Book Review: Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita, by Phyllis Birnbaum

Each Wednesday, I review a French-related book. The subject varies, from culture to film to memoir to biography to whatever the heck I feel like reading that week and whatever strikes my fancy at the library or bookshop.

Regular readers of My Inner French Girl know that I lived in Japan for a time after college and remain fascinated by all things Japanese. Despite being Asian myself (Note to the few folks out there who still think the word Oriental is appropriate to be used to describe people: it’s not. Unless you’re referring to a rug or — maaaaybe – a type of cuisine, leave it out of your vocab, ‘kay?), I continue to harbor a fascination with the culture, part of which I recognize is just my way of romanticizing an ethnic group despite the fact that I should really know better.

It came as a big surprise to me to discover this book at the library a few weeks ago. Although I don’t lay any claims to possessing any but a basic knowledge of European art history in the prewar years, I’m certainly familiar with most of the names attached to that illustrious period in Paris history when it seemed that most of the world’s most promising artists were drawn to the city’s reputation as a haven of creativity. Why had I not even heard of this artist, who would have stood out among the great white masters of Europe with his funky dress, imaginative canvasses, and certainly his most un-Western of names? Given my keen interest in the Japanese-French connection, as well as my interest in art history, how could I have missed this most French of all Japanese artists?

The full title is Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita, The Artist Caught Between East and West (2006), written by journalist/translator/biographer/novelist Phyllis Birnbaum. A biography of the celebrated Japanese artist Foujita (Fujita Tsuguharu), a flamboyant womanizer and ebullient personality who counted among his friends Modigliani and Picasso, it perfectly captures the emotional and physical strain of any immigrant struggling to gain acceptance in a foreign culture, while attempting to provide a satisfactory answer as to why he isn’t better known outside of Japan. (It seems even France, the country in which his art found full flower and where he eventually died, has largely forgotten him.) Foujita certainly wasn’t the only Japanese artist in Paris during the interwar period, but he was definitely the one who made the greatest impression, if not the most lasting. Here, Birnbaum outlines the enormous effort and sacrifices he had to make in order to find his place among the many luminous greats who competed with him to gain the attention of Europe’s most fickle art audience.

Foujita represents one of those dreamy artists who can probably relate to the oft-repeated bumper sticker slogan, I wasn’t born in ______, but I got here as fast as I could. The son of a prominent Japanese military officer and an heir to a proud samurai legacy, Foujita wasted very little time in hustling over to the city that at the time reigned supreme as the center of the art world. Birnbaum spends very little time discussing his pre-France life, perhaps hampered by the lack of reliable resource material to fill in the many gaps she leaves in the narrative. She does provide a fairly good analysis of the influence that the Parisian art scene had on Japanese artists in general and the thrall it held for those longing to break free from the traditional restraints on Japanese art. Even today, with the number of Japanese traveling abroad reaching record heights and the Internet’s global reach extending to the remotest corner of Japan, many Japanese art collectors cling to the traditions of old, displaying scrolls and canvasses filled with the familiar thick, black strokes of sumi ink and conspicuous in their abundant use of stark white space.

Foujita, of course, would have been trained in these classic art forms while in school in Tokyo, but fortunately for his future success, he came of age at a time when Western-style oil paintings were taking the country by storm. The 1868 Meiji Restoration had thrown open the doors of Japanese isolation to the wider world, and it wasn’t long before the bright colors and radiant images of Impressionist art thrust their way into the consciousness of Japan’s budding artists. A dazzled Foujita, already establishing a reputation for himself at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts as a “difficult” student, soon realized that Paris would be the perfect place for a hungry, passionate artist like himself, one who longed for just the right environment in which to express the complicated thoughts and ideas aching to burst forth from his prolific brush.

Birnbaum is at her best when describing Foujita’s long and happy years in Paris, which began in 1913 when he sailed to France at the age of 27. While not an artist herself, she understands the creative impulse that can enslave a person to her art and the consequences — mostly bad, occasionally good — it can have on those dwelling in the artist’s inner circle. Foujita isn’t immune to these indulgences — he plows through five wives, the last of whom remains a steadfast and sometimes overly zealous guardian of his art and biography — but for someone who was known for traipsing around Paris in Greek costumes and growing his hair out in a Cartesian monk-like bob known as kappa, his life is surprisingly restrained compared to the tragic melodrama that comprised the lives of many of his contemporaries like Modigliani. Unlike many of the artists who flocked to Paris during those golden years, Foujita actually enjoyed tremendous financial and critical success, particularly after he discovered the technique for which he is most known: the extraordinary, ivory-like whiteness in his many of his Paris paintings that few, if any, have been able to duplicate.

Still, even an artist as well-respected as Foujita couldn’t escape his origins, and even the most sophisticated Parisian critic couldn’t help but conflate his art with his ethnicity. While the works of van Gogh (who was Dutch), Picasso (Spanish) and Modigliani (Italian) rightfully stand on their own, Foujita’s were often scrutinized with an eye towards his Japanese heritage. Despite his extensive Western training (even at the Tokyo School) and his hearty embrace of French culture, critics frequently accused him of abandoning his Japanese roots if he attempted to create art that strayed from the japonisme that was still all the rage. Van Gogh was wildly praised for his own experiments in Japanese-style art, but Foujita wasn’t allowed the same independence. The irony is that his Japanese compatriots viewed his Japanese-influenced techniques as being primitive and unoriginal and often accused him of peddling to Western stereotypes of “Orientalism” to sell his art.

His years in Paris as the darling of the art world and a favorite at parties for his wild antics and even wilder costumes are fully detailed here, interspersed with equally absorbing episodes of productive art-making. Birnbaum reaches deep into the archives and makes good use of her Japanese-language skills to unearth details about Foujita’s personal and professional lives. Foujita’s widow may hold his legacy in an iron grip, but somehow Birnbaum manages to piece together a credible and frequently satisfying account of a life that was nothing if not exciting. Later on, the story takes on a darker, more sinister mood, as Foujita and his fifth and last wife are forced to return to Japan just before the Germans storm Paris. The celebrated artist throws himself into his new task as a commissioned war artist for the Japanese Imperial Army, a role which many in Japan now castigate him for, and which ultimately casts a menacing shadow over the remaining years of his life.

One minor irritant of this book is Birnbaum’s frequent insertion of herself in the narrative. I prefer my biographies to be straightforward — but well-written — stories of the subject and her life, and would rather not indulge the author in her comments about what she ate or drank with her interviewees in the course of doing research for the book. The difficulties in conducting research on a subject as well-traveled as Foujita and his art are understandable and probably interesting in themselves, but their description can be jarring in a story that takes place at a time far removed from the present. Inserting oneself into the story only confuses the reader, particularly if the latter would prefer to remain firmly in the time period during which the subject lived.

In addition, Birnbaum employs a non-linear narrative when telling Foujita’s story, occasionally jumping forward in time when fleshing out the details of a past episode, or perhaps inserting a too-lengthy biography of a tangential character. There’s plenty of juicy gossip about some of the more colorful characters that populated the famous artist haunt of Montparnasse — where Foujita lived during his early years in Paris — but other times it seems that Birnbaum strays a wee bit too far from her main subject. The lack of many dates — even years — can also make for difficult reading and only exacerbates the frustration inherent in a text that doesn’t flow in chronological order.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake the publisher (and author?) made, however, is the woeful lack of illustrations to accompany the book. About eight or nine of Foujita’s signature works are featured, including the horrifying, tragic and brilliantly executed war mural Last Stand on Attu (below), but they represent a teeny-tiny fraction of his vast oeuvre, and even more disappointing, they’re reproduced here in black and white. Was the prestigious Farrar, Straus & Giroux trying to save money on the printing costs? Did the marketing department not think that the inclusion of flat, atonal prints would detract from the story, which glorifies Foujita’s remarkable colors and contrasts? Did Birnbaum not have a say in what photographs and how many would be included in the book? Who knows? The final result is a book that strives to revive Foujita’s reputation as a master of post-Impressionist art, an astute and talented student of the School of Paris and a brilliant muralist through rigorous analysis of his life and work, but which ultimately fails to deliver a resounding conclusion through the glaring omission of colorful prints that would reinforce the theme and introduce a new generation of fans to his art.

Overall, the book remains an engrossing read. As a writer interested in the intersection between creativity and personality, Foujita certainly provides an excellent Exhibit A of the joyous and sometimes maddening world of the obsessive artist. Birnbaum’s background as a novelist and journalist proves useful here, as she weaves a fascinating story of a truly talented artist and the unique environment in which he lived. Paris in the 1930′s has never sounded more glamorous, and to a writer like me to longs for a community in which art and creativity are celebrated, the book’s depiction of Paris represents as an orgy of artistic inspiration.

This isn’t the definitive English-language book on Foujita’s life, and there likely won’t be one for as long as Foujita’s widow is alive. Because of lingering accusations against the artist as a wartime collaborator, she is steadfast in her fierce protection of his reputation to the extent of barring most exhibitions of his work. Birnbaum points out that the last few years have seen a gradual relaxation of her restrictions, so that more writers are able to plumb his archives and produce more even-handed publications of his life and work. Major retrospectives of Foujita’s work have been mounted in Paris, New York and Tokyo, exposing his phenomenal art to new audiences and allowing for a more balanced view of his life. Unfortunately, much of the written material that’s been published is in Japanese, and Foujita’s name is reduced to a footnote outside of the insular world of metropolitan art circles. It’s a sad ending to what was truly an amazing and noteworthy life, and while Foujita’s name will always be familiar to the most dedicated lovers of Parisian art history, it will likely be well after our time before he achieves the kind of recognition his white European contemporaries already enjoy.

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