ARTH779D

Artists from Japan practiced in the United States in the early twentieth -century despite racially based restrictions on immigration and exclusion from citizenship. Even under harsh conditions of racial discrimination, a surprising number of these artists attained professional success, at least before the Second World War and the Japanese-American Incarceration all but extinguished their practice. Today these Japanese artists are marginal figures or are largely forgotten, their artworks having fallen through the cracks of art historical study. Art History s long-entrenched approach to disciplinary categorization, which distinguishes "Asian art" and "Japanese art" from both "modern art" and "American art," works to perpetuate a racial bias against Asian artists who were active in the United States in the twentieth century, both before and after the war. In order to address this disciplinary problem, and on the occasion of the major exhibition "Obata Chiura, An American Modern" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this seminar aims to bring perspectives from multiple subfields to bear on the global nature of Japanese artists' practice in the American diaspora. We will assess the challenges and potential of such material to the discipline, and chart new strategies and methodsfor cholarship.