Studio: international art (52.1911)

The Present Condition of Art in Japan

"THREE FRIEND" OF THE
WINTER." BY ARAKI JIPPO

impossible to go over one place many times with
the bmsh as in oil painting, and as the work must
be done with the fewest strokes possible, a certain
importance must be attached to the subtle beauty
of brush-work. The cravings 01 the progressive
artists of Japan to-day are for a new manifestation,
retaining the best of their own style and adding the
best of the West.

Let us now consider oil painting. When our
artists acquire a certain skill in the manipulation
of oil-colours, all traces of independence and in-
dividuality seem to disappear from their work.
Somehow or other our oil paintings suggest a lack
of thought when compared with those seen at
a Western exhibition. Because of this lack of
thought the style seems to be empty disclosing
an undue susceptibility to the influence of others.
Consequently, our artists fail to show in oil their
own interpretation of the subject there is but

little personality in their work, which, moreover,
often has the appearance of being very laboured.
As each subject is capable of divers modes of
treatment, any one of which the artist may choose
to portray his own impression to the best advantage,
an exhibition with a wider scope of subject and
much more varied in point of style and treatment is
much to be desired.

The paintings exhibited by the members of the
Judging Committee, on the whole, stood out pro-
minently as regards merit from the average of those
that were submitted to them, those by Kanokogi
Takehiro, Wada Eisaku, Yoshida Hiroshi, and
Okada Saburosuke being especially worthy of praise.
It is curious to note that many of those who
received honours at the previous exhibition failed
this time to produce work up to the anticipated
standard, while there were found some excellent
pictures by hitherto comparatively unknown artists,

"THE PEACOCK KING" BY KIMURA BUSAN

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