Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita--the Artist Caught Between East and West

by Phyllis Birnbaum

The first biography in English of the Japanese artist who was a central figure in the dazzling artistic milieu of 1920s Paris When we think of expatriates in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century, certain names come to Hemingway, Picasso, Modigliani—and Foujita, the Japanese artist whose distinctive works, bringing elements of Japanese art to Western oil painting, made him a major cultural figure in 1920s Montparnasse. Foujita was the only Japanese artist to be considered part of the “School of Paris,” which also counted among its members such prominent artists as Picasso and Modigliani. Noteworthy, too, was Foujita’s personal style, flamboyant even for those flamboyant times. He was best known for his drawings of female nudes and cats, and for his special white color upon which he could draw a masterful line—one that seemed to outline a woman’s whole body in a single unbroken stroke.
With the advent of the Second World War, Foujita returned to Japan, where he allied himself with the ruling Japanese mili-tarists and painted canvases in support of the war effort. After Japan’s defeat, he was scorned for his devotion to the military cause and returned to France, where he remained until his death in 1968. Acclaimed writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum not only explores Foujita’s fascinating, tumultuous life but also assesses the appeal of his paintings, which, in their mixture of Eastern and Western traditions, are memorable for their vibrancy of form and purity of line.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Japan, France, Art History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2006

About the author

Phyllis Birnbaum is a novelist, biographer, journalist, and translator from the Japanese. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, and other publications. She lives near Boston.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is now over fifty years after the death of Tsuguharu Foujita 藤田嗣治 in 1968, but he remains a controversial figure today. It is hard to imagine a better biographer than Phyllis Birnbaum, based on wide-ranging interviews and an astonishing amount of research in at least three languages. It gives a fascinating and multifaceted portrait of a man who sits uneasily between different cultures. If you have read Ishiguro’s novelistic treatment in An Artist of the Floating World, you will know something of the background to Foujita’s wartime years. Recruited by their government to support the Japanese war effort by painting battle scenes, Foujita was anything but reluctant, enjoying the perks of celebrity. The best of his wartime paintings have not lost their power to shock and move, as I saw myself at a special exhibition at MOMAT (Tokyo). One of the best books I read in 2020.

[Sally Ito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glory in a Line is a biography of Japanese artist, Foujita. It's a well-written engaging biography of a seminal Japanese artist of whom I was always curious to know more about. A fairly tightly written work that introduces Foujita well, I did wonder, however, more about his late life conversion to Catholicism in lieu of the fact that he was such a controversial figure as a war artist for Japan.