Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Toko Shinoda: Variations of Vermilion

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Toko Shinoda: Variations of Vermilion

by John McGee

Toko Shinoda, Japan’s grand dame of abstract painting, turned 90 this year. To celebrate, the Hara Museum held a show of nearly a quarter century of her work, from older lithographs to newer paintings. 

Like other refined Japanese women, Shinoda studied calligraphy when young. She was initially successful in the traditional art form but being strong-willed and independent, she soon tired of its restrictions and began to experiment. A two-year stay in 1950s New York introduced her to the abstract expressionists who were breaking free of their historical bounds in a similar way. She returned to Japan with even greater resolve.

Toko Shinoda, Inishie,
1986

Shinoda never gave up the elements of Japanese writing—ink, brush and paper—but she no longer scrawls tightly controlled kanji on skinny scrolls destined to hang in a tokonoma. She makes wall-filling abstractions in her unique vocabulary of dynamic brushstrokes. 

For the 16 paintings in this show (all but one were produced in the last three years) Shinoda used black sumi and cinnabar ink in asymmetrical compositions which balance empty space and three main types of strokes: long, thin slashes; sweeping angled wedges that start narrow and wet and spread wide into individual streaks as the brush runs out of ink; and short, overlapping, translucent layers painted with a broad brush. Underneath the activity, metal pigment grounds glow with a soft calm. 

At the top of the 120x80cm, vertically composed Quest (2000), for example, a nervous bundle of thin red twigs hangs over a patchwork block of gray, black and silver washes on a silver ground. It’s almost a landscape—a sketchy red cloud threatening a watery boulder below. 

The storm breaks in Voice of the Moon and Vermilion Moon (both 2000)—slivers of black lightning slice down the middle of both vertical compositions. High on the left side of Voice’s gold ground, a thin, horizontal white bar slides halfway across, dissipating some of the heat. Likewise, a filmy red box with irregular edges on the bottom right of the platinum ground Vermilion gives it ballast. 

The 23 lithographs span 1979-99, with the bulk from the ’80s. In general, they are about half the size of the paintings and are printed on white, blue or red paper. Though they preserve similar gestures, they lack the vitality of the paintings. However, Shinoda has coaxed a similar kind of energy from the printing medium. She builds translucent blocks from diaphanous layers of ink in Joy and Rapture (both 1991) and freezes etching bubbles in the center of Inspiration (from a 1986 series). A few pieces also take her full circle, incorporating traces of largely illegible hiragana and kanji characters. 

Though admired overseas, Shinoda has had only one previous solo show in a Japanese museum, perhaps confirming that Japan’s conservative, patriarchal society still largely ignores iconoclasts, especially when they are women.

This exhibition was held Mar-Apr 2003 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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