Preparing to go out
(Yosoou hitobito 粧ふ人々)
1935
Medium
six panel folding screen: ink, colour pigment on silk
Measurements
176.8 × 364.0 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds from the Estate of Kevin and Eunice McDonald and NGV Foundation, 2019
© Estate of Taniguchi Fumie
Gallery location
Level 1, NGV International
About this work
Taniguchi Fumie was a trailblazing artist who has perhaps never received the recognition she deserved. She studied fine art at Bunka Gakuen University, graduating in 1934, and later trained under the famous painter Kawabata Ryūshi, becoming one of the few women to exhibit with the highly regarded Blue Dragon Art Society (Seiryūsha). She received critical acclaim and held solo exhibitions in 1941 and 1942 at leading art galleries in Ginza. After evacuating Tokyo during the Second World War, her career and personal life faltered. She moved to the United States in 1955, spending the remainder of her life in Los Angeles, supporting herself as a waitress, seamstress and housekeeper.
Painted when she was twenty-five, this folding screen is Taniguchi’s masterpiece for which she was awarded the prestigious Y-Shi Prize at the 1935 Seiryūsha autumn exhibition. A celebration of the chic moga (modern girl) of 1930s Japan, the work resembles historical fūzoku byōbu screens depicting scenes of daily modern life. Shown changing from traditional to contemporary fashions, these moga are accompanied by symbols of independence and modernity – elegant high-heeled shoes, a Marcel curling iron, a powder compact, cantilever chair, bobbed hairstyles and European-style lingerie – signifying burgeoning consumerism and the new social and financial independence available to women in twentieth-century Japan.