Name That Artist

January 18, 2005 5:06 AM

Name that artist: He's Japanese or Japanese-American, judging from his name. He paints (or painted?) busy 1920s-ish city street scenes, full of old cars and people in the dress of the day, generally very small and dwarfed by the (New York?) buildings around them ... Perspective was usually from far away, perhaps in the sky. Charming paintings, very detailed, with humor and often an almost cartoon sensibility. I seem to remember sometimes many umbrellas ...

I used to borrow an oversized book of his work from a library in a city that is now far away from me, and obviously I've lost track of his name. Something about him reminded me a little of Hopper and Magritte, if they pulled their artists' lens far away from their subjects ... maybe I'm associating Magritte because of bowler hats and umbrellas, though.

posted by Shane to media & arts (7 comments total)

This is kind of a stretch, but is it Dong Kingman? I say it's a stretch because Kingman is Chinese-American, and he painted more towards the 30s-later -- but your description matches his work to a tee.

Here are some more examples of his paintings.
posted by Marit at 5:49 AM on January 18, 2005

Thanks! Kingman is really cool. But I'm definitely thinking of a Japanese name with maybe four syllables, like "Takahashi," but not "Takahashi." And his style is more of a cartoony realism, whereas Kingman is a little more impressionistic. But I'm enjoying looking through Kingman's art now, anyway.
posted by Shane at 6:13 AM on January 18, 2005

Mitsumasa Anno?
posted by hama7 at 9:39 AM on January 18, 2005

Tadahiro Uesugi?
posted by Hands of Manos at 10:25 AM on January 18, 2005

Damn, this is going to drive me buggy. It could almost be Anno, and I know I've looked at his work, but Anno does primarily soft, slightly fuzzy watercolor illustrations for children's books. This was a book aimed at adults, considered kind of "fine" or maybe more "pop" art, and done in, I think, fairly resolute oils or acrylics. If Anno did "Anno's Journey to NY" in oils, then maybe, heh.

And Uesugi is much more stylized and geometric than the fellow who's haunting me, too.

Thanks, though!
posted by Shane at 11:17 AM on January 18, 2005

You're not thinking of Chiang Yee, by any chance? -- author of The Silent Traveller in New York, The Silent Traveller in San Francisco, et al. Yes, I know, Chinese rather than Japanese -- but the date is about right, and some of the other details fit.

I can't find any of his American cityscapes online, but there is a nice little exhibition of his work here, devoted to his paintings of the English Lake District. There are plenty of umbrellas, but I wouldn't describe the paintings as having a 'cartoon sensibility'; they are more traditional than that. (I've always felt vaguely dissatisfied with his work, perhaps because it seems so deliberately calculated to appeal to Western expectations of what authentic Oriental art ought to look like. Worth checking out, though -- some of the paintings are charming in their quiet way.)
posted by verstegan at 5:51 AM on January 19, 2005

Thanks, verstegan. Not the artist I was thinking of, but great stuff.

Looks like I'll have to stop back to that out-of-town library someday and check out the Oversized Books shelf to see if it's still there...
posted by Shane at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2005