Bokujinkai

Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde (Brill, 2020)

Author Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer discusses calligraphy, abstraction, and global contemporary art in postwar Japan.

key themes

• Calligraphy, brush arts, and word-and-image
• Global modernism and global contemporary art
• Transcultural and transnational approaches
• Abstract art and abstract painting
• Postwar avant-garde
• Modernism

further reading

• Winther-Tamaki, Bert. Art in the encounter of nations: Japanese and American artists in the early postwar years. University of Hawaii Press, 2001.
• Bogdanova-Kummer, Eugenia. “Ink Splashes on Camera: Calligraphy, Action Painting, and Mass Media in Postwar Japan.” Modernism/modernity 27, no. 2 (2020): 299-321.
• Bogdanova-Kummer, Eugenia. “Contested Comparisons: Franz Kline and Japanese Calligraphy.” Tate Papers (2017).

Exhibitions and Collections

• Bokubi
• The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, Guggenheim