Primitivisme in Japanese Modern Art: In the Case of Taro Okamoto

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Taro Okamoto received his elementary art education in Paris from 1930 to 1940. Afterreturning to Japan, he became a leader of contemporary art in Japan. Okamoto should beregarded as avant-garde because he reconstructed old-fashioned Japanese artistic circles withhis innovative ideas. However, his thoughts were ambivalent rather than progressive. This isexemplified by his discovery of the beauty of Jomon wares. Until Okamoto noted the estheticvalue, they were considered archeological samples, not art. His discovery was an epoch-makingevent. The root of Okamoto's original sense of beauty lied in Primitivisme. While he wasin Paris in the 1930s, Primitivisme, the Western reflection on the Other, was the influentialthinking of the day. Extraordinary as a Japanese student, Okamoto did not solely devote himselfto painting but also studied anthropology under Mauss and assimilated the Primitivisme. WhenOkamoto cut his way in the ruins of Japanese artistic circles with his novel ideas, his rhetoricwas that of Primitivisme. He wished to reset and regenerate Japanese art. For this purpose,he grafted Primitivisme onto Japanese modern art. At the beginning of the century, Westernavant-garde co-opted Black African art within the Western beauty to reactivate Europeantradition because Black Africa was thought to be the start of human evolution. Similarly,Okamoto recognized Jomon wares as the starting point of Japanese art history for regeneratingJapanese tradition.