ARTHI 6C Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Japanese Americans, Sansei
May 15th, 2018
● Artists and World War II
○ Internment: Japanese-American artists
○ Displacement
○ Betterment
● Revisionism:
○ The re-interpretation of the historical record
○ Involves challenging traditional views and ideas
○ Adding in people/events who were present but remain overlooked (often
women and minority groups)
● Executive order 9066: signed Feb 19, 1942 by Franklin Roosevelt
○ The forced removal and incarceration of all people of Japanese descent on the
West Coast
● Terms for Japanese-Americans
○ Issei: someone born in Japan who emigrated to North and South America. (First
Generation)
○ Nisei: a person born in the U.s. whose parents were immigrants
○ Sansei: the child of at least one Nisei parent
● Hapa: is a term for a person of mixed ethnic heritage. The term originates in Hawaii
from the Hawaiian word for "half", "part", or "mixed". It is in itself loaned from the
English word "half". In Hawaii, the word refers to any person of mixed ethnic heritage,
regardless of the specific mixture.
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find more resources at oneclass.com
● Chiura Obata:
○ American and Issei artist
○ Suset, Watetoe Mach , 9
■ Placed into a camp for Earthquake victims-SF Earthquake disaster
■ Actually an image within an internment camp, treated as inmates who
might escape
■ No cameras allowed so the only way to document the experience is
through creative arts
■ He is trying to find a little piece of beauty in the camp-the fire-y sunset
○ First person of non-white descent to work in an art department in the West
coast-hired in 1932
○ Removed during the internment and loses his job as a tenure professor at
Berkeley during the time of his imprisonment
○ Starts art classes at the camp-starts a generation of people who might not have
exposure to the arts of both worlds-Japanese & American
○ Somebody with a hybrid artistic personality
○ Making beautiful watercolor on silk-Chiua Obata-Gad Cao
■ Manipulates the paint drips on silk to create distant landscape image
■ Honors the great natural creation in the United States
■ One of the first artists to document national parks in the form of water
color
○ Motee Cpess o the Cliffs of Pebble Beach
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find more resources at oneclass.com
■ Japanese qualities
■ Uses California landscape as inspiration
○ Ne Moo, Topaz
■ Bleak and disparring time captured by the vast landscape of nothingness
and the few people who are allowed free movement
○ Stuggle, Tail to Johso Peak, qigh Siea, Califoia, 9 colo oodcut
■ The struggle of hiking up a difficult trail
■ Personal struggle in the era to face intense discrimination-figure out
how to make that path forward
■ Semi-figurative quality, but also has abstractive qualities-no clear path,
there is recognizable qualities but still ambiguous
● Abstraction:
○ The freedom from representing something concrete, or pertaining directly to
reality
○ Absence of figure
○ Uses a visual language of line, colors and shapes to produce form
○ Can be non-representational, but can also be semi-representational
○ Non-figurative and semi-figurative
○ Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge-NON-Representational
○ Joseph Stella, Bridge---Semi-Representational
● Biomorphism
○ Patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature and living organisms
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Adding in people/events who were present but remain overlooked (often women and minority groups) Executive order 9066: signed feb 19, 1942 by franklin roosevelt. The forced removal and incarceration of all people of japanese descent on the. Issei: someone born in japan who emigrated to north and south america. (first. Nisei: a person born in the u. s. whose parents were immigrants. Sansei: the child of at least one nisei parent. Hapa: is a term for a person of mixed ethnic heritage. The term originates in hawaii from the hawaiian word for half, part, or mixed. In hawaii, the word refers to any person of mixed ethnic heritage, regardless of the specific mixture. Placed into a camp for earthquake victims-sf earthquake disaster. Actually an image within an internment camp, treated as inmates who might escape. No cameras allowed so the only way to document the experience is through creative arts.
