Mavo
By Laura Zhang '26
Access the scans of this periodical via Princeton University Library.
After the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), Japanese society was liberated from the nationalist effort that the conflict with Russia entailed. As a result, debate in civil society started to emerge about the individual’s tacit duty to the state and their family (Weisenfeld 2002). Many intellectuals and artists, reacting against societal norms of mass conformity and inspired by contemporary art movements in Europe like expressionism, took to exploring their inner psyches and pursuing the creation of an “autonomous self” (Ibid., 19). After WWI, political upheaval caused by economic unrest and the formation of a large working class inspired many thinkers to align with leftist thought regarding issues of class division.
Within this historical context, a group called “Mavo” entered the Japanese art scene in 1923. Whilst the origin of the name of the group is still debated, one version of the story is that Mavo’s five founding members wrote their names in Latin letters on cut up pieces of paper, mixed them up, and then randomly chose four letters which formed the word “Mavo” (Ibid.). Mavo defined itself in opposition to the gadan, the established art bureaucracy in Japan responsible for major exhibitions and official art schools. Drawing from Marxist ideas, Mavo artists positioned the gadan as a representation of bourgeois capitalism and themselves as the revolutionary proletariats who would break down the barrier between gadan art and the art of the everyday (Ibid.). In its 1923 Manifesto, Mavo artists proclaimed that “[w]e are radical. We revolutionize. We move forward. We create. We constantly affirm and negate,” (Figure 1) highlighting their wish to destroy and revamp Japan’s entrenched art institutions.
Although there are no explicit mentions of surrealism in Mavo’s manifesto, the two movements’ theories and artistic practices are aligned. Like surrealism, Mavo found its inspiration from Dada. Specifically, the leader of Mavo, Murayama Tomoyoshi, had studied in Berlin and when he returned to Japan, drew upon the philosophical and artistic proclivities of movements like Dadaism, futurism, and constructivism to create his theory of conscious constructivism (ikiteki kouseishugi) (Munroe 2004, 216). Through this theory, he advocated for the inclusion of “the entirety of life,” (zenjinsei) or the everyday, into art (Weisenfeld 1996, 64). Mavo henceforth sought to create art that rejected a traditional aesthetic in favor of promoting a subjective, personal style that portrayed a sense of self, a preoccupation that surrealism shared.
Mavo also rejected established styles of painting, notably yōga, Japanese art created using Western conventions, materials, and techniques like oil painting, and nihonga, the modern Japanese art that used traditional Japanese techniques. Instead, Mavo favored unique compositional strategies and materials, such as collage and assemblage, which represented a shift from a preoccupation with mimetic representation to abstraction (Munroe 2004). Such strategies were often used in surrealist works, given how collage allows for irrational juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images to create a new whole, mirroring the illogical nature of the human unconscious or dreams. The similarity between Mavo and surrealism’s artistic practices is exemplified in Murayama’s “Work using Flower and Shoe,” which was included in Mavo’s First Exhibition in 1923 (Figure 2). This work was a collection of random found objects, breaking down the barrier between fine art and daily life and establishing the materiality of the mundane as a form of art.
Murayama’s work also highlights Mavo’s conceptual connection to the surrealist movement. His work especially parallels the surrealist object, which is a rearrangement of everyday objects into a new configuration, thereby conveying a hidden desire and a symbolic function. In Murayama’s work, a high heel shoe is put in a box which also contains fake flowers in a glass bottle with a ribbon (Figure 2). The shoe is simultaneously a representation of female sexuality and a reference to the transformation of Japan’s gender hierarchy, as women started to enter the workforce and adopt Western styles of dress. The apparent breaking of traditional gender norms did not result in complete liberation, as reflected in periodicals like Women’s Review (fujin koron), to which Murayama himself contributed, where fetishized icons like women’s legs and high heels proliferated (Weisenfeld 2004, 133). Alluding to the popularity of images of high heels in mass media, Muryama’s work becomes a symbolic attack on capitalist commodification by taking mass produced and fetishized items and transforming them into unique objects.
In September 1923, Mavo artists launched the Mavo magazine, which became a public manifestation of Mavo’s ideas. This periodical ran from July 1924 to August 1925 and consisted of seven issues. The magazines exemplified Mavo’s ideological commitment to merging the everyday with fine art. As seen in the cover for its third issue, Mavo experimented heavily with typography and image, as the Japanese characters “マヴォ” (Mavo) are printed upside down along with the names of the contributors, whereas the English “Mavo,” in a characteristically playful font, sits upright and horizontally on the top of the page (Figure 3). This dynamic use of typography, which challenged standardized fonts, results in the integration of text into the visual language of the magazine, making the entire magazine into a work of art in its own right. With periodicals being considered at that point in Japan “low” art of mass production, Mavo artists thereby used Mavo to bridge this divide of “low” and “high” art, emphasizing their wish to convey that artists can contribute to fine art through commercial production and mass culture.
Flipping through the issues of Mavo, readers also could appreciate the diversity of text, texture, and materials that Mavo artists included in the magazine. The first issue of Mavo is printed primarily on white, glossy paper, and is read from left to right, which aligns with the Western reading norm. The second issue’s cover is printed on red cardstock paper, but its inside contains thin, matte pages, and is printed from right to left, thereby following Japanese reading norms. The third issue contains newspaper cutouts with advertisement clippings, whereas the fourth issue comprises green and red butcher paper. The content featured in the magazines varies from poems, essays, and theatrical texts, to prints, exhibition catalog images, collages, illustrations, and linocuts. The texts that accompanied the images would often be printed in various orientations, requiring the reader to engage in active reading, by constantly rotating and interacting with the magazine to read the text. The first three issues notably contained more images, with the proportion of text within each issue increasing after the third issue, given the addition of the likes of neo-dadaist poet Hagiwara Kyoujirou to the editorial board (Weisenfeld 2002). The content of the last three issues also became increasingly radical, often referencing leftist positions about class revolution and Bolshevism.
This innovative use of text and image is exemplified in a page from Mavo’s third issue, which features an original advertisement that Mavo artists used to promote the periodical, pasted over a newspaper clipping (Figure 4). On the border of the advertisement is a sentence that reads, “[p]eople! Let’s live Mavo spirit, it is unlimited, absolute perfection,” with every character rotated in a different direction (Ibid.). The advertisement also uses different font sizes and line weights, with shapes scattered throughout the text. The re-use of old Mavo material in the form of the appropriated advertisement is characteristic of the rest of the Mavo magazine, which often features artwork that recalls and reuses work found in previous issues.
Mavo offers another link between Mavo and surrealism, through its featured artworks, which often included portrayals of the individual’s perspective on their daily life. This is exemplified in Yabashi Kiminaro’s “Self-Portrait,” published in Mavo issue 2. The linocut depicted a stick figure, representing the artist, surrounded by an environment composed of abstract shapes and words such as “pig” (buta), “death” (shi), “kill” (ya) (Figure 5). This is a depiction of Kiminaro’s anxieties related to his daily surroundings and social environment, as well as his muddled internal mindscape. The crowded composition and floating thoughts represented by the words, offered the viewer an insight into how Kiminaro perceives himself. Whilst not entirely dedicated to exploring the unconscious, “Self-Portrait” responded to surrealism’s call for the exploration of the individual’s self.
The unique contribution of Mavo's editors presented another connection between Mavo and surrealism. Despite being a series, the varying designs of the covers of the issues hinted towards a sense of individuality in every iteration. The contributors to each magazine changed per issue, with founding members Ogata Kamenosuke and Ouura Shuuzo leaving before the publication of Mavo issue 3 as both members were becoming disillusioned with Mavo’s increasing radicalization (Weisenfeld 2002). When Mavo issue 4 was released, Kyoujirou and avant-garde artist Okada Tatsuo joined the editorial staff (Ibid., 184). They attempted to expand the reach of the magazine, declaring that anyone who had heard the name “Mavo'' was a Mavoist and could submit works of art and manuscripts to the magazine (Ibid.). This resulted in the expansion of the number of contributors for the last three Mavo issues, filling in the gap created by the departure of Ogata and Ouura, and allowing Mavo to evolve towards a new direction. This emphasis on collaboration and participation from readers outside of the editorial staff mirrors the work of surrealist magazines such as the La Révolution Surréaliste, which often had probing questions aimed towards its readers to encourage engagement with the magazine and surrealism as a whole.
However, this desire for flexibility and the promotion of self-expression ultimately resulted in the dissolution of Mavo (Weisenfeld 1996, 71). Mavo's sales were not self-sustainable, especially after sponsors pulled out due to the fact that Mavo issue 3 controversially had firecrackers attached to its cover (Weisenfeld 2002). After Mavo’s termination, Mavo’s ideological range, from artists like Murayama who aligned themselves with the revolution of artistic practices as a form of moderate social protest to radical anarchists such as Kyoujirou, led to the fracturing of Mavo’s group cohesiveness. Moreover, as the Shouwa period (1926-1988) started, Japan entered an era of political polarization, thereby pushing individuals to choose between either a political or apolitical life (Ibid.). Unable to reach a consensus and reconcile their differences, Mavo artists decided to instead disband, leaving behind a lasting legacy that paved the way for the emergence of future avant-garde movements in Japan.
Bibliography
Munroe, A. "Review of Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905-1931." The Journal of Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 215-219. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/55116.
Weisenfeld, G. "Mavo's Conscious Constructivism: Art, Individualism, and Daily Life in Interwar Japan." Art Journal 55, no. 3 (1996): 64-73, https://www.jstor.org/stable/777767.
Weisenfeld, G. Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde 1905-1931. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.