Remembering Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) 

@mariearlethskov

 

 

I. 

 

One of the reasons why I choose to follow the art historian and punk scholar Marie Arleth Skov on Instagram, is because she regularly posts amazing photographs that I've not seen before (but wish I had) of people I've never heard of before (but wish I had). 

 

For example, a couple of days ago she posted (a slightly cropped version) of this picture of the Japanese-French painter Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, taken in 1926, and looking decidedly dapper (if not dandyish indeed). 

 

I mean, I'm not a fan of the toothbrush moustache, the bowl cut hairstyle, or the windsor glasses, but I do like that shirt, those trousers, and the socks. 

 

 

II.

 

But who is (or was) Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita?

Born in born in 1886, in Ushigome (Tokyo), Foujita developed a childhood love of art and by the time he reached adolescence had already decided he wanted to become a painter and move to Paris. However, he was encouraged by his father to complete his studies in fine art in Japan before setting off to France.   

In 1905, Foujitta enrolled at what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, graduating in 1910. Having never lost sight of his original plan, he left for Paris in 1913, aged twenty-seven. His father agreed to support him for three years - after which, if he had failed to find success as an artist, it was agreed he would return home to Japan. 

Foujita settled in Montparnasse and rapidly became part of the Paris art scene. Wisely, whilst many other Japanese artists in the City of Light tended to keep to themselves and struggled to adjust to a European lifestyle, Foujita made a concerted effort to adapt to his new surroundings and improve his French language skills.  

Before long, Foujita was pals with Modigliani and visiting Picasso in his studio. The outbreak of war in 1914 made things tough for him (as for many others - not least of all those called up to fight at the front). But again, unlike most other Japanese artists, he decided not to return home; although he did relocate to London at the start of 1916. 

 

It was during his London period that Foujita dumped his wife and broke with his father. Returning to Paris in 1917, he found a new bride; the French model, painter, and former child prostitute Fernande Barrey. He also began to find success as an artist, exhibiting his work more widely and developing the style he would become well-known for.       

During the 1920s, he took advantage of both the strong art market and the thriving Paris nightlife, becoming a regular at all the popular bars and clubs, immediately recognisable due to his very distinctive look. In some ways, like his art, he was a perfect - and original - fusion of East and West. 

 

His nudes in particular were thought to be a harmonious meeting of Japanese and European aesthetics; see, for example, Nu Couché à la toile de Jouy (1922) - a beautiful and brilliant portrait of Kiki de Monparnasse and the ethereal - almost ghostly - quality of her white skin [1].   

All was going well until the tax man caught up with him. Unable to pay what he owed, he returned to Japan and hoped to make enough money there to clear his debts. His reception back on home soil was mixed, however. The public liked him, but the critics dismissed his work as mediocre and too heavily under the influence of Western art. 

 

So Foujita returned to Paris (via the US), before then travelling round South America in 1931.

 

By November 1932, he was in Mexico, where he stayed for seven months and, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, became aware of the social and political role that art could play; not that he decided to experiment with socialist realism, still preferring to paint cats and flowers rather than tractors and heroes of the Revolution. 

 

Having said that, after he returned to Japan in 1933, his work did become dominated by traditional (some might say old-fashioned, even reactionary) Japanese subjects, such as geisha, sumo wrestlers, and fishermen and, during the war years, Foujita was happy to become an official war artist and celebrate the courage of Japanese soldiers. Indeed, he became one of the nation's leading war artists and not only produced a prolific number of war paintings but oversaw special exhibits for members of the military.  

 

Following Japan's defeat, however, his reputation suffered; not only had he allowed his work to serve as propaganda for the Imperial Japanese military, but he refused to address accusations about his role as a war artist. It's probably a bit much to describe him as a fascist-imperialist, but his claims to have always been a pacifist at heart are highly suspect.  

Nevertheless, he was given a teaching post at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in the spring of 1949. Unhappy and bored in the USA, he grew increasingly nostalgic for his former life in Paris and so, the following year, Foujita moved back to France, where, he declared, he would remain for the rest of his life.  

 

In 1955, he renounced his Japanese nationality and became a French citizen. Then, in 1959, Foujita converted to Catholicism and was baptised in Reims Cathedral (the traditional site for the coronation of kings). It was at this point he took on the Christian name of Léonard and his art becomes overtly religious in character.

In 1962, Foujita conceived a plan to construct and decorate his own chapel, à la Matisse. This would be his final project. For a few months after its opening to the public in 1966, he was diagnosed with cancer and died in January 1968, aged 81. 

In 2003, his coffin was finally transferred to the small Romanesque chapel.  

 

 

III.

 

So, what then are we to make of Foujita ...? 

 

Shortly after his death, a fellow Japanese artist published an essay in which he was described as an insane narcissist who took rather too much pleasure in depicting the horrors of war. So I think it's fair to say that his reputation and legacy is complicated and controversial [2].

 

But, as Marie Arleth Skov says, what clothes and what a haircut! And anyone who loves cats can't be all bad. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Foujita seems to have had a thing for white skin; in 1922, he met Lucie Badoul, whom he called Youki, the Japanese word for snow, and she became one of his favourite models and, after divorcing Fernande, his third wife in 1929.  

[2] A successful retrospective of his work was held in 2006 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. And in France, Foujita has always remained a celebrated figure, much loved for his paintings of Parisian streetscapes, beautiful nudes, cats, and everyday objects. He is primarily associated with Les Années folles, however, in the French popular imagination. (Don't mention the War.)    

 

 

D. H. Lawrence and a Postcard from Paris

Erotic French postcard featuring a photo of 

Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) 

by Julian Mandel (c. 1920)

 

 

D. H. Lawrence opens his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity' with a liberal acknowledgement that "what is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another" [1]. It's a fine definition. 

 

However, it isn't long before he puts his reactionary hat back on and calls for the rigorous censorship of what he terms genuine pornography. Genuine pornography - which Lawrence distinguishes from the erotic aspect of art - is secretive in nature and almost always underworld. Secondly, it is an affront to sex and the human spirit:

 

"Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it. This is unpardonable. Take the very lowest instances, the picture post-cards sold underhand, by the underworld, in most cities. What I have seen of them have been of an ugliness to make you cry. The insult to the human body, the insult to a vital human relationship! Ugly and cheap they make the human nudity, ugly and degraded they make the sexual act, trivial and cheap and nasty." [2]         

 

Blimey! It makes you wonder what kind of cards Lawrence had been shown; as well as where, when, and by whom ...? As he'd been in Paris for a month shortly before writing his essay, it's possible that he was shown some saucy postcards by one of the bouquinistes plying their trade along the banks of the Seine. 

 

The amusing thing is that - just a few lines later - Lawrence feels obliged to acknowledge that "the human nudity of a great many modern people is just ugly and degraded, and the sexual act between modern people is too often the same, merely ugly and degrading". This would suggest that genuine pornography is actually a truthful representation of bodies and acts; a form of graphic realism that does away with the ideal fantasy of sex as something pure and pristine.   

 

There's a further irony in the fact that later in the same year - 1929 - thirteen of Lawrence's paintings would be seized by the police from the Warren Gallery in London and described by an octogenarian magistrate in pretty similar terms - gross, coarse, hideous, unlovely and obscene.

 

Now, if we think Frederick Mead's reaction unfair and slightly hysterical, then mayn't we also challenge Lawrence's view of French postcards ...?   

 

 

II.

The pornographic postcards with which Lawrence confesses at least a vague familiarity, have, for us, a kind of sepia-toned charm that makes one nostalgic for a time gone by. And, whether Lawrence wants to admit it or not, such images have a long, complex, and intimate relationship with the history of art and photography in which the human figure is so central. 

 

By the 1860s and '70s, nude photos were all the rage in Paris, though the authorities still had a degree of control over their production and circulation. However, thanks to a relaxation of censorship laws and new methods of photographic reproduction, the trade in (increasingly risqué) images in the form of carte postales grew dramatically during the following decades, both in the domestic market and internationally. 

 

Not only did street vendors offer such, but they were sold by wine merchants, café owners, tobacconists, barbers, and, of course, the second-hand booksellers who lined the Seine. As one commentator notes: "It is entirely possible that some two to four million nude photographs were in circulation by the end of the nineteenth century, many of them graphically pornographic ..." [3] 

 

Some cards featured anonymous prostitutes or working-class girls looking to make a little extra cash; others featured well-known models and performers, happy to pose au naturel or take part in a little faux lesbianism for the camera. Often sold in sets of up to a dozen, the cards were avidly collected (though, for obvious reasons, rarely posted in the mail). 

 

By the time of Lawrence's death in 1930, the heyday of the French postcard had pretty much come and gone and the 1940s and 50s saw the rise of the pin-up magazine, which, one suspects, Lawrence would not have approved of either.

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236.   

[2] Ibid., p. 241. 

       

[3] Raisa Rexer, 'The Naked Truth About French Postcards', on the Wonders and Marvels website, click here.

 

Readers interested in this topic might like to see Nigel Sadler's book Erotic Postcards of the Early Twentieth Century, (Amberley Publishing, 2015), in which he explores the changes in social attitudes, fashions, and technology through the medium of erotic postcards. 

Pornosurrealism: Autumn 1929

Ceci est une pipe

 

 

If there is one picture in which Surrealist art, nude photography, and porn all come together, it's a notorious image by Man Ray featuring his mistress and muse Kiki de Montparnasse displaying what Humbert Humbert would describe as the magic and might of her own soft mouth ... [1]

 

The picture - one of four sexually explicit images taken by Ray of himself and his lover - appeared in the avant-garde magazine Variétés, alongside equally explicit poetry written by Benjamin Péret and Louis Aragon (two pioneers of literary Surrealism).

 

The story goes that when editor of the Brussels-based magazine, Edouard Mesens, complained he was having trouble paying the printers, Aragon suggested a special issue should be published in order to increase sales. Keen to contribute, Péret argued that nothing is more special - or sells better - than sex and he volunteered to provide some risqué verse (about little girls lifting up their skirts and masturbating in the bushes, for example).

 

Aragon explained the idea to Ray, who excitedly agreed to provide some photos - which, conveniently, he just happened to have hidden in a drawer of his desk. As one commentator notes:

             

"Even with the faces cropped, Aragon knew who'd posed for them. The male body, hairy and pale, was obviously Ray's. And everyone in Montparnasse would recognise as Kiki's the mouth, lipsticked in a Cupid's bow, clamped around his penis ..." [2]

 

André Breton edited the special special edition and called it 1929. He divided the poetry into four sections, named after the seasons, and each was illustrated with a tipped-in photograph by Ray. The initial print run of 215 copies were intended for private sale in Paris, but most were seized at the border by the authorities and destroyed. 

 

The few copies that escaped the clutches of the French customs offcials were sold (under the counter) at hugely inflated prices to art lovers, for whom the work embodied the freedom, dark humour, and daring eroticism that defined Surrealism. It has since become a collectors item; as has the first English edition published (somewhat belatedly) in 1996 [3].       

 

Notes

 

[1] Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed. with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel Jr., (Vintage Books, 1991), p. 184. 

 

[2] John Baxter, 'Man Ray Laid Bare', Tate Magazine, issue 3 (Spring 2005): click here to read online.  

 

[3] 1929, by Benjamin Péret, Aragon, and Man Ray, (Alyscamps Press, 1996). Although the work is said to have been translated by Zoltan Lizot-Picon, it is actually a collaboration between the art scholar and critic Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno and André Breton's biographer Mark Polizzotti. 

      Whilst - predictably - HM Customs and Excise declared it pornographic and prohibited its importation into the UK, the book was, however, allowed to circulate freely within the United States as a work of art.