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JAPANESE ART AFTER 1945: Scream Against the Sky. By Alexandra Munroe. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 1994. 417 pp. (Illustrations, photographs.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 0-81093512-0.
FOR THOSE who find it difficult to imagine such an art as avant-garde in Japan, land of conformism and orthodoxy, this book is a surprise and an eye opener. It is an excellent exploration into the origin, development, and current situation of Japanese avant-garde art within the broader context of Japan's culture and society.
Principal author, art historian Alexandra Munroe, served as guest curator at the Yokohama Museum of Art from 1991 to 1993. During her tenure there, she conducted extensive research on postwar and contemporary Japanese art, which led to the exhibit, "Sengo Nihon no Zen'ei Bijutsu" (Post-War Japan's frontline art) held in Yokohama, New York and San Francisco. This book results from her pioneer research and these exhibits. Readers will, therefore, not only have an opportunty to revisit the exhibits, but will also share the fruits of her insightful work.