No.4, May 1999
Tami Koume's paintings
Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura in Japan
Eight pieces of work by Tami Koume (Tamijuro Kume), a Japanese painter
who was a friend of Ezra Pound around 1920, were exhibited at the Museum
of Modern Art, Kamakura (photo) from April 3 to May 9, 1999. The concept
of the exhibition, titled as 'Art of Taisho and Showa Period,' was to show
the works by Japanese painters of these periods.
One of Koume's works, 'Off England' (oil, 1918) was exhibited in 1998 at
the same museum's exhibition, 'Mobo and Moga, 1910-1935', in which the
art works by Japanese modernist painters were collected. The Koume's work
was highly evaluated that time for it was the only discovered work in Japan
influenced by Vorticism originated by Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound in 1910's
(1).
At the exhibition of this time, seven newly discovered works by Koume were
added. ' Camels, Followers and Princesses' is an oil work painted on gilded
screen panels. ' Batterfly and a Woman' also is an oil work painted on
silk. In these works, he united the form of Japanese art and the method
of western art. They are full of modern sense and large in size.
Also exhibited was a collage work of a nude male drawn with water color
and crayon on the paper on which a poem by Gilbert Cannan (English novelist
and dramatist, 1884-1955) was printed.
Toshiharu Omuka, associate professor of art history at Tsukuba University,
who in recent years greatly promoted the research on Koume from the view
point of art history and discovered his works, regards Koume as a forerunner
of the Japanese Avant-Gardes art movements (2). Accordingly the discovery
of Koume's works might fill the void in the art history of Japan.
Koume was born in 1893 in Tokyo. After graduating from Gakushuin University,
he entered to the Saint Jones Wood Art school, London in 1914. In London
he was introduced to Pound by Michiwo Ito, a dancing student from Japan.
They helped Pound's reading of Fenollosa's notebooks on Noh. Koume returned
to Japan in 1918. He won several prizes from important exhibitions in these
years and held an exhibition at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In 1920, he
went to the United States and exhibited his works at Kingore Gallery on
Fifth Avenue, New York. A year after, he went to Europe and in 1922 exhibited
his works at Pound's apartment. Then he returned to Japan and was going
to move to Europe again. But in 1923 he was killed in the Kanto earthquake.
He was waiting for a ship to Europe at a hotel in Yokohama.(3, 4)
Since then, Koume had been a forgotten painter in Japan. But after the
World War II, research on Pound became active and the name of Tami Koume
that appeared in such literatures as the Selected Letters (5) and
Pound's biography (6) written by Noel Stock and published in 1970 was paid
much attention by Pound scholars.
It was in 1980's that the painter was identified as Tamijuro Kume by Shiro
Tsunoda, then professor of English and a researcher on Pound at Obirin
University. He did biographical study of Koume by interviewing with his
family. After that, detailed study from the view point of art history was
done by Omuka. He discovered Koume's works from his family's home.
Among the readers of Pound, 'Tami's dream', recollected by Pound in The
Cantos LXXVI (7), is a very well known work of Koume. After the exhibition
at Pound's apartment in 1922, it had been owned by Pound in Paris and then
transferred to Olga Rudge's house in Venice. Rudge was mistress of Pound.
Mary de Rachewiltz, who is Pound's daughter between Rudge and him, also
retrospected in Discretions (8) on 'Tami's dream,' which she had
seen in her child years.
During the war years when Rudge's house had been sequestered as an alien
property by Italian Government, 'Tami's dream' disappeared. It is described
that the work was cut up for canvas by an Italian painter who was rented
the house (9).
To imagine 'Tami's dream', it seems that there would be no other way than
to depend on the descriptions by Pound and de Rachewiltz. But Omuka recently
found out a photograph that might be a key to imagine 'Tami's dream.' In
New York, Koume and his friend Kyuji Sato kept friendships with a British
sculptor, Emile Fuchs, who made a plaster head of Koume. This head is still
in existence. Sato was photographed standing by the side of this head of
Koume in New York studio. In the back of him, a large oil painting can
be seen. Omuka suggests in his book on the Japanese Modernist paintings,
that this photograph might be a key to imagine 'Tami's dream' (10).
In his 1954 letter to Wyndham Lewis, Pound wrote that the 'Tami's dream'
was ' big 10 by 12 feet' and 'in low tone buff, yellow and blackish.' There
was one more painting by Koume of the same tone, but smaller portrait,
in Rudge's house. However this too disappeared during the war.(11)
It is strongly hoped that we could see more of Koume's works in coming
years.
Literature
1) Omuka, Tosiharu : The Japanese Modern Art Movement and the Avant-Garde
1920-1927, Skydoor, 1995, p.85.(main text in Japanese)
2) Omuka, Tosiharu : One more Pound's Artist: on newly discovered documents
on Tamijuro Kume: Tsukuba University Annual report on Art Study 1994,
p.6.(main text in Japanese)
3) Tsunoda, Shiro:Friendship fostered between Pound and Tami Kume, in Studies
on Ezra Pound, a collection of articles commemorative Ezra Pound Centennial,
ed. by Rikutaro Fukuda and Akira Yasukawa, Yamaguchi Shoten, 1986. p.11-15.(main
text in Japanese)
4) Omuka, Tosiharu : The Japanese Modern Art Movement and the Avant-Garde
1920-1927, p.82-94.
5) Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941, ed. by D.D. Paige,
Faber and Faber, 1950, p.93, 179, 189, 282, 292.
6) Stock, Noel : The Life of Ezra Pound, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970, p.186, 247.
7) The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New directions, 1995, p.482.
8) de Rachewiltz, Mary : Discretions, A Memoir by Ezra Pound's Daughter,
Faber & Faber, 1971, p.22.
9) Pound/Lewis : The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis(ed.
by Timothy Materer), New Directions, 1985, p.279-280.
10) Omuka, Tosiharu : The Japanese Modern Art Movement and the Avant-Garde
1920-1927, p.89.
11) Pound/Lewis :op.cit.p.279-280.
Acknowledgement:
I would like to express special thanks to researchers for thier kind instructions
on the recent progress of studies on Tamijuro Kume.
Copyright (C)1999 Hideo Nogami
