Bather with Cigarette

Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s experiments with the subject of the modern swimmer demonstrate the artist’s sly sense of humor and were based on his summers at a coastal art colony in Maine. Here, both swimsuit and cigarette refer to newly relaxed codes of seaside behavior. The boldly un-self-conscious bather floating ashore on a minuscule clamshell recalls Italian Renaissance works such as Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1486, Uffizi). Solid forms, a flattened sense of space, and a dark palette mark this work as belonging to Kuniyoshi’s early career. He immigrated to the United States in 1906 and eventually moved to New York City, where he trained under Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller. In this scene, he follows his teachers’ example by presenting a modern, commonplace subject but retaining influences from previous centuries.

Excerpt from

Sue Canterbury, DMA label text, 2018