Koga Harue's Umi (Sea, 1929) and "Soluble Fish" : "Mechanism" that Gyrated from Proletariat Art, Max Ernst to Bauhaus

Abstract

In recent years, researches concerning the representative work of Koga Harue's Surrealism, Umi (1929), have pinpointed the sources to the various images portrayed therein. But, they have only deepened its enigmatic character. This paper, however, sheds new light on Koga's art. Constituted in combination with an analogue of a girl in swimsuit (right), the industrial machine imagery (top left) holds an important significance decisive to the understanding of the work's composition and meaning. The source to this image is found in the blast furnace photograph published in the German popular science journal, "Wissen und Fortschritt" (1927-10). Yanase Masamu's CAPITALISMUS too is understood to have been based on the same blast furnace Herrenwyk (Lubeck) photograph, anticipating an affinity between Koga and Yanase. Further, the introductory poem by Koga reveals how a "revolving of the world" image, akin to that of proletariat art, cuts across Umi. But, what is more important with regards Koga's "revolving" image is the collage hier ist noch alles in der schwebe (1920) by Max Ernst. "Soluble Fish" (^military vessel pouring out smoke and whose bowels are transparent=smoke-bellowing ship), with moorings in Ernst, becomes a symbol of the principle in Koga's surrealistic painting and appears frequently in a number of works post-Umi. On the bottom left of his second representative work, Sougai no Keshou (1930), there is an allusion made to a photograph of the metalwork studio of Bauhaus. From a "Romanticism of the machine" of the Umi to a "Realism of the machine" (Itagaki Takaho), as evident in the allusion to Bauhaus, Sougai no Keshou shows how Koga's "Mechanism" underwent a huge gyratory motion.