Market Front

© Kunié Sugiura

Market Front

On view

Modern and Contemporary Art
Theodora Walton William Walton III Pavilion
Peter B. Lewis Gallery

Market Front,

1978

Kunié Sugiura, born 1942, Nagoya, Japan; active New York, NY and Chicago, IL
2020-37
Market Front exemplifies one of Sugiura’s signature practices: stretched canvas diptychs on which the artist pairs an abstract gestural painting with a photographic print, typically featuring an urban landscape. In Market Front, the juxtaposition has sociocultural significance: this image depicts the facade of a fish market in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood, where, to communicate with a diverse community of residents without a common language, the front of the market was painted with either a square (closed) or a circle (open) depending on whether fresh catch was available. Sugiura captured a moment in which abstraction conveyed universal meaning to the diverse ethnic groups that coexisted and interacted in New York in the 1970s.
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More About This Object

Kunié Sugiura's Market Front

Information

Title
Market Front
Dates

1978

Maker
Kunié Sugiura
Medium
Photographic emulsion, acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
61 × 86.5 × 2.5 cm (24 × 34 1/16 × 1 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2020-37
Place Depicted

North America, United States, New York, New York, Chinatown

Signatures
Signed, dated, and titled on verso
Culture
American, Japanese
Type
mixed media, paintings, diptychs, photographs
Materials
acrylic paint, canvas, emulsion
Subject
abstraction, windows, markets (buildings)

Kunié Sugiura, New York, New York, consigned; to [Alison Bradley Projects, New York, New York], sold; to Princeton University Art Museum, 2020.

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