Cows in Pasture
Yasuo Kuniyoshi
YASUO KUNIYOSHI, 1923. OIL ON CANVAS.
Born in a Year of the Cow, according the the Japanese calendar, it seemed obvious to Kuniyoshi that he would feel a kinship to these creatures. Invited to an art colony in Maine for the summer of 1920, surrounded by agricultural land and pastoral fields of grazing bovine, his paintings ‘usually began with cows’. Yet despite the ample opportunity, Kuniyoshi worked in the Japanese tradition of painting from memory, not from life. His subjects were a combination of visual recollection and idealistic imagination, resulting in subjects that were the ideals of their being, the platonic perfection of cows. This was combined with an influence of Cubism from the West that resulted in angular, geometric lines and reductions, producing images that bridged a cultural gap. Over the 1920s, he painted more than 60 works with cows as the central subjects. There is something in these works that speaks to the uniquely universal experience of agricultural, while still feeling reminiscent of deeply American way of life.