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June 30, 2016

[SSJ: 9450] REMINDER: Bert Winther-Tamaki on Earth Art in Postwar Japan (July 7th)

From: "Sophia Univ., Institute of Comparative Culture"
Date: 2016/06/30

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2016

Body, Pottery, Installation: Three Genres of Earth Art in Postwar Japan

Bert Winther-Tamaki (University of California, Irvine)

July 7th, 2016
18:30-20:00
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University Yotsuya Campus

More than most art materials, soil is freighted with a wide range of ideological imperatives, from
wholesome agrarianism to the abject or the toxic. Tsuchi (soil, clay, earth) is a force to be
reckoned with in three genres: images and performances presenting the body besmirched with mud
(Hamaya Hiroshi, Shiraga Kazuo); ceramic art that bakes clay into stony solids (Yagi Kazuo, Itō
Kōshō); and installation work that excavates and deposits soil in large volumes (Sekine Nobuo, Endō
Toshikatsu). These genres of earth art stand in relation to the urban ground, which changed rapidly
underfoot in postwar Japanese cities from a largely unpaved and often muddy or unruly material
substrate to a hard-paved, terraced, and floored-in surface. As the earthy ground receded, artists
experimented with means of restoring wholesome contact, or mediating fears that such return was no
longer possible.

Bert Winther-Tamaki is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. He
specializes in the history of modern Japanese art, Asian American art, and the history of
interactions between Japanese and American art worlds. His many publications include Art in the
Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (2001) and Maximum
Embodiment: Yoga, the "Western Painting" of Japan, 1910-1955 (2012). His current research project is
titled Earth, Stone, Wood, Ink: The Natural Materials of Modern Japan.

Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University

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