Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 provides a comprehensive look at Asian artists’ work in the United States, examining their contributions to American art and culture and explaining the political and social conditions that have delayed recognition of their works.
The book, edited by Gordon H. Chang, Mark Dean Johnson and Paul J. Karlstrom, spans the period from the Gold Rush to the late 1960s and covers several centers of Asian American art: New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Profiled artists are in a variety of fields: painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, textile artists and ceramicists. Prominent artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Asawa and Chang Dai-chien and less familiar figures like Eitaro Ishigaki, Lai Yong and Yoshida Sekido are included.
The 400 reproductions of artwork, portraits of artists and historical ephemera show the ways the artists thought about issues such as the “West,” the “East,”
man and nature, the city and race.
“Our goal is to suggest a radical re-envisioning of Asian American art to include a long view of its own history,” said Johnson. “We hope the magnificence of the many constellations that appear within these pages provides sources for future discovery, appreciation, and dialogue as the field of Asian American art continues to expand and inspire.”
The volume features essays by scholars, a detailed biographical directory of 159 artists and an art historical chronology that places the careers of these artists against the political and cultural events of the time.
Making their debut are many immigrant artists who were not allowed to become U.S. citizens; they eventually returned to their home countries and were not historically documented in either country.
The publication has been in development for over a decade and is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Stanford University and the Getty Foundation.
(From top to bottom photo)
- Eitaro Ishigaki with murals in Harlem, ca. 1937. Image courtesy Federal Art Project, Photographic Division Collection, 1935-1942, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
- Sung-woo Chun, Lunar Mandala, 1962, oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 30 1/2 in. Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
- Bumpei Usui, Party on the Roof, 1926, oil on canvas, 46 1/4 x 58 in. Collection of the Nanago Prefectural Shinano Art Museum, Nagano, Japan.
