"We Asians"? Modernity, visual art exhibitions, and East Asia

Boundary 2

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 91-126

  Wee, C J W L ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77952086697     PISSN: 01903659     EISSN: 15272141     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01903659-2009-038     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. The expression was first used in 1962 by Kaname Akamatsu ("A Historical Pattern of Economic Growth in Developing Countries," Journal of Developing Economies 1, no. 1 [March-August 1962]: 3-25) to describe the life cycle of industries during economic development, during which there is the shifting of industries from more advanced coun-tries to those catching up from behind. One example of this is the shifting of textile production from Japan to the Asian Newly Industrializing Countries, and then further to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries and China
2. This is a postwar development. Meiji-era Japanese Asianists, for instance, were generally not interested in areas south of China, and during the 1930s East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere period, Northeast Asia was the main focus in imagining Asia, as Asianist ideals depended on Confucianism; non-Confucian societies, in contrast, needed "guidance." A certain superior attitude toward Southeast Asia, it has been noted, continued in Japan's postwar "return" to Asia as part of its politics of economic productivity (J. Victor Kosch- mann, "Asianism's Legacy," in Network Power: Japan and Asia, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997])
3. Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008)
4. Mahbubani was a noted "Asian values" spokesman and was called, satirically, "the scourge of the West" ("Asian Values: The Scourge of the West," Economist, April 22, 1995, 24)
5. Patrick Flores, Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS [National University of Singapore] Museum, 2008), 25
6. See "Intersections: Issues in Contemporary Art," ed. Joan Kee, special issue, positions: east asia cultures critique 12, no. 3 (Winter 2004)
7. and Caroline Turner, ed., Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific (St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1993)
8. Apinan Poshyananda, "Asian Art and the New Millennium: From Glocalism to Techno- Shamanism," in International Symposium 1999: "Asian Art: Prospects for the Future" Report, ed. Furuichi Yasuko and Hoashi Aki (Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Center, 2000), 165
9. For the claims made for "Asian democracy," see, for example, Robert Bartley et al., Democracy and Capitalism: Asian and American Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993)
10. Khoo Boo Teik, Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995)
11. Mahathir and Ishihara teamed up to author The Voice of Asia, trans. Frank Baldwin (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1995)
12. the title seems a mild translation of the original "No" to ieru Ajia [The Asia That Can Say "No" (1994)]. Here, Ishihara, known for his anti-foreign worker xenophobia, states that the claim that Japan is a culturally homogeneous society is wrong, for it is a mix of various Asian nations-a stance revised from an earlier position on Japan being a homogeneous nation-state, made here in order to claim Asian commonality
13. C. J. W.-L. Wee, The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), 15-19
14. Arif Dirlik, "Asia Pacific Studies in an Age of Global Modernity," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (June 2005): 158
15. Slavoj Žižek asserts that "the ideal of this global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude which... treats each local culture the way the colonizer treats colonized people-as 'natives' whose mores are carefully studied and respected⋯ [In any case,] the strain of particular roots is the phantasmatic screen which conceals the fact that the subject['s]⋯true position is the void [of capitalist] universality" ("Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," New Left Review 225 [1997]: 44)
16. Naoko Munakata, "Has Politics Caught Up with Markets? In Search of East Asian Regionalism," in Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006)
17. For example, Ian Buruma, "What Happened to the Asian Century?" New York Times, December 29, 1999, available at http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/ 29/opinion/what-happened-to-the-asian-century.html?pagewanted=1 (accessed December 30, 1999)
18. The misfortunes of the emerging Southeast Asian economies are more than balanced by the increased economic presence of China, and many observers, such as former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, replaced the Little Tigers, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, with China in their view of Asia. See Keating, "The American Era Is Over: The Asian Century Is Dawning," The Age (Melbourne), October 16, 2003, available at http://www.theage.com.au/ articles/2003/10/15/1065917476292.html?from=storyrhs
19. Wang Hui, "The Politics of Imagining Asia: A Genealogical Analysis," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (March 2007): 14
20. Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Trans- nationalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 1-50
21. Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima, Postindustrial East Asian Cities: Innovation for Growth (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press; and Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006), 2
22. Yusuf and Nabeshima, Postindustrial East Asian Cities, 29. Tokyo, of course, is a premier world city, and, in Peter J. Taylor, D. R. F. Walker, and J. V. Beaverstock's account, Singapore and Hong Kong are part of an "alpha world city" band, though at a lower level within the band, under London, Paris, Tokyo, and New York
23. Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Milan occupy the same level as Singapore within that premium band ("Firms and Their Global Service Networks," in Global Networks, Linked Cities, ed. Saskia Sassen [New York: Routledge, 2002], 102)
24. Göran Therborn, "Asia and Europe in the World: Locations in the Global Dynamics," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (2002): 287-307
25. Nigel Harris, The End of the Third World: Newly Industrializing Countries and the Decline of an Ideology (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987)
26. and Soogil Young, "East Asia as a Regional Force for Globalism," in Regional Integration and the Global Trading System, ed. Kym Anderson and Richard Blackhurst (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).It was also conveniently ignored that industrial policy and state direction existed to varying degrees in the Asian NICs, though the research shows that the key regional "integrators" have been corporations
27. James E. Cronin, The World the Cold War Made: Order, Chaos, and the Return of History (New York: Routledge, 1996), 252
28. By contrast, the opening ceremony of the [2008] Beijing Olympics, like the skyscrapers of Shanghai, show us how authoritarian capitalism already stakes that claim [to be liberal capitalism's alternative]" ("Another 9/11 Isn't Our Worst Problem," Guardian Weekly, September 19, 2008, 20)
29. Dieter Ernst, "Searching for a New Role in East Asian Regionalization: Japanese Production Networks in the Electronic Industry," in Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006)
30. Mike Douglas, "The 'New' Tokyo Story: Restructuring Space and the Struggle for Place in a World City," in Japanese Cities in the World Economy, ed. Kuniko Fujita and Richard Child Hill (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993)
31. Yusuf and Nabeshima, Postindustrial East Asian Cities, 31
32. Peter J. Katzenstein, "East Asia-Beyond Japan," in Beyond Japan, 33
33. Monetary Authority of Singapore, Economic Policy Department, Macroeconomic Review 2, no. 1 (January 2003): 65
34. Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London: Verso, 2002), 6
35. Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 211
36. Fredric Jameson sees the move from one to the other as a significant change, indicating not only different power and economic relations from an older colonial period but also a different politics ("Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue," in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998])
37. Munakata, "Has Politics Caught Up with Markets?" 157
38. Civilization is like an epidemic of measles" ("On De-Asianization by Fukuzawa Yukichi," trans. Okada Hidehiro, in The Meiji Japan through Contemporary Sources, vol. 3 [Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1969-1972], 129)
39. "It is in Asia that the ethical world of political consciousness first arose. Asia is the continent of sunrise and of origins in general" (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H. B. Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], 190)
40. Sun Ge, "How Does Asia Mean? (Part II)," trans. Hui Shiu-Lun and Lau Kinchi, Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 326-27; 330-31
41. and Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization, 6-11
42. Sun Ge notes that "the question of Asia must not merely be pursued within the framework defined by the dichotomy of East versus West, but also be considered as dealing with the internal problems in the Asian region" ("How Does Asia Mean? [Part I]," trans. Hui Shiu-Lun and Lau Kinchi, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 [2000]: 14)
43. see also Katzenstein and Shiraishi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia
44. Melissa Chiu, "Asian Contemporary Art: An Introduction," in Grove Art Online, http://www.groveart.com/grove-owned/art/asiancontintro.htm (accessed January 19, 2008)
45. See George Yudice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), for a broader discussion of culture as a resource
46. and Mark W. Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002)
47. Kobena Mercer, introduction to Cosmopolitan Modernism: Annotating Art's Histories, ed. Kobena Mercer (London: Institute of International Visual Arts and MIT Press, 2005), 7
48. Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 11
49. Jean-Hubert Martin, "Preface," in Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee national d'art moderne, [and] La Grand Halle, La Villette, Magiciens de la Terre, exhibition catalog (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1989), 8
50. Tatehata Akira, "A Trojan Horse? Multiculturalism in International Art Exhibitions," in International Symposium 2002: "Asia in Transition: Representation and Identity" Report, ed. Furuichi Yasuko and Hoashi Aki (Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Center, 2003), 310. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
51. Modernist art here repeats an anthropological phenomenon as examined by Johannes Fabian in his important Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)
52. Tadashi Uchino, "Presenter Interview: Connecting the Theater People of Asia; The Japan Foundation International Collaboration Program" (interview of the Japan Foundation's Performing Arts Division coordinator, Hata Yuki), available at http://performingarts.jp/E/pre-interview/0711/1.html
53. The Japan Foundation symposia brought to Tokyo notable art critics and historians, and also cultural intellectuals from the region, including Australia; the most recent symposium was "Count 10 Before You Say Asia," held in Tokyo on November 22-23, 2008
54. The symposium proceedings have been published as International Symposium 2008: Count 10 Before You Say Asia: Asian Art After Postmodernism, ed. Furuichi Yasuko and Hoashi Aki (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 2009)
55. Takashi Shiraishi, "Japan and Southeast Asia," in Network Power, 184-86
56. The "rise of China⋯ diverts Japanese attention from ASEAN [as has] increasing contact between Japan and South Korea [combined with] declining financial support from public and private sectors in Japan for this relationship;and fragile institutional infrastructure to advance the effort" (Yamamoto Tadashi and Carolina Hernandez, "Social and Cultural Dimensions in East Asian Community Building," in ASEAN-Japan Cooperation: A Foundation for East Asian Community, ed. Japan Center for International Exchange [Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2003], 172)
57. Flores, Past Peripheral, 31n35
58. "A Short Chronology of Modernism in East Asia," in "The Road to Venice: Asia-Pacific at the Biennale," special issue, ART iT (Spring/Summer 2007): 123
59. According to curator Kamiya Yukie: "The original word was invented by the Japa nese secretariat to translate the German taxonomical word for the Vienna Expo in 1873. All three countries [Japan, China, and Korea] have been using this Japanese invention" ("Communicative Approach, from Asia," in Japan Foundation Asia Center, Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art, ed. Kataoka Mami, exhibition catalog [Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Center, 2002], 133)
60. Kamiya's source is the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Kataru Genzai Katarareru Kako: Nihon no Bijutsushigaku 100-nen [The Present That Tells, the Past That Is Told of: One Hundred Years of Art History in Japan], report of the International Symposium on the Preservation of Cultural Property, Tokyo, Japan, 1997 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1999), 317
61. Rasheed Araeen, the British-Asian artist, critic, and founder of the arts journal Third Text, has exhorted African art historians to work and to grasp the historical significance of African modernism: "It would be naive to expect that this job should have been done by the West's own critics or historians
62. How could they, without not only disturbing their perception of the other but also demolishing their very philosophical framework of Eurocentric modern art history on which their power is based?" ("An Open Letter to African Thinkers, Theorists, and Art Historians," Documenta Magazine, no. 1, "Modernity?" [2007], 129)
63. Jeannine Tang, "Spectacle's Politics and the Singapore Biennale," Journal of Visual Culture 6, no. 3 (2007): 365-77
64. and C. J. W.-L. Wee, "Global Art, Globalised Art and 'Belief,'" Broadsheet: Contemporary Visual Arts and Culture 35, no. 4 (December 2006-February 2007): 214-19
65. Iftikhar Dadi, "Globalization and Transnational Modernism," in Globalization and Art, ed. James Elkins, Alice Kim, and Zhivka Valiavicharska (University Park: Penn State University Press, forthcoming)
66. Toshihiro Kennoki, acknowledgment, in Fukuoka Art Museum, Modern Asian Art: India, China & Japan, exhibition catalog (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1979), 6
67. Kazuma Shinto, acknowledgment, in Modern Asian Art, 4
68. "The city has the geographical advantage of being close to the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese Continent and from the ancient times, has been serving as a gateway to import Asian culture" (About Fukuoka City: A Quick Guide, available at http://www.city.fukuoka.jp/profile/index-e.html)
69. Laxmi P. Sihare, "100 Years of Modern Indian Art," in Modern Asian Art, 22, 23. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
70. Michiaki Kawakita, "Modern Japanese Art," in Modern Asian Art, 38. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
71. Exhibition Organization of the People's Republic of China, "Outline of the Development of Modern and Contemporary Art in the People's Republic of China," in Modern Asian Art, 33. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
72. Xu Hong, "Chinese Art," in Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Caroline Turner (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005)
73. Shinji Koike, "Asian Artists Exhibition Part I: 'Modern Asian Art-India, China & Japan,'" in Modern Asian Art, 11. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
74. Kakasu (Kakuzo) Okakura, The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (London: J. Murray, 1903), 1
75. Okakura's romantic and high-cultural version of art is a counterpoint against the new commercial-industrial modernity. He tells a U.S. audience in a talk, "You should remember, however, that our wholesale adoption of your methods of life and culture was not purely a matter of choice but of necessity. The word 'modernization' means the occiden- talization of the world. The map of Asia will reveal the dismal fate of the ancient civilizations that have succumbed to the spell of industrialism, commercialism, imperialism, and what not, which the modern spirit has cast over them" (Okakura Kakuzo, The Heart of Heaven: Being a Collection of Writings Hitherto Unpublished in Book Form [Tokyo: Nippon-Bijutsuin, 1922], 199)
76. Shigeru Aoki, acknowledgment, in Fukuoka Art Museum, Festival: Contemporary Asian Art Show, 1980, exhibition catalog (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1980), 7. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
77. Mikio Soejima, "Message: Cultural Identities in Asian Art," in Fukuoka Art Museum, 2nd Asian Art Show, Fukuoka, exhibition catalog (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1985), 10. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
78. Furuichi Yasuko, "Asia: The Possibility of a Collaborative Space-Under Construction Project," in Under Construction, 14-15. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
79. Kataoka Mami, "Asia's Art Map" in Under Construction, 20-21. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
80. Takeuchi Yoshimi, "Asia as Method," in What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yo- shimi, ed. and trans. Richard F. Calichman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 13. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
81. For the differences and disagreements between Takeuchi and other scholars, particularly the ethnologist and comparative civilizations scholar Umesao Tadao, see Sun Ge, "How Does Asia Mean? (Part I)" 36-42
82. Kim Sunjung, "In Search of an Oasis," in Under Construction, 141
83. Compare Dutch architect-critic Rem Koolhaas's put-down of the East Asian forms of urbanism he dislikes: "Maybe this lack of geometry is typically Asian: Tokyo is the eternal example" ("Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis....or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa," in Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, ed. Jennifer Sigler (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1995), 1075
84. Pi Li, "Fantasia: An Imagination toward the Daily Life," in Under Construction, 149, 150
85. Kamiya, "Communicative Approach," 133
86. Asmudjo Jono Irianto, "Asia Now: Under Construction?" in Under Construction, 93. Subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only
87. The quotation is from Hans Belting, "Art and Art History in the New Museum: The Search for a New Identity," in Painting in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, ed. David Moss (London: Academy Editions, 1996), 34