Inoue Yūichi is considered a revolutionary innovator of 20th century Japanese writing. He was one of the founding members of the Bokujinkai group (Society of Ink Workers) which sought an exchange with the international art scene after the end of the Second World War.
Yūichi deliberately focussed on individual Sino-Japanese characters, detached from their literary context (in this case Hana, (flower), see also Hill I., 1967) and challenged the boundaries of conventional calligraphy. While the highly concentrated work of the calligrapher was traditionally conducted at a table, Yūichi chose to work on the floor thus forming a connection with the dynamic painting technique of action painting. Using very powerful movements which involved the whole body, he used a large badger-hair brush to set the characters in ink on sheets of paper.
Inoue Yūichi (1916–1985)
Hana (Flower), 1967
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Lines against Limits)
Material: Drawing ink with adhesive on paper on wood
Size: 152 x 244 cm
Inv-Nr.: A_267
Keywords:
Previous owner: Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo; private collection, Asia; Anon. Sale, Christie’s, Hong Kong; private collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, Hong Kong, 2020
Inoue Yūichi was considered a revolutionary innovator of 20th century Japanese penmanship. Following the Japanese capitulation at the end of the Second World War, an avant-garde movement emerged in Japan which sought exchange with the international art scene. The group Bokujinkai (Society of Ink Workers) was founded in 1952 by Yūichi, Morita Shiryu and other writing artists and played a special role in this. Their magazine Bokubi (Ink Art) offered a forum for discussion of both new trends in Western art and Japanese and Chinese penmanship. They discussed the question of the future of calligraphy and its place in the current art world: ‘Calligraphic art, which has preserved a long tradition in a remote corner of the East, has finally come into view of the world. But will it resurge as a truly modern art, or will it be abandoned and self-destruct, after the progressive artists absorb it? We are now standing at this crossroad. Seeing this, we cannot lose so much as one day. […] First of all, we believe that liberating ourselves from old conventions is the first step towards calligraphy’s emancipation and its establishment as a modern art. Each of us might have a different opinion on how to do this, but we came together based on this fundamental attitude.’ [1]
Yūichi played a special role in the group in deliberately focussing on individual Sino-Japanese characters, detached from their literary context (in this case Hana, (flower), see also Hill I., 1967) and thus challenging the boundaries of conventional calligraphy. While the highly concentrated work of the calligrapher was traditionally conducted at a table, Yūichi chose to work on the floor thus forming a connection with the dynamic painting technique of action painting. Using very powerful movements which involved the whole body, he used a large badger-hair brush to set the characters in ink on sheets of paper. Yūichi’s approach transformed the symbol into an image – something he further emphasised by laminating the sheets of writing onto panel. The written word becomes an image according to Western understanding.
[1] Manifesto of the Bokujinkai Group, printed in: Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer: Bokujinkai: Japanese calligraphy and the postwar avant-garde, Leiden, Boston 2020, p. 47.
