Books:
You know from the outset that this book is
about Japanese art because the surreal manga-
style drawing on the cover typifies an instantly
recognisable idiom of Japanese art. Making a
Home (accompanying a show of the same name
New York may be the home of personal
at Japan Society) surveys the experiences and art
self-creation for its newcomers, as implied in
of 33 Japanese artists working now in New York,
Koizumi’s quote, but it’s a relatively narrow ideal
from the relatively unknown to figures such as
unless it includes the freedom to look beyond the
Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone and Ushio Shinohara,
confines of identity itself. The context supplied
and while historical context is notably supplied by
by the essay on Kusama is telling; she pointedly
an excellent essay about Yayoi Kusama’s time in
was not merely a product of the conditions she
New York in the 1960s, Making a Home is really all
found herself in culturally, in terms of her mental
about cultural identity: on the one hand the book
health or financially; rather, she transformed what
is awkward about identity issues, and on the other
she was given. Thus Reiko Tomii talks of the
it frames its subject matter from the beginning in
vexed question of whether Kusama’s oeuvre of
terms of identity.
the 1960s belongs to Japanese or American art
Awkwardness towards the issue of identity
history precisely because Kusama is not readily
shows in interviews with the artists; asked if
reducible to an idea of either.
they see themselves as Japanese, American,
Tomii writes that ‘ultimately the most
international or hybrid artists, all respond with
salient feature of contemporary art is the ongoing
answers that uneasily qualify the question,
redefinition and reinvention of the practice itself.
ranging from regret that they will always by seen
The study of contemporary art accordingly has
as Japanese artists, to outright dismissal of the
to expand itself.’ The artists in this book at their
question as dated. The unwritten subtext seems
best do reinvent and redefine their work and the
to be that in leaving Japan the artists are escaping
basis of it; like Kusama before them, at their best
a restrictive cultural identity; artist Miwa Koizumi
not only is their identity merely a material to be
says, ‘Here there are no containers. I can be as
transformed and transcended but so too is the
complex and different as I like.’ Nonetheless, most
issue of identity. While the thoughtful sincerity
of the artists, including Koizumi, make work that
of this book’s position is clear, it might have done
alludes to identity, whether in the difficulties of
better by its artists by expanding its perspective
Japanese experience, through cultural hybridity
beyond the framework of the merely personal.
or in utopian idealism of seeking to be free of
alasdair Duncan
the limits of any identity. Yet the expression of
an understandable wariness at the prospect of
being reduced to a mere cultural identity is itself
restrictive: this is the problem played out here.
Making a HoMe:
Japanese ConteMporary
artists in new york
By Eric C. Shiner & Reiko Tomii
Japan Society/Yale University Press, $65/£40 (hardcover)
Artreview 130
JAN_books.indd.indd 130 4/12/07 15:11:29
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