The Art of Yasuo Kuniyoshi

By Duncan Virostko, Museum Assistant

“Skill is nothing. Anyone can be skillful. Skill is a means to an end. What you want to say is more important than skill!”. ~ Advice to Art Students, Yasuo Kuniyoshi

On display in Dunham Tavern’s exhibit about the Cleveland Print Maker’s Print-A-Month club from the 1930s is a singular work which stands out from all the rest. Yet, on first examination it might blend into the background. The print is typical of those sold by the club from Dunham Tavern’s parlor during the brief period between being lived in by its last owner, Oriana Stephens, and its conversion into a museum. In fact, it is perhaps less daring than some other prints, being a simple landscape of a bucolic New England scene. The print is rendered in a style one might at first glance write off as “WPA standard”.

Prints from the Cleveland Print-makers Club “Print of the Month” series on display at Dunham Tavern.

But a closer look reveals the inscription Yasuo Kuniyoshi, a clearly Japanese name amidst a sea of Euro-American artists. It caught my eye a year ago, and so for Asian Pacific Islander month I devoted some time to researching the fascinating career of a man who faced oppression and mistreatment by his own government, yet nonetheless rose above adversity to emerge a leading print artist. That became the label that now highlights the piece for visitors. However, I never wrote a blog about it. That is likely because, for whatever reason, my original text for the label disappeared into the aether! Fortunately, of course, the original text survived so I began my process of writing this blog by first typing up the label as originally rendered, then adding to and revising it based on subsequent research.

Kuniyoshi Yasuo (国吉康雄), or “Yas” to his friends, was an American artist, born September 1st, 1889 in Okayama, Japan. He emigrated to the United States in 1906 at age 17, to avoid going to military school.

His identity as an American was continually contested in the tumultuous twentieth century, as American racism against people of Japanese descent grew hand in hand with the increasing militarism of the government of Japan. A year after Kuniyoshi’s arrival, President Theodore Roosevelt passed the “Gentleman's Agreement” immigration laws with the complicity of the Japanese government, setting an racial quota which limited Japanese emigration to the United States.

Kuniyoshi was encouraged by a high school teacher in Los Angeles to pursue a career in art, and studied for three years at the city’s School of Art & Design before moving in 1910 to New York to study at the National Academy of Design there.

Kuniyoshi was primarily a still life painter, but he also produced intaglio prints between 1916 and 1918, and later embraced zinc plate lithography. His artistic style was strongly influenced by cubism in his early career. He also adopted a Japanese approach to painting, creating idealized figures from memory, rather than utilizing models and drawing from life. Later in his career, he would utilize sumi-e ink wash techniques in his works.

Key to Kuniyoshi's development as an artist was his spending the summer in Ogunquit, Maine, at the art colony of Hamilton Easter Field, in 1917. Field, a noted Japanese art collector, saw potential in young Kuniyoshi. Field introduced Kuniyoshi to many other promising young artists at Ogunquit, many of whom would go on to become not only great American artists in their own right but also some of Kuniyoshi’s closest friends and advocates. He would need the latter increasingly in the years to come.

Kuniyoshi in his 30 East Fourteenth St. New York studio, October 31st 1940. He is shown working on his painting *Upside Down Table and Mask.*

Kuniyoshi married his first wife, fellow New York art student Katherine Schimdt of Xenia, Ohio, in 1918 at Ogunquit. Schmidt paid a heavy price for her love: the marriage resulted in her losing her American citizenship due to the racist laws at the time. By 1930 they had moved from a small studio apartment to a newly built home on Ohayo Mountain Road in Woodstock, New York, where Kuniyoshi would spend the summer for the majority of his life. The couple would divorce soon after, and Kuniyoshi would go on to marry artist Sara Mazo in 1935 who he had met in Woodstock.

Outside of his own work as an artist, Kuniyoshi devoted much of his career to teaching others art. This was somewhat pragmatic: it was a more stable source of income. His approach to teaching was to engage students not just on matters of technique and other fundamentals, but also about their subject matter and the artistic process. Kuniyoshi especially emphasized getting to know students work, and where they were in their development artistically, when teaching them, whilst encouraging them to develop their own unique styles. Kuniyoshi taught both at Woodstock, and for the Art Students League as a traveling lecturer, giving back to the organization which was pivotal to his own education.

Katherine Schmidt & Yasuo Kuniyoshi, ca 1925 (Stonewall Studios)

Kuniyoshi was active in opposing the Japanese Empire during the 1930s and 1940s. He considered himself not only American, but also a patriot.

Yet he only faced more discrimination from the US Government. Executive Order 9066 unlawfully imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. This was euphemistically referred to as being “interned”. Entire families were arrested without due process and forced to leave their homes and businesses overnight. They would be held in these camps, without legal recourse, for the duration of World War Two. Most of their property, seized by the government was subsequently sold off, leaving them no communities to return to once the war had ended.

The order was opposed by civil rights leaders, many members of the government, and military intelligence personnel whose reports that Japanese-Americans posed no threat were ignored. It however only applied to the West Coast of the United States, where it was falsely claimed their proximity to military bases made them a threat to national security.

Kuniyoshi managed to escape the fate of so many other innocent Japanese-Americans merely due to living in New York state. Nonetheless, he still had his constitutional right violated when both his binoculars and his camera were confiscated from him, a significant loss for the painter. His bank accounts were also frozen, and he was prohibited from leaving the state. It was internment in all but name.

Kuniyoshi however was resilient. The injustices only redoubled his resolve as an artist. During this period, he remarked: ““First, we must be prepared to defend our own freedom as artists. Second, and most important of all, in spite of the grave threats looming all over the world, we must hold firmly with all those who believe in and encourage freedom of expression and democratic principles, so that—for them and with them—we may continue to create a great American art.”.

*Torture,* Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Lithograph, 1942

Kuniyoshi worked for the US government producing anti-fascist propaganda, targeting the Axis Powers of Japan, Italy, and Germany. He was also a prominent member of the resistance group, the Japanese-American Committee for Democracy, which sold war bonds, held blood drives, and cooperated with similar Chinese-American organizations to support the war effort against Japan.

*Circus Girl Resting,* Yauso Kuniyoshi, Oil on Canvas, 1925

Kuniyoshi’s artwork Circus Girl Resting (1925) was criticized by President Truman when it appeared in an exhibition held by the State Department in 1946 entitled Advancing America, alongside famous modernist painters such as Georgia O’Keefe. “If that’s art, I’m a Hottentot!” Truman declared. He subsequently had all the artists in the exhibition blacklisted from receiving Federal support.

Truman’s reaction was consistent with his general hostility towards high culture. He later would go on to write a scathing response to an unflattering review by music critic Paul Hume of his daughter’s singing in December 1950, in a moment of rage that was self-admittedly un-presidential. It is notable that Truman was one of the few modern presidents to never earn a college degree. Studies suggest that a lack of knowledge about art leads to a bias towards representational art and art made by those of a similar cultural background. Truman’s lacking education, which amongst other things limited his exposure to different kinds of art, played a role in why he reacted poorly to a cubist piece by an Asian-American.

This knee-jerk reaction was compounded by the racism Truman frequently expressed throughout his life, a reflection of his turn of the century Arkansas origin. Whilst Truman is well known for initiating the racial integration of the US military during his presidency, he is perhaps better judged by his previous and subsequent racist beliefs, including opposing mixed-race marriage and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

However, his reaction to the painting was not solely rooted in racism, but also sexism and misogyny: what he objected to was not only Kuniyoshi as an artist, but also his depiction of a woman who did not fit his parochial views of conventional attractiveness as a thing of beauty. These attitudes were echoed in the press of the day, with the Chicago Tribune describing the work as “a beefy female in a state of undress…leering at whoever stops to look”.

Throughout his life, Kuniyoshi struggled to counter such reactions. Amongst his fellow artists, he was a well-respected and successful colleague. He was even something of a socialite, effortlessly moving between different artistic spheres. However, the general public and government could not see past his ancestry, and to them he was an “alien enemy”.

*Festivities Ended,* Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Oil on Canvas, 1948

By the late 1940s, Kuniyoshi was nearing the end of his life, having sadly contracted cancer. In 1948, he was the first living artist to have a career retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, herself an accomplished sculptor.

In spite of failing health, Kuniyoshi nonetheless preserved through the cumbersome process of gaining US Citizenship, for which he was for the first time eligible thanks to changes in the law regarding Japanese-Americans. The process at the time involved first making a declaration to a Federal or State Judge that one intended to become a citizen and giving an oath to permanently reside in the US and renouncing all allegiance to other nations. With a period of two to seven years, an applicant could then petition for citizenship from the court and had to provide an affidavit from two witnesses who knew them personally proving a five-year residency and “good moral character”. The Judge then began an investigation into the applicant, at the end of which they would either accept or reject the application for citizenship and future citizens would take another oath.

*I Like It Here,* Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Oil on Canvas, 1945

This version of the process Kuniyoshi faced was initiated in 1906, with an act establishing The Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization and placing it in charge of such affairs. It was part of a larger white supremacist and eugenicist policy of the US government starting in the 1880s to restrict immigration, the effects of which are still felt to this day. The shift towards an anti-immigrant stance would ultimately culminate in the Immigration Act of 1924, which created the Border Patrol and set strict quotas on immigrants of various backgrounds and largely excluded Asian immigrants such as Kuniyoshi. The act would only be repealed in 1952, as a result of resistance from civil rights groups resisting McCarthy driven efforts to pass even more restrictive immigration laws, which resulted in calls for general immigration policy reform. The quota system itself, however, would live on until the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 abolished it.

Kuniyoshi died in 1952, his application for citizenship never having been accepted.

*South Berwick, Maine;* Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Lithograph, 1934

The Kuniyoshi print on display at Dunham Tavern depicts South Berwick, Maine, and was created in March of 1934. Kuniyoshi captures the most picturesque and historic elements of the town. The large group of buildings in the center foreground appears to be Kuniyohsi’s rendition of the Portsmouth Company Cotton Mills, a key industry in South Berwick which was known for its textile industry. The Mills were created in 1832, and were driven by the water power from the Salmon Falls River, which is just barely visible to the extreme left of the Kuniyoshi rendering. By 1934, only the Counting House portion of the mills remained, and today it is a museum and home to the town’s historical society. In the background, two prominent church spires emerge in the distance from amidst the trees. These belong to the present day First Federated Parish Church and First Baptist Churches respectively. The Baptist church, nearer of the two, was constructed in 1823 and has served the community continuously for 202 years. The further of the two churches was originally a Congregationalist Church, which merged in 1929 with the local Baptist-Episcopal Church, and was originally built in 1826, though it has been much remodeled. Neither in actual fact have the large tall spires Kuniyoshi depicts but rather are domed with tall thin spikes, suggesting either that he was using artistic license in this regard or else their spires have been significantly altered since.

Given that Kuniyoshi’s approach was often to work from memory rather than life, and that there is a Methodist Church located in nearby Berwick, Maine of a similar style to the ones in the print, the former seems more likely. The scale and composition of Kuniyoshi’s landscape are modified slightly from their actual layout to provide a more dramatic scene, whilst still remaining true to the actual landmarks of the place itself. A visitor to, or native of, South Berwick would certainly recognize the locale instantly. This is very much in line with the Ukiyo-e landscape prints from which Kuniyoshi drew inspiration, as they are not always literally accurate, but always include recognizable landmarks and if well rendered convey the feeling of a place dramatically.

*Bouquet & Stove,* Yasuo Kuniyoshi, American, Oil on Canvas, 1929

Yauso Kuniyoshi’s art, made in the face of discrimination and adversity, is a valuable part of Dunham Tavern’s heritage. The members of the Cleveland Print Makers Club, one of several organizations which came together to preserve Dunham Tavern, recognized Kuniyoshi as worthy of inclusion in their Print-A-Month Club’s offerings, not only because of his choice of quintessentially American subjects but also because he was a superior print artist of the period. Kuniyoshi experienced and navigated a complex relationship between his Japanese heritage and his American daily life, a journey shared with many Asian-Americans then and now. By finding ways to combine his artistic techniques and sensibilities informed by his heritage with a genuine love of America, Kuniyoshi’s art speaks deeply to that experience. Kuniyoshi’s amazing and successful career stands in contrast and critique of the discriminatory treatment he received at the hands of the US government. A staunchly loyal American, who worked to support it in a war against his own home country, and who was often chosen to represent the nation in artistic exhibitions, Kuniyoshi was nevertheless denied citizenship, had his civil rights curtailed due to racism, and faced ridicule by its President. Yet, in spite of all this, Yasuo Kuniyoshi was a significant American artist of the 20th century. He is a laudable example of quiet resistance to injustice through excellence.

Today Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s art remains a significant, if often overlooked, part of Asian American history. Its mere existence challenges our preconceptions and policies towards immigrants and minorities. It invites us to design a better set of policies than those which served only to restrict him in his chosen career, and to create a better nation than the one which failed to reward him for his talent and loyalty. Ultimately, whatever path lies ahead for us as a society, we are wise to follow Kuniyoshi’s own advice, given in his description of his 1948 painting Festivities Ended: “The world today is chaotic, but we must go on.”.