Many materials and media other than ink have been used to represent and indeed extend, strengthen, or refocus the aesthetics of Japanese and/or Asian ink, often without spilling a drop of actual ink. Media such as photography, oil-on-canvas, video, and digital imaging, but also tomato juice, soy sauce, gunpowder, tv commercials, and computer games have contributed substantial new dimensions to qualities of ink associated with Asian tradition. The modern vibrant and multifarious visual epistemology of Japanese and Asian ink painting owes much to acts of remediation in non-ink media, perhaps more than works made with actual ink.
Bert Winther-Tamaki is the Chair of the Art History Department at the University of California, Irvine, and Professor of Visual Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. His work focuses on the role of the visual arts in the construction of modern national identities, especially in early and mid-twentieth-century Japan. He is particularly intrigued by artists whose positions partly outside Japan complicated the artistic identities they developed in various media.
Select Publications include, Maximum Embodiment; Yoga, the "Western Painting" of Japan, 1910-1955. University of Hawai'i Press, January 2012, Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth co-author with Louise Cort. Washington, D.C.: The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 and Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early Postwar Years. Honolulu. University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.
This lecture is sponsored by: History of Art Department, Japanese Studies, Asian American Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Department of Diversity and Inclusion
For more information, visit the Department of History of Art website.
