#KogaHarue

The Sea, (1929)

#KogaHarue

Simple Sad Story, (1930)

In "Umi" (海) aka "The Sea," Japanese artist Koga Harue (古賀春江) composes a vast, dreamlike tableau where machines, nature, and humans exist in uneasy harmony. The painting depicts a seaside scene, but closer inspection reveals a montage of unlikely companions: an airship floats above like a massive bird, while a submarine glides beneath the water, its inner workings exposed to view. Fish and sea creatures drift nearby, rendered in the same calm, measured style as industrial smokestacks that rise along the left edge. At the right, a woman in an old-school swimsuit raises one arm, her upright form echoed by the tower-like industrial plant across the canvas. According to MOMAT (the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), it's a contrast of things that fly (bird and airship) and things that swim (fish and submarine) as well as things that stand upright (the woman and the factory). We see multiple such pairs of "natural things" and "artificial things" that closely resemble each other. It's also interesting (to me) that the woman is reportedly based on a postcard of the famous Hollywood actress Gloria Swanson. Koga drew many of his motifs from mass media and scientific journals, including German popular-science magazines that circulated in Japan. Rather than narrating a linear story, he painted items like a collage, so meaning emerges through analogy and juxtaposition. The submarine’s cut-away transparency exemplifies what Koga described as his desire to “compensate for the incompleteness of reality and help direct reality toward a future that is complete.” Created in 1929, as Japan’s modernization accelerated, "Umi" has been read both as a poetic fascination with the romance of the machine and as a subtle premonition of the militarization to come. The painting resists fixed allegory. Its power lies in unsettling pairings of natural and artificial, human and industrial, visible and hidden for a vision of the modern world's dreams, contradictions, and fragile balances.

Umi (海 / The Sea) by Koga Harue / 古賀春江 (Japanese) - Oil on canvas / 1929 - National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan) #WomenInArt #art #BlueskyArt #ModernArt #JapaneseArt #KogaHarue #古賀春江 #MOMAT #東京国立近代美術館 #NationalMuseumofModernArtTokyo #Koga #artText #artwork #JapaneseArtist #surrealism #超現実主義

'Garden with Ume'
de Harue Koga

#art
#artgallery
#artcollectors
#haruekoga
#kogaharue
#gardenwithume