The Seattle Weekly
March 17, 1990
Letters
The Tsutukawa Defense
To describe much of George Tsutakawa’s work ("Just add water," 10/3) as being one of imitation belies a gross and fundamental ignorance of how artists eclectically assimlate external information and reach maturity in their own work.
Now only is it demeaning to suggest that the works that compose Tsutakawa’s formative years have no import for the Bellevue Art Museum retrospective, it is ludicrious from a historical viewpoint to dismiss them.
While Matthew Kangas finds works derivative of artists like Rockwell Kent and Thomas Hart Benton to be worthy only of derision (while ostentatiously naming names, periods and teachers), the inclusion of these works is actually exciting and all the more necessary to understanding the development of Tsutakawa. After all, is the exhibit about Tsutakawa or someone else?
Lastly, while Kangas’s remarks about Tsutakawa’s "ethnic past" and "uncertain assimilated future" bring to mind questions put to me in Poland in the mid-1980?s on my "Jewish descent" (I replied in no uncertain terms that I was a Jew in the here and now, I didn’t need dusting off), I question whether Kangas has a full grasp of how ethnicity plays a contributing role for many in the arts.
While Tsutakawa may have experienced painful, intense, and polarized feelings about his American and Japanese selves, that he produced work that came under the powerful influence of European arts movements doesn’t mean he concurrently rejected that part of him that is rich in Japanese culture.
Ken Akiva Segan