Foujita: Painting and Photography

Tsuguharu Foujita was a leading Ecole de Paris painter, known worldwide for his signature milky white backgrounds. For this event, we recontextualize his art by exploring his relationship to photography, the exhibition’s keyword, from the following three perspectives:

1) A painter created by painting and photography

Foujita was widely featured in the media of his time, and it was his iconic self-portraits and widely reproduced photographic portraits that brought his look worldwide renown. One might call this a clever media strategy, one that successfully launched an unknown Paris-based painter from East Asia to the forefront of the global stage. Through these self-portrayals, we trace the process by which Foujita branded himself, crafting the image he wanted the world to see.

2) Painting created by photography

Like so many artists, Foujita used photography in his paintings. He used them in place of sketches to record the landscapes and people of the world during his travels, extracting and repurposing different details as needed in his numerous paintings. In this exhibition, we explore the fragments of photographs found in his paintings to examine Foujita’s process for using photography.

3) Photography created by a painter

Foujita owned several cameras, which he used to take thousands of photographs during his life. These Photographs are just as fascinating as his paintings, documenting glamourous Paris, singular Latin America, vibrant Beijing and Japan during his worldwide travels. This exhibition features a selection of his best snapshots from those housed in Japan and France, sharing yet another gateway into his unique sensibilities.

In these contexts, we examine the acts of painting and photography, tracing the trajectory of his gaze as it shifted between painting and photography to share Foujita’s charm from unexplored angles.

Foujita’s Media Strategy: Self-Branding in Painting and Photography

The bob cut, moustache, round glasses and eccentric fashion with a cat by his side—it’s easy to fall for Foujita’s image strategy. Images just as his friends knew him were endlessly reproduced in paintings and photographs, so in this exhibition, we’ll share the self-painted and photographed portraits that brought this iconic character renown around the world, tracing the painter’s pioneering media strategy for an age of image overload.

The Largest Collection of Foujita’s Finest Photographs

Experience a selection of Foujita’s finest photographs from among the thousands housed in Japan and France. With his beloved Leica camera in hand, Foujita allowed the curiosity of an amateur photographer to fuel him, his shutter capturing world travels in the 1930s in black and white, and 1950s Europe in vivid color, all snapshots certain to captivate hearts and minds. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in the largest collection ever of these must-see snapshots, admired even by professional photographers, set against the red brick walls of the Tokyo Station Gallery.

Uncovering Hidden Gems in Masterpieces: Paintings in the Context of Photography

Foujita reached for a camera when others grabbed pencils or charcoal, using photography as a part of his painting process. His lens captured nonchalant visual memos of chance encounters with people and scenery from his travels, pieces of which—people’s faces, clothing patterns, architecture or animals—he then extracted and recontextualized on canvas. While the photographs are works of art in their own right, for Foujita, they served as a practical part of his painting process, so in this exhibition, you’ll experience his masterpieces, themselves, alongside the photography used to make them, a context inviting fascinating analysis through a kind of two-in-one viewing experience.

• Prologue: The Age of the Gaze
• The Artist Created by Painting and Photography
• Painting Created by Photography
• Photography Created by the Painter
• Epilogue: Memories of the Gaze/Reminiscences of the Gaze