Papers by Gennifer Weisenfeld
Japanese Studies, Dec 1, 1998
The Journal of Asian Studies, Nov 1, 1997
Modernism/modernity, 2014
Positions, Aug 1, 2000
JAPAN is indeed a "Land of Color, Culture and Charm." It is the land where East and West meet in ... more JAPAN is indeed a "Land of Color, Culture and Charm." It is the land where East and West meet in perfect accord, where the modern culture of the Occident harmonizes with Oriental civilization. Available throughout Japan are the latest travel facilities from automobile to airplane, plus home comfort and snug hotel accommodation, which assure the tourist a delightful trip at minimum expense of time and money.-Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways, advertisement, 1939
University of California Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2019
University of Hawaii Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2017
Design Issues, Oct 1, 2009
Despite the apparent divide between modernism's sometimes recondite aesthetic sensibilities and t... more Despite the apparent divide between modernism's sometimes recondite aesthetic sensibilities and the more didactic needs of corporate advertising and political propaganda, the modernist artistic movement was integral to the early development of modern Japanese promotional design, particularly in the sphere of photography. As major Japanese corporations emerged in the 1920s, it was clear that they were not just product manufacturers, but arbiters of taste who often worked in tandem with the state in directing consumer life and consumption habits through compelling visual strategies. In the 1930s, when daily life rationalization trends melded into increasingly broad-based social mobilization, these same modernist pictorial strategies began to be deployed concurrently in the dynamic realms of national publicity and propaganda (kokka senden or kokusaku senden) production, in both the graphic arts and exhibition display design. Through a close examination of the artistic production of some of the foremost commercial artists and photographers of the period, I will explore how the designers' integrative techniques exploited the affectivity of modernist manipulation of the image, effectively blurring the line between publicity and propaganda through the 1930s and beyond. The burgeoning field of commercial design was profoundly influential in the transformation of Japanese social and cultural practices in the prewar period because the construction of recognizable brand name products helped manufacturers forge a national consumer market by the late 1930s. Print advertisements for a range of newly emerging national Japanese corporations-Morinaga Confectionary Company, Matsushita Electric, and Kaō Soap among others-reveal the extensive use of modernist imagery to promote consumer products. 2 Modernist styles were popular among advertising executives and designers precisely because of their close associations with the modern, the new, the scientific, and the machine aesthetic. Not coincidentally the companies who employed modernist aesthetics were largely (although not exclusively) companies marketing new types of modern consumer products like Western
Getting the Picture, 2020
Transcultural Studies, 2007
Despite the increased border-crossings and hybridities that characterize contemporary art in a gl... more Despite the increased border-crossings and hybridities that characterize contemporary art in a globalizing world, there is a pronounced trend among contemporary Asian artists and the art professionals who promote them to deploy and reinscribe selected notions of "tradition" in an effort to carve out a distinct and marketable identity for their work in the transnational art market. While many contemporary Asian artists live and work between two, sometimes three, continents, often residing outside the country of their birth, they often still draw from a distinct repertoire of iconic cultural symbols from their "native" culture as a means of self-definition. Even the decidedly futuristic and technologized world of pop art fusions such as Takashi Murakami’s iconoclastic Superflat and Mariko Mori’s technicolor new-age spiritualism rest on a bedrock of these cultural forms. Such traditions, drawn from language, religion, aesthetics, and even sexual mores and erotica, a...
positions: asia critique, 2000
JAPAN is indeed a "Land of Color, Culture and Charm." It is the land where East and West meet in ... more JAPAN is indeed a "Land of Color, Culture and Charm." It is the land where East and West meet in perfect accord, where the modern culture of the Occident harmonizes with Oriental civilization. Available throughout Japan are the latest travel facilities from automobile to airplane, plus home comfort and snug hotel accommodation, which assure the tourist a delightful trip at minimum expense of time and money.-Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways, advertisement, 1939
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Papers by Gennifer Weisenfeld