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JOHNSON, KIRSCH HART, | THE SABURO HASEGAWA READERTHE SABURO HASEGAWA THE SABURO HASEGAWA READER Edited by MARK DEAN JOHNSON AND DAKIN HART with Associate Editor MATTHEW KIRSCH Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ahmanson • Murphy Imprint in Fine Arts. The Saburo Hasegawa Reader Frontispiece. Facsimile reproduction of Kiyoko Hasegawa’s poem, “We Remember,” 1976. Courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California. The Saburo Hasegawa Reader Edited by Mark Dean Johnson and Dakin Hart with Associate Editor Matthew Kirsch UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are sup- ported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York. The exhibition is made possible through the lead support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. Generous transportation assistance has been provided by ANA (All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd.). Major support has also been received from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. The exhibition is also supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-520-29899-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-520-97092-2 (Epub) LCCN: 2018061421 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018061421 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This reader is dedicated to the memory of Kawasaki Koichi, whose work has been and will continue to be the foundation stone of Saburo Hasegawa’s legacy. Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Brett Littman Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv Dakin Hart and Mark Dean Johnson Note on Translation xxiii Saburo Hasegawa: A Brief Biography xxv Dakin Hart and Mark Dean Johnson I. Artist of the Controlled Accident 1. The Controlled Accident 3 Saburo Hasegawa 2. The Paintings of Saburo Hasegawa 4 Paul Mills 3. Saburo Hasegawa: Master of the Controlled Accident 12 Alan W. Watts 4. Saburo Hasegawa as a Leader in Modern Art in Japan 18 Elise Grilli 5. Selected Writings by Saburo Hasegawa Article from the New York Times 23 Haniwa (unpublished poem) 24 vii viii Contents Notes on Painting (unpublished essay) 27 My House (reprinted essay) 29 II. Remembrances of Former Students 6. Remembrances of Former California College of Arts and Crafts Students Billy Al Bengston and Mel Strawn 35 III. Selected Letters to Isamu Noguchi 7. Selected Letters from Hasegawa to Isamu Noguchi, 1950–1951 41 IV. Selected Essays by Saburo Hasegawa 8. On Sesshu, 1934 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 53 9. Sesshu, 1948 (translated by Haruko Kohno) 60 10. The New Art, 1948 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 71 11. Conversations with Isamu Noguchi June 8 and 9, 1950 (translated by Yoriko Yamamoto and Mark Dean Johnson) 76 12. Days with Isamu Noguchi, 1950 (translated by Reiko Tomii) 80 13. Rambling Words on Song-Yuan Flower-and-Bird Painting, 1950 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 84 14. Mondrian: An Essay on the New Occident and the Old Orient, 1951 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 93 15. Arp: An Essay on the New Occident and the Old Orient, 1951 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 99 16. Letters from France and America: An Essay on the New Occident and the Old Orient, 1951 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 103 17. Making the Katsura Imperial Villa Abstract, 1951 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 111 18. Calligraphy and New Painting, 1952 (translated by Haruko Kohno) 114 19. New Photography and Painting, 1953 (translated by Haruko Kohno) 119 20. The Fate of American Artists, 1955 (translated by Gaku Kondo) 127 21. Present-Day American Abstract Art, 1955 (translated by Haruko Kohno) 133 22. Nationalism and Universalism in Japanese Art, 1955 (translated by Haruko Kohno) 139 Notes 161 Illustrations 1. Reproduction of floor-plan drawing accompanying “My House” 28 2. Noguchi and Hasegawa at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum exhibition, 1950 42 3. Isamu Noguchi, untitled drawing of Jomon figure, c. 1931 77 4. Photograph by Isamu Noguchi of Saburo Hasegawa, Japan, c. 1950–1953 104 5. Saburo Hasegawa New Year’s card to Isamu Noguchi, 1951 115 6. Saburo Hasegawa, Relaxing (Serenity), c. 1951 134 ix Preface Brett Littman Director, The Noguchi Museum For a teacher a student is necessary. —Isamu Noguchi, “Remembrance of Sabro Hasegawa,” c. 1976 (unpublished typescript), The Noguchi Museum Archive Isamu Noguchi, who arrived in Japan in May 1950—over thirty years after he was there as a child and twenty years after his last visit—returned as something of a perennial student, reacquainting himself with a culture irrevocably changed by the events of World War II. Although he would meet a new slate of friends and future collaborators from Japan’s fractured avant-garde, it was the painter, critic, and poet Saburo Hasegawa who had the greatest impact. Noguchi would later characterize Hasegawa as his teacher in a unpublished remembrance from 1976. Their associa- tion, cut short by Hasegawa’s death in 1957, was brief but resonant. The two traveled together to Nara, Kyoto, and elsewhere in Japan in search of elements that could unite its past and future aesthetic traditions and shape the country’s artistic future. Hasegawa, equally conversant in Sesshu and the art of Marcel Duchamp, acted as a unique guide for Noguchi and could clearly communicate to him such esoteric correspondences. Their mutually engaging conversations in this short period were important and life changing for both artists. In 1954, Hasegawa would visit the United States again and become an ambassador of the Japanese avant-garde and a lecturer on tea ceremony, Zen, and Daoism to intellectual and artistic circles in New York and later in San Francisco, where he lived until his death. As the new director of The Noguchi Museum, it is my hope, along with our partners at Yokohama Museum of Art and the Asian Art Museum of San Fran- cisco, that the exhibition Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa xi xii Preface in Postwar Japan will properly reintroduce Saburo Hasegawa to American and Japanese audiences and will reinsert him into the postwar and contemporary dia- logue. To that end, The Saburo Hasegawa Reader, a free-online and downloadable publication, offers English translations of his selected writings from Japanese art journals for the first time and presents an unpublished manuscript put together by the Oakland Museum in 1957. These texts suggest some facets of the artist who became Noguchi’s friend and teacher in 1950 when they together discussed so many topics in which they shared a profound interest. The early 1950s were a com- plicated time for American and Japanese relations, and these artists were at the forefront of establishing an international aesthetic that reflected aspects of each. We hope this glimpse into the period will a illuminate a dynamic moment for these two artists, and ultimately for the world of art they inhabited. Acknowledgments TheSaburo Haseagwa Reader accompanies the exhibition Changing and Unchang- ing Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan. The exhibition is made possible through the lead support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. Gen- erous transportation assistance has been provided by ANA (All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd.). Major support has also been received from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. The exhibi- tion is also supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Depart- ment of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. We are grateful to Yoriko Yamamoto for her help with translations and more generally for her involvement throughout the long development of this project. We also wish to recognize the support of Keiko Morita at the Saburo Hasegawa Memorial Gallery and Koichi Kawasaki’s more than forty years of scholarship on Hasegawa. Finally, we extend our deepest appreciation to the Terra Foundation for Ameri- can Art for their leadership support, and the University of California Press for being our publishing partner in making the ideas of Saburo Hasegawa accessible once again. xiii Introduction Dakin Hart and Mark Dean Johnson Saburo Hasegawa’s suddenly high-profile work and ideas resonated in a mid-twen- tieth-century American art world that had been largely leveled and restructured by the turmoil of World War II and its geopolitical aftermath.