TY - BOOK ID - 78645038 TI - Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan PY - 2018 SN - 1501715062 9781501715068 9781501715051 1501715054 9781501715044 1501715046 9781501715044 PB - Ithaca, NY DB - UniCat KW - Art, Japanese KW - Art and social action KW - Art KW - Art, Occidental KW - Art, Visual KW - Art, Western (Western countries) KW - Arts, Fine KW - Arts, Visual KW - Fine arts KW - Iconography KW - Occidental art KW - Visual arts KW - Western art (Western countries) KW - Arts KW - Aesthetics KW - Social action and art KW - Social action KW - Monoha (Group of artists) KW - History KW - Political aspects KW - J6008.90 KW - J4010 KW - J4000.90 KW - J6020 KW - Japan: Art and antiquities -- history -- postwar Shōwa (1945- ), Heisei period (1989- ), contemporary KW - Japan: Social sciences in general -- ideology, socio-political and socio-economic movements KW - Japan: Social history, history of civilization -- postwar Shōwa (1945- ), Heisei period (1989- ), contemporary KW - Japan: Art and antiquities -- Japanese aesthetics (Japonism) KW - relationship between art and politics in Japan, participatory cultural forms, Cold War, social realists on the radical left, liberal art education movement. KW - Art, Primitive UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78645038 AB - Justin Jesty's Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan reframes the history of art and its politics in Japan post-1945. This fascinating cultural history addresses our broad understanding of the immediate postwar era moving toward the Cold War and subsequent consolidations of political and cultural life. At the same time, Jesty delves into an examination of the relationship between art and politics that approaches art as a mode of intervention, but he moves beyond the idea that the artwork or artist unilaterally authors political significance to trace how creations and expressive acts may (or may not) actually engage the terms of shared meaning and value.Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan centers on a group of social realists on the radical left who hoped to wed their art with anti-capitalist and anti-war activism, a liberal art education movement whose focus on the child inspired innovation in documentary film, and a regional avant-garde group split between ambition and local loyalty. In each case, Jesty examines writings and artworks, together with the social movements they were a part of, to demonstrate how art-or more broadly, creative expression-became a medium for collectivity and social engagement. He reveals a shared if varied aspiration to create a culture founded in amateur-professional interaction, expanded access to the tools of public authorship, and dispersed and participatory cultural forms that intersected easily with progressive movements. Highlighting the transformational nature of the early postwar, Jesty deftly contrasts it with the relative stasis, consolidation, and homogenization of the 1960s. ER -