On View
Not on viewObject number2005.1
Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Artist
Arnold Newman
(American, 1918-2006)
Date1941
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsimage: 9 7/8 × 12 1/2 in. (25.1 × 31.8 cm)
sheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
sheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LinePermanent Collection Fund
Exhibition History"The Human Face: Portraits in Photography," KIA Long Gallery (May 5 - Aug. 28, 2007).
"Through the Photographer's Lens: O'Keeffe and Her Circle," KIA Galleries 2&5 (May 9 - Sept. 13, 2009).
"Framing Moments: Photography from KIA's Permanent Collection," KIA (Feb. 6 - May 16, 2021)Label TextIn 1941, Arnold Newman was a very young, but budding photographer in New York whose work quickly caught the eye of such influential figures as Alfred Stieglitz and Beaumont Newhall, the Museum of Modern Art’s first head of its photography department. Kuniyoshi, captured here in his 14th Street studio, was among the most established and popular painters/printmakers/writers in the New York art world. His leisurely pose, surrounded by objects from his life, appears ordinary to us today but when it was made, this type of “environmental portrait” was a completely new look in photography. Newman’s career would skyrocket for the next 60-plus years. He garnered nearly every award and commission possible in the art world, along with major world-wide exhibitions, acquisitions, and publications. Kuniyoshi emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 1906 wanting to be an artist, but he wanted to be an American citizen even more. However, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941, the government classified him as an enemy alien, froze his assets, and placed him under curfew and travel restrictions for the duration of World War II. When he died in 1953, his paperwork for citizenship was still in process.
[Framing Moments Exhibition, 2021]
