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In May 1950 Isamu Noguchi (1904–88) returned to Japan for his first visit in 20 years. He was, Noguchi said, seeking models for evolving the relationship between sculpture and society—having emerged from the war years with a profound desire to reorient his work “toward some purposeful social end.” The artist Saburo Hasegawa (1906–57) was a key figure for Noguchi during this period, making introductions to Japanese artists, philosophies, and material culture. Hasegawa, who had mingled with the Eu...

Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the United States before 1970. The publication features original essays by ten leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and over 400 reproductions of artwork, ephemera, and images of the artists. Aside from a few artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Yun Gee, artists of Asian ancestry have received inadeq...

Malvin Gray Johnson, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Max Weber were three New York City artists whose work was popularly assigned to the category of "racial art" in the interwar years of the twentieth century. The term was widely used by critics and the public at the time, and was an unexamined, unquestioned category for the work of non-whites (such as Johnson, an African American), non-Westerners (such as Kuniyoshi, a Japanese-born American), and ethnicized non-Christians (such as Weber, a Russian-born Je...

A beautifully produced celebration of Leo Amino’s sculptural adventures in light and color, richly complicating the story of abstraction in America The first catalog on the Japanese American artist Leo Amino (1911–89), this book intervenes in both histories of American sculpture and in histories of Asian American art. Amino's work provokes an exciting reconsideration of abstraction in the works of artists of color. Like fellow experimentalists Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt, Amino was initially...

Edited by Christopher K. Ho and Daisy Nam This collection of seventy-three letters written in 2020 captures an unprecedented moment in politics and society through the experiences of Asian-American artists, curators, educators, art historians, editors, writers, and designers. The form of the letter offers readers intimate insights into the complexities of Asian American experiences, moving beyond the model-minority myth. Chronicling everyday lives, dreams, rage, family histories, and cultural...

Artvoices Magazine 2008-2018 "Special Collection" features ground breaking articles mainly on emerging, neglected and under recognized artists of color, LGBTQ, mature and women.  Established in 2008 Artvoices Magazine was an important and necessary platform for artists and art professionals who were contributing to the landscape of contemporary art but were routinely left out of the conversation.  Artvoices Magazine 2008-2018 celebrates the individuals featured in our publication, many or whom...

Ngô tackles the legacy of French colonialism in Vietnam through its invasive introduction of foreign trees and grafts Huong Ngô (born 1979) is a Hong Kong–born artist based in Santa Barbara. Her conceptual, research-based practice often takes the form of installation, printmaking and nontraditional mediums. Ungrafting looks at histories of colonial violence, specifically French colonialism in Vietnam, as well as resistance movements, through image-making, translations and material investigation...

Born in Taiwan, Ang Lee is one of cinema's most versatile and daring directors. His ability to cut across cultural, national, and sexual boundaries has given him recognition in all corners of the world, the ability to work with complete artistic freedom whether inside or outside of Hollywood, and two Academy Awards for Best Director. He has won astounding critical acclaim for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which transformed the status of martial arts films across the globe, Brokeback Mou...

Best known as a painter and theater artist, Roger Shimomura explores his Japanese American identity through a vibrant and provocative stylistic combination of twentieth-century American pop art and traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints. In his printed works, one discovers a number of firsts, among them the artist's first examination of place; his first attempt to combat stereotypes by appropriating racist caricatures; and his first use of explicitly sexual imag...

A few short days has changed my status in this country, although I myself have not changed at all. On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953) awoke to find himself branded an enemy alien by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis forced Kuniyoshi, an emigre Japanese with a distinguished career in American art, to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity th...

In her radical exploration of cultural and personal identity, the writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha sought 'the roots of language before it is born on the tip of the tongue'. Her first book, the highly original postmodern text "Dictee", published in 1982, is considered a classic work of autobiography and is widely read by students internationally. This stunning selection of her uncollected and hitherto unpublished work at last brings together Cha's writings and text-based pieces with image...