From Curious Dolls to Primitive Art : The Self image of Postwar Japan Reflected in Works from Non Western Areas
| Autor: | Yukiya, Kawaguchi |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | japonština |
| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | 国立民族学博物館研究報告 = Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology. 36(1):1-34 |
| ISSN: | 0385-180X |
| Popis: | 本稿では，プリミティヴ・アートと総称された非西洋圏の造形が，戦後の日本でどのように紹介されたのかを，昭和30 年代に行われた展覧会を通してなぞり，そこに映っていた日本人の自己像を明らかにしようとする。1955 年（昭和30），東京で「アジアアフリカ珍奇人形展」という展覧会が，バンドンで行われたアジアアフリカ会議に合わせて開かれた。その後1960 年（昭和35）には，国立近代美術館で「現代の眼―原始美術から」展が開催される。わずか5年間に，アジア，アフリカの仮面や神像たちは珍奇人形から原始美術へと昇格した。この原始美術展は新聞，雑誌の大きな注目を集め，アジア，アフリカ，オセアニアなど原始美術によって語られる「彼ら」と，近代化に成功した「われわれ」との対比が強調された。さらに4 年後の1964 年（昭和39），東京オリンピックの年，まず「ミロのビーナス」展が官民一体の協力によって実現した。また東京オリンピックの芸術展示として「日本古美術展」などが東京で行われた。この展示には124 点もの縄文時代の造形が出品されていたにもかかわらず，「原始美術」という枠はここでは消えていた。おそらく，戦後復興を遂げ，先進国の一員となったことを世界にアピールするうえで，日本の原始美術は不都合だったのである。珍奇人形から原始美術への格上げも，原始美術とされた縄文の土器，土偶の古美術への編入も，また「ミロのビーナス」展が行われたのも，東京オリンピックを機会に，西洋先進国と肩を並べたということを国の内外に向かって誇示しようとする明確な意思の表れだったといえる。ただし一方で，土方久功のように，冷静に西洋に距離を置こうとしていた人間がいたことも忘れるべきではない。 Works from non-Western areas are often called primitive art, and wereintroduced to the postwar Japan through several exhibitions. This paperreviews some of the exhibitions held in Japan in the 30s of Showa era (1955–1964) to see how they represented so-called primitive art and consequentlyhow they reflected the self-image of Japanese people of those days.In 1955 (Showa 30), an exhibition entitled ‘Curious Dolls from Asia andAfrica’ was held in Tokyo on the occasion of Asian-African Conference inBandung, Indonesia. Five years later, in 1960 (Showa 35), another exhibitionof primitive art ‘Today’s Focus: Primitive Art Seen through Eyes of the Present’was organized by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. We cansee that masks and ancestor figures were raised from ‘curious dolls’ to primitiveart in only five years. This exhibition in 1960 attracted a lot of attentionin newspapers and magazines. Their articles emphasized a sharp contrastbetween ‘They’, or the non-Western areas including Asia, Africa, Oceania,represented by primitive art and ‘We’ meaning Japan and European countriesthat had succeeded in modernization. In 1964 (Showa 39), four years later,the year of Tokyo Olympic Games, an exhibition of the ‘Venus of Milos’from Musée du Louvre was organized in Tokyo as a joint project of Japanesegovernment and a newspaper company. In the same year, another exhibition‘Japanese Old Art Treasures’ was held as one of the official art exhibitionsaccompanying the Olympic Games. As many as 124 works of pottery,clay figures and others from Jomon period were displayed in this exhibition.They had been treated as primitive art in Japan previously, but here no framingas ‘primitive art’ could be seen. Probably introducing any of Japanese artas ‘primitive art’ would have contradicted the intention of showing foreignvisitors that Japan was fully rehabilitated from the ruins of war to become amember of the advanced countries. Raising ‘curious dolls’ to primitive art,raising the clay works of ancient Japan from primitive art to old art treasures,and organizing the exhibition of “Venus of Milos”, all of these efforts canbe said to be expressions of an intention to tell the Japanese people and foreignvisitors of those days that Japan was now modernized and a member ofthe Western club. Still we should not forget that some Japanese, includingHisakatsu Hijikata, were trying to keep a certain distance from Europe. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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