Researcher ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9312-8164
Graduation Year
2026
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Art History
Reader 1
Julia Lum
Reader 2
Zsofi Valy-Nagy
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2026 Tara A Attanasio
Abstract
This thesis examines Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953) and his still life paintings titled Broken Objects and Room 110 as modes of implicit portraiture, self-declaration, and self-reclamation. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, government authorities deemed Kuniyoshi an “enemy alien” and confiscated his photographic equipment. Painted two years following his camera’s confiscation, Broken Objects and Room 110 contain references that recall Kuniyoshi’s prewar photographic practice and visualize his response to the loss of his camera. I foreground my analysis with Kuniyoshi’s Self-Portrait as a Photographer from 1924 and his photography from the 1930s to detail his metacritical relationship to both painting and photography and how he translates that relationship in his 1944 still lifes. Ultimately, I suggest that Kuniyoshi, as a first-generation Japanese-American modernist, negotiated and asserted his identity across media, even as circumstances continuously challenged his agency and perspective.
Recommended Citation
Attanasio, Tara A., "Still Life as a Photographer: Visual and Mnemonic References to Photography in Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s 1944 Broken Objects and Room 110" (2026). Scripps Senior Theses. 2756.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2756
Included in
American Art and Architecture Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons
