Book talk, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant Garde
Channel: eastasianarthistory
Date: 22/07/2020

Author Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer discusses calligraphy, abstraction, and global contemporary art in postwar Japan.

Buy the book: https://brill.com/view/title/55005
Learn more: https://eastasianarthistory.org/2020/07/21/bokujinkai/

The Bokujinkai—or ‘People of the Ink’—was a group formed in Kyoto in 1952 by five calligraphers: Morita Shiryū, Inoue Yūichi, Eguchi Sōgen, Nakamura Bokushi, and Sekiya Yoshimichi. The avant-garde movement they launched aspired to raise calligraphy to the same level of international prominence as abstract painting. To this end, the Bokujinkai collaborated with artists from European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism, sharing exhibition spaces with them in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond. The first English-language book to focus on the postwar history of Japanese calligraphy, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde explains how the Bokujinkai rerouted the trajectory of global abstract art and attuned foreign audiences to calligraphic visualities and narratives.