Madam Q
Madam Q (also rendered as Madam Q.) is a 1950 photograph by Kansuke Yamamoto.[1][2][3] It is a gelatin silver print on developing-out paper and is in the collection of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.[1][2] The work was shown at the 10th Bijutsu Bunka Kyokai exhibition in March 1950.[4] In Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto, Amanda Maddox compares it with Man Ray's La Tête (1931), placing it among the postwar works through which Yamamoto's photography has been read in relation to international Surrealist photography.[3][5]
Description
The photograph shows a woman's head against a blank background.[3] Her hair spreads outward in broad waves, and the image is reduced almost entirely to the relation between the face, the hair, and the surrounding empty space.[3] Maddox identifies the sitter as Yamamoto's wife and notes the close compositional similarity to Man Ray's La tête, where a woman's head likewise appears suspended against a plain ground.[3] The work is reproduced as plate 79 in Japan's Modern Divide.[5]
Exhibition history
According to the chronology published in the 2001 Tokyo Station Gallery retrospective catalogue, Yamamoto was publishing photographs in newspapers and magazines in early 1950 while continuing to exhibit in group shows.[4] In March 1950, Madam Q was shown at the 10th Bijutsu Bunka Kyokai exhibition together with works listed as Work A, Work B, and Work C.[4] The photograph belongs to the early phase of Yamamoto's postwar activity, when he resumed public exhibition after the wartime contraction of Surrealist publishing and avant-garde practice in Japan.[4]
Interpretation
Maddox discusses Madam Q as one of several Yamamoto photographs that can be set beside earlier works by European Surrealists.[3] In this case, the comparison is with Man Ray, but the point is not simple imitation. Rather, Yamamoto reworked familiar Surrealist forms within his own photographic practice in Japan.[3] Maddox also argues that Yamamoto's work repeatedly engaged themes common in European Surrealist photography, including theater, eroticism, mystery, and chance, while giving them a distinctly local and personal form.[3] Seen in that context, Madam Q is one of the postwar works that helps place Yamamoto within a transnational history of Surrealism rather than within a purely domestic history of Japanese photography.[3]
Collection
The work is in the collection of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.[1][2] The museum database gives the dimensions as 254 × 228 mm.[1]
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Collection Database". Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Retrieved April 12, 2026.
- 1 2 3 "Madam Q". Art Platform Japan. Retrieved April 12, 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Maddox, Amanda (2013). "Disobedient Spirit: Kansuke Yamamoto and His Engagement with Surrealism". In Keller, Judith; Maddox, Amanda (eds.). Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. pp. 188–190.
- 1 2 3 4 Yamamoto Toshio; Inada Takeo; Tanaka Haruko, eds. (2001). Kansuke Yamamoto: Conveyor of the Impossible (in Japanese). supervised by John Solt and Ryuichi Kaneko. Tokyo: Tokyo Station Gallery. p. 208.
- 1 2 Maddox, Amanda (2013). "Disobedient Spirit: Kansuke Yamamoto and His Engagement with Surrealism". In Keller, Judith; Maddox, Amanda (eds.). Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. p. 206.