Charade

Yasuo Kuniyoshi immigrated to the United States in 1906 and held odd jobs on the West Coast before settling in New York. In the 1920s, he traveled to Europe and first took the circus and its “gaudiness, sensualism, and decoration” as subjects. This portrait of a person with a mask pushed up on the forehead may allude to the many guises Kuniyoshi assumed during his lifetime. The Museum of Modern Art recognized him as one of “Nineteen Living Americans” in 1929, and later during World War II, the Carnegie Institute awarded him first prize in the exhibition Painting in the United States, 1944. Kuniyoshi only returned once to Japan, and his art was condemned as being “too European.” During the war, questions about nationality may have pushed Kuniyoshi to give broadcasts to Japan and design posters for the Office of War Information. (“This is no Less Curious: Journeys through the Collection” cocurated by Sonja Gandert, Alexandra Palmer, and Alana Ryder and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24 – April 12, 2015)Yasuo Kuniyoshi was born in Okayama, Japan, in 1889, and came to the United States in 1906. He attended numerous schools, including the Los Angeles School of Art, and in New York the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. In New York, he was influenced by both his teacher Kenneth Hayes Miller and his friend Jules Pascin. Two visits to France in 1925 and 1928 gave Kuniyoshi a taste of Parisian modernism, especially apparent in his still lifes. Kuniyoshi often depicted delicate, somewhat melancholy women, as seen in Charade. His bright, pastel colors, compressed space, love of textures, from thick impasto to translucent glazes, and his almost calligraphic brushwork are all reminiscent of his Japanese background and exposure to French modernism. In his last five years, the period of this painting, Kuniyoshi’s colors intensified, with surprising new hues that served to underscore the inventive combination of reality and fantasy found in his work. As the artist himself said, “When I have condensed and simplified sufficiently I know then that I have something more than reality.” (From “A Handbook of the Collection: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,” 1998)