing Shanghai , it would be
useful to extend our topic into graphic art , printed materials in a larger
context , and design , as pointed out by Professor Shen. But to keep our
focus , I would like to refer to the presentation by Professor Clark as astarting point in our discussion.
Mr. Tatehata quoted Walter Benjamin three times and addressed theissue of translation. He pointed out how the process of translation isinherently affected by cultural differences , but presented the positive sideof this issue. Professor John Clark closely examined Cubism and categorized the multifarious variations of Cubist signs, which oscillate between
positive and negative. Mr. Tatehata , would you like to comment on
Professor Clark 's presentation , in relation to the issues of translation andtransformation ?
Tatehata Akira: I am not sure if I understood Professor Clark 's pap er
correctl y, but I think he made a point in saying that reception of Cubism
varies according to th e cultural situation in each area, so that we cannot
assume reception and transformation occurred in the same way across theboard. I think thi s issue indeed touches on the fundamental basis ofmodernism. Moderni sm has been introduced as a universal ideolog y intoth e local context , resulting in conflict , breakdown , and hostility. I thinkthese consequences are shared among regions that have experienced
modernism , and Asia is not an exception . But I think there is a differ ence
between Japan , Korea, China , and the countries of Southeast Asia in theway in which tensions were heightened. The conflict between theuniversal and the local tradition occurr ed in Europe, too , as seen in the236example of France. Baudelaire , who defined modemite, looms over us as ashadow of great disruption. We could say that the Cubism we are
discussing here is a symptom of this disruption.
All thes e countries experienced conflict, breakdown , and hostility ,but the process by which the y emerged differed from country to country;
the process in Japan differed from that of the Philippines, which incorporated Cubism in its Christian culture. I borrowed Walter Benjamin 's
theory on translation to make a point on the productive effect resulting
from the overpowering quality of the process. But making this point is no
more than stating a dogma. What Professo r Clark is saying is that we needto consider the different consequences of Cubism in differ ent regions ,and if we do , we would need to also refer to the different signs that wereincorporated along with Cubism. I think he is suggesting that we
consider all the relevant elements in considering the situation.
But as the exhibition is about Cubism in Asia in a broad sense, I
would like to pick up on a common thread regarding transformation of
Cubism as it entered Asia. For example, the styles of Vertical Fragmentation or Transparent Cubism appeared in some areas. This is very intere sting, because th ese manifestations are not results of a parallel effort among
the different countries. Nonethel ess, they appeared in parallel. A strange
Cubism born out of struggle established grounds for these commonalities. I am not surprised by the different ways in which Cubism wasreceived , but rather, I am surprised that I have found commonalities
among different cultures, despite the fact that they adopted Cubism
without having anything to do with each other. What is your view,
Professor Clark?
John Clark: First of all, I don 't think Cubism or any Euramerican style isuniv ersal, as you seem to think it is. There is no such thing as universal art
style; there is univ ersa lity in the world and there are various conditions
under which universalit y can be translated betwe en cultures.
1think if we didn 't know after the translations of Greek text into

Arabic and then back into Latin that ideas flow cross-culturally, crossing
cultural boundari es, in Europe in the 12th century, we certainly should
not know at the end of the 20th century in a word culture.
The fact that the translation may or ma y not disturb some previous
order of knowl edge which is only local is not the problem . The problem
is not the translation but the probl em of domination taking man y years.
What is th e modern in Asian art starts with the cultural
relativization through the importation of Western academy styles under
the conditions of colonial domination , or quasi-colonial domination in
the case of chose countries which weren't dominated , or the non-237

transference , in those countries like Thailand which was not colonized, orthe self-colonization of countries in the case of Thai elites , who usedacademy painting as a kind of superior decoration to match the increasingly privileged lifestyle acquired through European administrativetechniques of modern colonialism in the late 19th century. There are allkinds of problems in different places.
But the problem is that cultures can speak to themselves acrossboundaries and those boundaries are not incommensurable. The
unmeasurability of the difficult y of the connection between different
cultures is not the same thing as the technical problem of translation.
Now, implicit in the position to be adopted , odd styles appear when they
cross national boundaries. In different contexts , the words are notunderstood but parts of the grammar are, or parts of the words aretranslated but not the grammar. For example , Chinoiserie is a series thattake elements from Chinese painting, where a very literal and stereotyped
kind of painting was transmitted into Europe and put into decorative
schemes which had almost nothing to do with the cultural origin, or
cultures of origin.
The problem of relativization is far more important; what changes
the cultural constitution of what we think is ours when cultural transferstake place. And this isn't just a colonial and non-colonial position. Of
course , otaku and /or manga in America or in Europe , is not cultural
invasion from Japan. It's a kind of positioning of the self against certain
kinds of material and other cultural values, which have reconstituted
themselves in a way where they find that sort of expression useful. I think
the problem is not how and why culture flows; it is how we have an
integrated world. Is there only one kind of modernity or are there manykinds of modernity? In other words , in the words of an Indian historianworking in America , is the European modernity to be seen as one kind ofmodernity which in a certain sense, in a category which you might callthe global genus of modernity, to be seen as provincial or minor type'That's the problem.
And how do we approach the knowledge of that? Should I, standingin an Asian context, counter-appropriate

modernity as my own, and see

European modernity as only local when I look back at the culture which
seems to have come down from New York, through the reception of
Alfred Barr? ls it the same thing with Umehara Ryuzaburo 's relationshipto Renoir as a teacher?
The problem is not nearly the problem of translation, but into what
hierarchy or genus of cultural forms is modernity to fit , and to see
whether or not modernity is something which belongs to all societies but
in different constitutions. We should have gotten over the problem of238

universality , which is an old problem.
Moderator (Mizusawa): I think Professor Clark is objecting to the idea of
Cubism being univ ersal. Mr. Tatehata , in you r first statement, you put
Cubism on one side to emphasize th e otherness or the alien -ness of theother. 1 am not a specialist on Cubism, so I cannot examine it in depth,
but I see that Cubism inh erentl y involves multi-l ayered and fluctuating
aspects, which have something in common with the fundamental
formalistic issues dealt with in mod ern ism. I wonder if Professor Ha yashi
has any comment.
Hayashi Michio : What you just point ed co, Mr. Mizu sawa, is precisely
what provoked us and motivated us to organize this exhibition. Peop lehave predetermined ideas of the Cubistic experiments made by Picasso
and Braque , but the Cubism or Cubism-like styles that spread among
artists in the Asian region were not necessar ily directl y influ enced by
Picasso and Braque. So, depending on when and how Cubism wasreceived , so-called Cubism appears in different guises. This is one of thepoints that needs consideration. The other point is how the various"transformations" of Cubism in Asia have induced some essential but notcommonly acknowledged aspects of Cubism to surface. I think we may
discuss such aspects in other sessions, coo. For example, in Asia, Cubism
was used in rendering narrative subject matter , so it incorporated theelement of"time:' Although th ese elements were not part of Picasso andBraque 's experiment , the y may, in fact, be latent possibilities in Cubism.
Hence , we can also consider a hypothesis that such new and germinal
possibilities that are not derived from Picasso and Braqu e's experimentalso existed in Europe. So, let me clarif y by saying that we did notorganize this exhibition with the understanding that a Cubism that was
unifi ed in Europe became diverse in Asia.
Bert Winther-Tamaki: I was struck by how the pan el includ ed the word
"transnationalism " in the session titl e, although that did not seem to be aconcept that guided th e way th e session was handl ed . But it did seem thatthe various papers had a lot to say about what we might call"t ransnational ism" and it does seem to be a valid proposition co describe
the aspects of Cubism as a transnational formation.
For instan ce, there are translations , ma gazines, and styles that werecrossing border s in ways that really can not be explained as national
culture or as imperial culture. It also seeme d to me that it would be
problematic to designat e that tran snation al cultural formation as
specifically Asian , in discussing th e features of the formation, whether it is239

the Transparent Cubism or the Vertical Fragmentation. I am skeptical as
to whether they exclude other local formations of Cubism, such as in
Mexico , Africa or in places like Turkey. So chis concept oftransnacionalism is one that will be useful in stretching chose elastic
border-crossing formations even further. I wonder if Professor Clark orothers have comments about "transnational ism~Hayashi: I would like co cake Professor Winther-Tamaki 's comment into
account and discuss cransnationalism, based on the three presentations
today. Rather than discussing this at a meta level, I would like co base our
discussion on specific cases. I appreciate the fact that printed media ,including magazines, play a significant role, after having heard the threepresentations chis morning. So, I would like to ask Professsor Omuka
about MoMA's "Cubism and Abstract Expressionism" exhibition catalogue
in the 1930s, which was introduced through magazines in Japan.
According to your paper , after learning about this exhibition , !hara
Usaburo and Fukuzawa Ichiro adapted Alfred Barr's ideas. Takiguchi
Shuzo also absorbed Barr 's ideas bur took a position that distinguishedhimself from Barr. I wonder why. Probably, he read media that did notcome from America, such as Cahiersd'Art and London Bulletin, andexamined Barr's idea of Cubism in comparison to the information heread from these magazines. This suggests chat transnational information,
which had been channeled through Europe until then, began to betransmitted through America. I think this may have been a major turning
point in the information channels that introduced modernity to Japan. I
would like to ask Professor Omuka, if I may.
Omuka Toshiharu: Of course Takiguchi Shuzo , who was keen on getting
information from France, ma y reacted against the extreme modernist
framework that was being introduced via America. The fact that MoMAin New York had established a framework is precisely what is significant
in this context . What I wanted to underline most in my presentation was
how they were able to place their framework in the context of "history.
Denying or revoking a framework , once it is established , is very difficult.
Up to that point,Japaneseread many French documents, for example , theideas of Amedee Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret and the lesswell-known Maurice Reyna!. Bur the French ideas were read as something
coming from contemporaries who were setting a trend in parallel to theJapanese , rather than a framework defining a historical step. I may not be
accurate in describing the situation, but I would say that the MoMA
framework created a "rupture" between the contemporary and themodern. In other words , it incorporated historicity into the modern and240

reinforced it with authority. Formulating a historical genealogy is thesame as conferring hierarchical value , which is different from putting
contemporaries side by side. I chink this situation marks the difference
betw een Cubism in the 1910s and Cubism in the 1930s.
Clark: We're talking about transnational ism all the time in regard to any
kind of art styles which may have spread from Euram erica to Asia. Mostof the time we are talking about the use of art styles as a way of constituting that of the national, and that's the real problem.

If you are talking about countries which haven't experienced
colonialism, like Japan or Thailand, then the national is almost entirely
given by internal discourses. If you are talking about the Philippines ,Indonesia, and ocher Southeast Asian countries und er areas of French
control , the style you adopt or what you don't adopt, if one style like
French Academy Realism has been adopt ed already, is a way of defining
the national in visual terms. It is a reaction towards the new and the nonnew, which is already there and maybe associated with a particularhegemony. You see that very clearly in India as well.
The interesting thing is that postcoloniality does not mean theescape from this discourse. The issue is about constituting the national
against the previous imperial center. In fact, it may mean the re-transportation of the new center from outside into a culture because of that
dichotomy .
I think that 's the structure and that's why one doesn't really talkabout transnational ism until chis issue is already quite old , like now . I
mean how old in terms of colonial icy and postcoloniality is always apolitical issue. But I think that's basically the reason why it's behind us
now, bur may not have been behind us in India in th e 1950s. That may be
why Subramanyan actually adopted Cubism to rediscover the Indian folkin the 1950s and '60s, even though India was already an independent
State by then.
Winther-Tamaki: Could I follow through? So, is it possible , then , for us
now to see Cubism as a transnational phenomenon

filtering into contexts

in India and elsewhere around the globe where motivations for art
production may be national or nationalist ?
In some ways, it is a cultural formation that is different fromnational culture , but in other ways, it is a difference-producing

matrixthat becomes a resource for these local or national cultures to use toward
their own ends.
Clark: I agree. That 's one very sensible way, at least.

241

Moderator (Mizusawa): Professor Tsuji, please .
Tsuji Shigebumi: I think Mr. Tatehata makes an effective hypothesis by
distinguishing "Cubism " and "something like Cubism" as two different
styles, but I find it very problematic if we were to incorporate it inpursuing the factual issues surrounding Cubism. In fact, most of theworks by Picasso and Braque were not available to the public until
around 1912, because they were kept in the hands of the art dealer Daniel
Henry Kahnweiler. Although these works were not exposed publicly ,Cubism was disseminated to distant places. So if you talk about "something like Cubism ;' everything that was disseminated would become"something like Cubism'.' I suppose Picasso and Braque came first, andthen the Salon Cubists. Once Cubism was born , Salon Cubists became
active agents . I think this is how Cubism actually developed.
I also do not agree with Professor Winther-Tamaki and Professor
Clark on their thoughts on how "different nationalities received an art
form different from the original; to explain how Cubism was received indifferent ways depending on countries or ethnicities. I may not haveunderstood Professor Omuka's presentation accurately , but when we lookat Cubism in the 1930s, Fukuzawa lchiro, for example , was co-opted andendorsed by the State government of the time. Meanwhile , other Cubists ,particularly Okamoto Toki and Yabe Tomoe, who advocated Cubism andbecame promoters of the movement in the 1910s and '20s, were arrested
and tortured by the authorities at the beginning of the 1930s. Okamoto
had his back broken and suffered from caries for the rest of his life. Manyof the Cubists , or those who were "like Cubists; were persecuted by theauthorities at the time .
Professor Omuka may have intentionally omitted these facts in his
presentation today, but unless we consider these facts, I don 't think we candiscuss the specific issues involved in the relationship between nations or
nationalities and Cubism. Cubism via Alfred Barr is one of the routes, but
we must also remember artists like Kuniyoshi Yasuo or Noda Hideo , whoworked on murals during President Roosevelt 's New Deal in America.
Such works are strong in socialist ideology. Many artists who participatedin the mural works were members of the Ashcan School , working associalists. There seems to be an apparent filtering of Cubism in Japan. It
would be difficult to discuss the impact of Cubism on the State or the
citizens. What is your view, Professor Omuka?
Omuka: I am currently interested in Proletarian art and internationalism.
I think Professor Tsuji has posed a legitimate point for consideration. I
focused on the 1930s this time because Yorozu and other artists from the242

1910s and '20s have already been discussed quite thoroughly. Rather thanresurrecting old arguments , I was interested in discussing Cubism in the
1930s. Now, regarding State authority, from what I have researched so far
about internationalism

in the 1930s, proletarian arr was oppressed by th eState authority at the time. Hence , Cubism and its reception were hardl ya priority , because holding a paintbrush in your hand was risky enough byitself. But I think it is useful to examine what Cubism was like then. I am
not able to answer your question adequately, but I would like to mention
that internationalism

in the proletarian art movement is complex , and theanswers are not as easy as the y appear.
Hayashi: I have a specific question related to Professor Tsuji's question
and Professor Omuka's answer. If proletarian aspects or politically avantgarde attributes were first recognized in the reception of Cubism, it is an
important issue to see how it was appropriated under suppressive
conditions and detoxified in the process of its historization. Professor
Shen touched upon Li Hua 's prints during the 1930s in China. Li Hua
was a member of Lu Xu n's New Woodcut Movement. The images in his

Modern Printsseries have a very strong character of proletarian protest, but
the fruits and violin on the table are typically Cubist and also bourgeois. I
wonder if this is something that shows the paradoxical nature of thereception of Cubism. According to Professor Shen , even though Cubists
worked on Cubist themes and materials at the beginning, they graduallyterminated all experiments, and turned to socialist or proletariat subject
matter. How should we understand the process of the demise of Cubism
over time ?
Shen Kuiyi: That 's a very good question. In the several articles written by
Julia Andrews and I about the Chinese woodcut movement , we also
discussed the issue of why certain woodcut artists gave up at the nascentstages of modernist experimentation, enabling them to shift their work to
the more , so-called revolutionary realistic style.
I think that the main reaso n is, of course, the conflict between
China and Japan that started in 1931. By 1931,Japan had occupied
Northeast China, so patriotic sentiment was very strong in China. But atthe beginning , Lu Xun , as seen in his woodcut movem ent, had rurned hiseyes towards the German Expressionists. He believed that woodcut would
become a new medium and a new kind of art in China and directly
borrowed this modernist, Expressionist art into China. Even later heturned his eyes to the Soviet Union and the woodcuts of the BelgianFrans Masereel (1889-1971 ).
So when we discuss the early stages of the woodcut movement , we243see it as a part of the modernist movement in the early 1930s in China ,fitting in with the movements of the Storm Society and artists who wereexperimenting with modernist art after their return from Europe orJapan.
Patriotic sentiment gradually grew and reached its peak in 1937
when the war between China and Japan erupted. So after that , not only
the artists in the woodcut circle, but the entire art world involved in themodernist movement all stopped their experiments. Of course , thewoodcut movement is usuall y considered more left-wing than oil
painting , so most of those artists went to the communist territory in
Yan'an or stayed in Shanghai in the foreign concessions between 1937 and1942 to continue their patriotic activities. So, I would say the major
reason is the war .
In any case, artists doing modernist experiments didn 't really getmuch support from the audience in China . So I think Professor Clark
raised a good question. Why should a very conservative academic sryle ofart become the mainstream and successful in China?
Moderator (Mizusawa): I think we need to consider the cultural sphereand the political situation, among many other factors , or else we would
be expanding our discussion too far into unexplored areas. As Professor
Omuka mentioned, the 1930s was the time when Cubism became
politically innocuous , as described by Professor Hayashi . It became arecognized , classic style of modernism with a place on the bookshelves ofhistory. The timing coincides somewhat with the woodcut movement.
This may be related to the Cubism Professor Hayashi has described asbourgeois. We would need an extra hour or two to discuss the issues of
Cubism in the 1930s. Since we don 't have time, I would like to draw
Session 1 to a close.
Before doing so, I have a very simple question. I may be questioned
how I was able to moderate this session without knowing the answer tothis question. Professor Hayashi , how could we explain the relationshipbetween transnational and international phenomena and Cubism?
Hayash i: That's too much to handle for me right now. It would also be

difficult to explain the history of discourse here , so let me answer yourquestion intuitively and succinctly. I think the nuance of the terminternational is very close to terms such as universality. In periods of
economic growth , such as the period in Japan represented by the Osaka
World Expo 1970, internationalism

tends to prevail. This trend iscommon throughout the world , so internationalism

was probably

advocated during the independence movement in Southeast Asian244

co unt ries. For examp le, "uni versality" beca m e a keywo rd in th e co nt ext o f
th e ind epend ence m ovem ent in Ind onesia. Term s such as "uni versality" o r"int ernati o nalism" do not co ntr adi ct natio nalism . Within a globalizin g
eco no mi c and politi cal system , th ere exists a force th at desires to beco me
ind epende nt in the same leag ue, or to be recog ni zed as an equ al partn er
am ong oth er co unt ries, so natio nalism and int ern at ionalism are two sidesof th e same co in. On th e oth er hand , transnational ism , w hi ch is co mmo nly d iscussed in pos tco lo ni al stu d ies and cultur al studi es, foc uses m ore
on loca l and multi -layered aspects, for exampl e, th e hybridit y of ame tro po lis as d iscussed in Sessio n 1. As we focu s on th e urb an situ ation ,exchanges at a level beyo nd th e natio nal bor ders occ ur in an ambi guo us
and m ultipl e- layered way co mp ared to exchanges o n the nation al level.
So, we are not di scussing exchanges of a uni fied cultur e betwee n natio ns
cultu re, but exchanges in multipl e di rectio ns at multipl e levels enco uraged by th e hybrid enviro nm ent w ithin a natio n . I think we use th e wo rdtransnation al ism in o rder to loo k at th ese situation s in detail.
Moderator(Mizu sawa): I think we can co ntinu e w ith thi s topic int o

Session 2, w hen we di scuss postcol oni alism. We have taken a lo ng tim e
for Sessio n 1. I would like to end thi s session here . Th ank you.

245

246

Session 2"Postcolonial Situation"
The reception of modern art in Asia has always been ambivalent. On
the one hand, it has been seen as a symbol of individualistic aesthetic
ideas and a mode of liberation from the old system within particularcountries. On the other hand, because it is imported from the West, it
has been criticized by subsequent generations as a reactionary
tendency reflecting a colonial mentality. In an environment thatfluctuated between these two extremes, the Asian Cubists experi­
mented in many different directions, developing their own versions of
Cubism that could not have been imagined in Europe, where it had its
source. In Europe, Cubism was an urban form of art, but for certain
reasons it was applied to rural landscapes in Asia. Although it
represented modern individualism, it was used to portray religious
imagery. In some cases, it became a style for declaring freedom of
expression in opposition to old ways or systems. In others, it was used
to comment on the tragic consequences of war and technology. In
different countries and regions, it was influenced and transformed byparticular political and ideological forces, and this situation muse be
examined from different angles with regard both to style and to thepolitics of its interpretation. In this way, we hope to stimulate a debatethat will clarify the issues attending cultural transformation in theprocess of modernization and decolonization in Asian countries.
Moderator: Hayashi Michio
Presentation 1 Art and Culture in the Third Space:
The Case of Indonesia
Jim Supangkat
Presentation 2 Translucent Traces of People:
Peasant and Proletariat in Philippine Cubism
Patrick D. Flores
Presentation 3 Nanyang Modernism: Between Idealisms
Ahmad Mashadi
Discussion (Q & A)

Session 2- Presentation 1

Art and Culture in the Third Space:
The Case in Indonesia
Jim Supangkat[Art Critic / Chief Curato r, CP Foundatio n]This exhibition and symposium on "Cubism in Asia: Unbounded
Dialogues~ as I understand it, is an effort to comprehend the modern art
of Asia. To my knowledge , chis effort began in the beginning of the 1990s,
when contemporary art exhibitions in Japan and Australia began coinvolve artists from various countries in Asia, in particular Southeast Asia.
From chis series of exhibitions, a question arose as to how contemporary
art emerged in the Asian countries chat were being included. This
question then led to another concerning how modern arc had developed
there previously.
I do not think that these questions have ever been answered in a
way chat can be fully understood in Japan or even Australia because thedevelopment of modern art in Asian countries is not based in modernism , as is the development of the modern art of the 20th century inEurope , America ,Japan and Australia.
Thus, this exhibition and symposium have returned to the questions: Is there modernism in Asia? Does the Cubism, whose visual signs
are apparent in the development of modern art in Asian countries, havethe same significance as the Cubism occurring in the development ofmodern art in Europe and America? If there is a difference between"Cubism of Asia" and Cubism, could this "Asian Cubism" indicate signs ofAsian modernism?
As I read it, chis list of questions indicates a perception chat equates
the development of modern arc in Asia with chat of modern art in Europe
and America. This equating of the two does not have co mean chat they
are the same. This equating actually is meant to seek out the differences
between "Asian Cubism" and Cubism, and from these differences begin tofeel out Asian modernism , which certainly cannot be assumed to be thesame as modernism.
I tend to be pessimistic about any research effort that equates thesetwo developments in modern art , which, in my mind , considers / weighs
the thinking of the history of modern arc. I doubt that this channel ofresearch will be able to reach any conclusion concerning modern arc in
Asia or find any kind of modernism that could be said to be Asianmodernism.
In my observation , the differences and similarities in the development of these two modern arts must be sought through the analysis of248

Jim Supangkat

the cultural backgrounds they emerge from. From these backgrounds wecan discover the differences in the attempts and thinking that shaped themodern world, as well as the processes of modernization, which also
differed due to dissimilar conditions, motivations , and cultural backgrounds.
Because of chis, any effort to understand modernism in Asia
requires a reanalysis of history as well as social and cultural developments.
The coverage of chis analytical approach would be much larger and wider
than the analysis of art history and modernism, which , within the
discourse we are familiar with, is more concerned with the issue of art.
Based on this framework of thought, my presentation tends co notmake an issue of Cubism as a tendency within the development ofmod ern art. I tend to see Cubism as a vehicle for the conveyance of theideology of the modern art of the 20th century. In light of chis, Cubism
does not stand alone. Cubism secs forth an issue chat had already begun
emerging in post-Impressionism. Or even within the Impressionism as
discussed in the writing of William R. Everdall in the book The First

Moderns:
In fact, Seurat was the first to consciously objectify the
painting , separating its rules from chose of reality. In 1885,
before he finished his reworking of the Grandejatte , thechallenge co continuity in the space of painting had notbeen made explicit. By the time he died in 1891, thechallenge was al most unanswerable. 'Cubism, along with Impressionism and post-Impressionism constituted
signs that are believed to indicate major changes in Europe and America
at the beginning of the 20th century. These changes included shifts in theviews about reality in the modern world. This is reflected in the longrunning debate of the socialists at the beginning of the 20th century
concerning the relationship between art and the people / society; about
the representation / reality of the modern world, and concerning how themodern world should be shaped. Toward the end of this debate , Fernand
Leger came to the conclusion chat chis debate, through the confrontation
between Realism and the New Realism, was not just a matter of differences of opinion about the realities of life. This controversy showed adifference in platforms. In his writing titled "New Realism;' in the
February 1937 issue of Art Front, an American leftist journal, Leger set
forth:For a half-century now, we have been living in an extremely
rapid age, one rich in scientific, philosophical and social
evolutions. This speed had , I chink, rendered possible the249

precipitation and the realization of the new realism, whichis quite different from the plastic conceptions that havegone before. [ . ... . . ] It was the Impressionist who broke 'theline'. Cezanne in particular. The moderns have followed byaccentuating this liberation. We have freed color andgeometric form. 'As is widely known , Fernand Leger's views of the New Realism came face
to face with the discourse on Realism of the 19th century. This discourse,with realistic art as its spearhead , exhibited the socio-cultural as well as
political domination of the neo-Classical developments in France. When
the French Revolution failed to establish the rule of the people , thereaction, which resulted , led Realism to give birth to Romanticism. Whensocialism and communism spread across Europe and America , this Realist
discourse merged with the label "Realism'.' Seen from the developmentsof the modern world in the 20th century , the dominant view behind thediscourse of Realism exhibited a pessimistic attitude toward the modern
world due to its tendency to see its dark side. It was these views, which ran
up against those of the modernists who saw the developments occurringin art as important signs. The modernists were making an effort todevelop a positive view of the modern world.
In order to get a better view of the confrontation of these views
within the issue of aesthetics behind the development of art, I became
interested in the writing of Andre Bazin titled "The Ontology of the
Photographic Image~ Actually, this essay was written as an observation of
the position of photography through the analysis of the process ofevolution from realistic painting , which was based in human efforts torecord reality, to photography. However, in his analysis, Bazin made anissue of Realism and its position in the development of modern art in the20th century.
Bazin saw realistic painting as containing two ambitions that led toaesthetic confusion. The first ambition was the aesthetic ambition thatdesired to set forth the spiritual dimension of reality. The other ambition
was the non-aesthetic psychological ambition to depict reality. According
to Bazin , all of the understandings behind the discourse of Realism were
haunted /shadowed by this confusion, which mixed up aesthetic and nonaesthetic ambitions.
In Bazin's opinion , the crisis of Realism ended with the emergenceof the developments in photography in the 19th century. The ambition to
depict reality ended forever and with the end of that ambition , thediscourse of Realism also came to a halt. The impact, according to Bazin,
was to return the development of art to matters of the aesthetic asreflected in the emergence of post-Impressionism and Cubism.

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[ ... ] Photography is clearly the most important event in
the history of plastic arts. Simultaneously a liberation andfulfillment , it has freed Western painting, once and for all,from the obsession with realism and allowed it to recover
its aesthetic autonomy. Impressionist realism , offeringscience as an alibi , is at the opposite extreme from eyedeceiving trickery. Only when form ceases to have any
imitative value can it be swallowed up in color. So, whenform , in the person of Cezanne , once more regains
possession on the canvas there is no longer any question ofillusions of the geometry of perspeccive'. 3
What Bazin meant by aesthetic autonomy, and the aesthetic divergence inRealism , I found it the writing of Stephen Davies citied, "Non-Western Art
and Art 's Definition ":[ .... ] In the West [.], it is widely claimed chat arc lacks"utility, " being made for contemplation

distanced fromsocial concerns; that artists should be indifferent toworld ly matters in pursuing their muse; chat artworks havean intrinsic value and should be preserved and respected.
[ ... ] We might question whether the Western ideology ofart corresponds to its reality? That "artists" names a spiritualcalling? That arc making is unaffected by the market? That
artworks are appreciated only when abstracted from themoral , political, and social settings within which they are
generated? [ ... ][ ... ] The notions listed above characterize what has cometo be known as fine or high arc. The fine arts were
described and typed at the close of the eighteenth century ,and the associated notion of the artist as genius unfetteredby the rules of craft , as well as by social conventions, waspresented at much the same time. Along with chis went theidea that the aesthetic attitude is a psychologicallydistinctive state of distance contemplacion. 4
The important point I gee when comparing the writings of Bazin andDavies is that the divergence in Realism within the development of arc in
Europe and America could also be seen in the divergence in the ideology
of arc because Realism cannot be perceived separately from moral icy andsocial conventions. This is an important issue because it indicates that thechanges ushered in by pose-Impressionism and Cubism constitute thereturn of the development of art in Europe and America to the framework of fine arc or high art and the ideology of arc as set out by Davies.

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Therefore, the modern art of the 20th century is a clear manifestation of the framework of fine art or high art and reflects the ideology ofWestern art. There are several generally acknowledged indicators thatstrengthen this conclusion. Among them are the references to Modernism
as High Culture; the placement of fine art as the keynote within thewriting done on the histor y of modern art, and the release of modern art
in the 20th century from all of the issues of reality, morality and social
conventions.
Returning to the exhibition and symposium "C ubism in Asia:
Unbounded Dialogues ;' the question that arises is: Does the Cubism thatemerges among the developments in modern art in Asia have the samebackground or a similar background ? Another , more basic question also
begs an answer: Can the Cubism in Asia be linked with the ideologicalupheaval in art occurring within the development of art in Europe andAmerica involving the discourses that developed within the frame of timeof one century?
The introduction to this symposium notes that Cubism in Asia
exhibits a variety of experimentationthat was not imagined in Europe

and that it could be assumed that the basis for the emergence of Cubism
in Asia might well be different than the basis for the emergence of
Cubism itself. The introduction to this symposium also states that the
Cubist works of art emerging in the various countries in Asia set forth
reality in the context of religious life and daily routine that can easily beread ; these Cubist works do not reflect the "Realism and New Realism"
conflict that exhibits the shift from one platform to another.
In the writing of Rizki Zaelani published in the exhibition
catalogue, there is a quotation of a statement by Ries Mulder, the Dutch
painter who pioneered and taught the Cubist tendency at an art education institution in Bandung. Ries Mulder , who had worked in Holland asa soldered glass artist, stated that he taught formalism to the painters ofIndonesia. He did not intervene in the artists' development of content
within their works of art.
This statement certainly reflects the development of Cubist
paintings in Indonesia that always gives rise to the question of whether
these Cubist paintings can be said to set forth Cubism just because they
exhibit the tendencies of formalism. This question can be expanded inorder to enquire the modern art of the 20th century in Indonesia and invarious other countries in Asia. Can the development of modern art in
Asia be defined as a development based in modernism simply because it
exhibits the tendencies of formalism?
In my opinion, these questions can never be answered because there
is a basic difference between the development of modern art in the 20th
century in Asian countries and the development of art in Europe andAmerica in th e 20th century. This basic difference is related to differences252

in art ideologies. Because of this , in my opinion, it is the differences inideology that should be at issue. If these differe nces in ideology can be setout, all of the differences in the development of arc in Asia - thedevelopment of modern art in the 20th century and the development ofcontemporary art-wi

ll become clear all on their own.

There are, however, constraints that limit the efforts to compare theideologies within the two developments of modern art. Up until now, theefforts at comparison have always run up against the efforts to compare
the ideology of Western art with the ideo logy of non-Western art.
The ideology of non-Western art ana lyzed within this kind ofcomparison involves anthropo logica l concepts among which there aremetonymic gaps. In my opinion , comparisons of this sort do not have thecapacity to explain the modern and contemporary art of Asia that hasdeveloped.
Asian art must be ana lyzed through the comparison of ideologies
rather than within the framework of ethnic art; and within the understanding that it is art in the Western sense that has undergone a process oftranslation. In the postcolonial analysis, art exists in a third space between
that of ethn ic art and Western art.
Over the past ten years I have attempted to take a clearer look at thetranslation of art in the Western sense in Indon esia through the rereadingof a number of views about the development of art in Indonesia. There
were many opportunities that eased this review of mine.
Indon esia is a postcolonial state, a nation whose territory was once a
Dutch co loni al possession known as the Dutch East Indi es. As a postcolonial state, Indon esia is not based on a specific ethnic culture. In
Indon esia there are more than 300 different ethnic cultures, and becauseof that it is impossible to make any one of them the basis for the people
and the nation of Indon esia. In this kind of situation , nationalism
emerged fully as a national liberation movement ; an important aspect of
the Third World.
The opportunity was, therefore, also open for me to do a postcolonial reading because the translation of art in the Western sense in
Ind onesia exh ibit s ambiva lence. Within the postcolonial analysis, thisambiva lence indicates that art was a colonial subject that was accepted on
one hand and rejected on the other. In the development of modern art
throughout the 20th century, this ambivalence has permeated the basis
for almo st every framework of thought or debate on the identifying of amodern Ind onesian art. In genera l this thinking and debating would
always come to nothing as it became entrapped in the West-East dichotomy.
In Ind onesia the development of art in the Western sense was not a
result of the continuationof the art activit ies of the Dutch East Indi esperiod. Even though notes exist on art activit ies taking place during the253colonial period, no specific art world was ever formed that would make itpossible for art to develop and become a basis for the development ofIndonesian art.
Among the few notes that do exist concerning the development ofart during the Durch East Indies period , there are bundles of documents
and research results that were eventually compiled into a book with thetitle VerlaatRapport fndiii 5 in the 1960s. This book , which was written in
Dutch by J. De Loos Haaxman, covered the art activities occurring in thecolonial Dutch East Indies from the 17th century through the beginningof the 20th century. Up until now, this book is the main source forresearchers on modern art in Indonesia.
In this book it can be found that the art activities of the Durch East
Indies period- the making of illustrations and paintings - were mostly
directed at creating visual notes for anthropological research. In thisbook , it is also seen that there was a strong contrast between the development of institutions for anthropological research and the lack of thedevelopment of any infrastructure at all for art. In the development that
occurred over the three centuries of colonial rule, not one art museum or
art education institution was built in the Dutch East Indies. It is apparent
that there was no attempt at the development of art institutions.
Because of this , art in the Western sense in Indonesia was not a
result of the direct adaptation of the art that was developing in Europe.
Art in the Western sense emerged through cultural contact. This art, asboth a concept and an activity, was a part of a cultural inter-mixing thatwas taking place in the third space that had been developing since the18th century.
In the beginning this culture inter-mixing constituted the changes
in the Javanese culture brought about by the intervention of the Dutchcolonial powers. The colonial authorities developed ever-greater influenceand leverage after the eighty years of war among the Javanese kingdoms
came to an end (1670-1750 ). Based on the treaty of 1755, the Dutchcolonial authorities got the right to intervene in the organization of thecourt life of the kings of Java.
Entering the 19th century, the Dutch East Indies colonial government began doing various studies of the ins and outs of Javanese culture ,the results of which were recorded in the form of drawings, paintings andlithographic prints. In 1833, the government of the Dutch East Indies
established the Javanese language Institute, and in 1840 established theJavanology Institute.
This inter-mixing of cultures did not take place in a peacefulsituation, but against the backdrop of conflict as the Dutch colonial
government imposed repressive political measures, which gave rise to
upheavals and warfare. Therefore , the cultural inter-mixing that did occur
immediately resulted in resistance. A number of Javanese nobles who had
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