The Reception of Primitivisme in Japan: The Discourse of Taro Okamoto

Kyoko Okubo

《The Journal of Asian Arts & Aesthetics》 6期 (2020/05) Pp. 1-11

https://doi.org/10.6280/JAAA.202005_(6).0001

摘要

Taro Okamoto received his elementary art education in Paris from 1930 to 1940. After returning to Japan, he became a leader of contemporary art in Japan. Okamoto should be regarded as avant-garde because he reconstructed old-fashioned Japanese artistic circles with his innovative ideas. However, his thoughts were ambivalent rather than progressive. This is exemplified by his discovery of the beauty of Jomon wares. Until Okamoto noted the esthetic value, they were considered archeological samples, not art. His discovery was an epoch-making event. The root of Okamoto's original sense of beauty lied in Primitivisme. While he was in Paris in the 1930s, Primitivisme, the Western reflection on the Other, was the influential thinking of the day. Extraordinary as a Japanese student, Okamoto did not solely devote himself to painting but also studied anthropology under Mauss and assimilated the Primitivisme. When Okamoto cut his way in the ruins of Japanese artistic circles with his novel ideas, his rhetoric was that of Primitivisme. He wished to reset and regenerate Japanese art. For this purpose, he grafted Primitivisme onto Japanese modern art. At the beginning of the century, Western avant-garde co-opted Black African art within the Western beauty to reactivate European tradition because Black Africa was thought to be the start of human evolution. Similarly, Okamoto recognized Jomon wares as the starting point of Japanese art history for regenerating Japanese tradition.

關鍵字

Taro Okamoto ； Primitivisme ； Surrealism