TALK: Mingei and the Emergence of Japanese Folk-Modernism, 1925-1955
Kim Brandt (History, Columbia University)
Friday, May 9 / 4:00 PM
Marine Science Institute Auditorium
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Mingei, or “folk-craft,” is in Japan today a well-known category of artistic production, a widely diffused type of commodity, and a seamless part of national cultural identity. Yet the word itself – along with the idea that the everyday pottery or furnishings of the pre-industrial farming household had great aesthetic value – was new in the 1920s. Between 1925 and 1955, various groups within Japanese society worked to define and redefine mingei. By the 1950s the result was a successful and highly marketable new articulation of Japanese national style. Kim Brandt is associate professor of Japanese history at Columbia University and the author of Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan (Duke University Press, 2007).
Sponsored by the IHC’s East Asian Cultures RFG, Japanese Arts & Globalizations MRG, and the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.
