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Post-War Avant-Gardes: Japan ↔ New York
Yayoi Kusuma & Yoko Ono
Feminist consciousness in Japan has drawn inspiration from women’s movements in other parts of the world and has been forged as part of the development of a specific form of modernity. How can the lives and works of Yayoi Kusama and Yoko Ono be understood through this local-global feminist relationship?
What were the social, historical conditions that laid the ground for their travels between Japan and New York? How did they struggle for recognition in both Japanese and US art worlds? Why have they been left out of histories of the New York and Japanese avant-garde art movement?
When and how have they been included in histories of feminist art?
In her book Into Performance, Midori Yoshimoto uses the term “intermedia” (not to be confused with mixed media or multi-media) to refer to art that blurs the border between art media and life media, that breaks down, in other words, distinctions between art and life. How do Yayoi Kusama and Yoko Ono do this in their art? How might their intermedia art be interpreted as feminist?
T 04.14
Presentation: Sage Rose (Wiki Education Foundation)
Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality, “Introduction”
Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, “Performing the Self: Yayoi Kusama and Her Ever-Expanding Universe”
Th 04.16
Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, “The Message Is the Medium: The Communication Art of Yoko Ono”
DUE: Visual Analysis Paper
 Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece, performance photograph, 1966 The ultimate goal for me is a situation in this society, where ordinary housewives visiting each other and waiting in the living room, will say, “I was just adding some circles to your beautiful de Kooning painting.” – Yoko Ono, 1967
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