Episode 27: Yasuo Kuniyoshi ✰ ► a deep dive into the often overlooked artist ◄
We are back, this time getting lost in the weird and wonderful world of painter, photographer and printmaker Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s early works (Part 1) that feature wonky landscapes populated by dream logic, lumpy babies, curvaceous women, angular farm animals, and Japanese folk tales as well as American folk influences.
Yas’ early works became an amalgamation of his lifelong journey of self-identity, expertly blending sentimental past memories, like that of Japanese folktale Momotaro, with present feelings of fear and isolation due to the growing racism and tension he was experiencing on the daily.
As an Asian American immigrant, and like many other Nikkei, Yas found himself trapped somewhere in the middle - considered neither Japanese nor American enough - as relations between the US and Japan escalated.
We discuss “Little Joe with Cow” 1923, “Bad Dream” 1924, and “Self-Portrait as Golf Player” 1927.
Topics include shedding your husk, Weezer dance-a-thons, dual cup-holder LaZ boys, censoring comics and mermaids . . . and so much more!!
LA School of Art and Design c. 1910s
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, “Little Joe with Cow”, 1923. Oil on canvas.
Yasuo and his wife Katherine Schmidt c. 1920s
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, “Bad Dream”, 1924. Ink on paper 15.5 x 20.25 in.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, “Self-Portrait as a Golf Player”, 1925. Oil on canvas.
Yasuo’s self-portrait featured in “19 Americans” exhibition at the MOMA in 1930 beside a Marsden Hartley.
