Hideo Date (January 5, 1907 – January 6, 2005) was a Japanese-born American painter active from the 1930s to the 1980s, known for combining elements of Japanese ''

nihonga ''Nihonga'' (, "Japanese-style paintings") are Japanese paintings from about 1900 onwards that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials. While based on traditions over a thousand years ...

'' with American

Synchromism Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) and Morgan Russell (1886–1953). Their abstract "synchromies," based on an approach to painting that analogized color to music, were amon ...

. A prominent figure in the

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

art scene prior to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, his career was interrupted by the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Although he continued painting for decades after the war, Date's work remained largely ignored until he was rediscovered by a younger generation of artists and curators in the 1990s.

Early life

Date was born in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

, Japan, and his father left for California in search of work shortly thereafter. Date's mother and brothers later joined his father to help in the hardware store he had established in

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

, and in 1923, a sixteen-year-old Date immigrated to California as well.{{cite web, last=Wakida , first=Patricia , url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Hideo%20Date/ , title=Hideo Date , publisher=Densho Encyclopedia , accessdate=18 July 2014 After his father was forced to file for bankruptcy and close the hardware store in 1925,Patrick, Alisha.
Hideo Date (1907-2005)
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107012828/http://www.sullivangoss.com/hideo_Date/ , date=2017-11-07 ." Retrieved 25 August 2014. the family moved to Los Angeles, where Date graduated from Polytechnic High School. In 1928, he enrolled at the

Otis Art Institute Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...

, but he left the next year over an argument with the Institute's director, who had urged him to stop painting "in an Oriental manner."Cheng, Scarlet.
A Painter Ready to Claim His Place
(28 October 2001) ''Los Angeles Times''. Retrieved 25 August 2014. His parting words were: "If you don't like my painting, you can go to hell."Higa, Karin. ''In Living Color: The Art of Hideo Date'' (Berkeley, California: Heyday Books, 2001). Date studied traditional Japanese painting at the Kawabata Gakko in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

for two years, returning to Los Angeles in 1930. Over the next several years Date became active in the local arts community and began exhibiting his work, helping his two brothers at their flower shop during the day and attending art classes at night. He was a member of the Independents, a group of Los Angeles area artists who rejected the tenets of

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

, and worked closely with Synchromism co-founder

Stanton Macdonald-Wright Stanton Macdonald-Wright (July 8, 1890 – August 22, 1973), was a modern American artist. He was a co-founder of Synchromism, an early abstract, color-based mode of painting, which was the first American avant-garde art movement to receive int ...

and others in the

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

movement. Date showed paintings in exhibitions of the Japanese Artists of Los Angeles, Young Painters at the College Art Association, Foundation of Western Art, the Los Angeles Oriental Artists Group, and the Los Angeles Art Association. He received a commission to paint a mural in Pickfair, the mansion home of

Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...

, and later Macdonald-Wright, then heading the Southern California

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

Federal Arts Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

, arranged for Date to paint another at a school in the Japanese American community of

Terminal Island Terminal Island, historically known as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhoods of Wilmington and San Pedro in the city of Los Angeles, and the city of Long Be ...

. Date was at work on the second mural at the time of the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

and

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

; it remained unfinished when he was sent to camp in 1942 and has since disappeared.

World War II and later career

During

, he was "evacuated" from the West Coast with other Japanese Americans, first to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in California and then to the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming. While at Heart Mountain, Date and fellow inmate Benji Okubo formed the Art Students League school and taught art classes in camp. At its peak the school had 250 students and teachers, who showcased their work in several exhibitions and created a mural at the camp. Date himself continued drawing and painting in camp, although he almost exclusively created pictures of cats. Date was released from Heart Mountain in 1945, to work on a mural in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

. He returned to Los Angeles briefly in 1947, to retrieve his pre-war artwork and hold a show at the Art Center School, but otherwise remained based in New York for the rest of his life. He married Yuriko Tamaki, and in 1955, after the Walter-McCarran Act struck down race-based restrictions on naturalization, he became a U.S. citizen. Although Date continued working, his career never fully recovered from the interruption caused by his wartime confinement. He participated in a few exhibitions in the 1950s, but did not show any work again until 1977. In the late 1990s, Date donated almost 200 works to the

Japanese American National Museum The is located in Los Angeles, California, and dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Japanese Americans. Founded in 1992, it is located in the Little Tokyo area near downtown. The museum is an affiliate within the Smithsonian Affil ...

in Los Angeles. Two other area museums showcased his work in 2000, and in 2001 the JANM retrospective, "In Living Color: The Art of Hideo Date," opened to the public. The JANM exhibit's curator, Karin Higa, published an accompanying book on Date and his work under the same title. Date died at his home in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

one day after his ninety-eighth birthday, in 2005.

References

{{reflist

External links

Japanese American National Museum's online collection of paintings by Hideo Date.

Article on Hideo Date by Karin Higa, author of Date's biography
{{authority control {{DEFAULTSORT:Date, Hideo 1907 births 2005 deaths American artists of Japanese descent Japanese-American internees 20th-century American painters American male painters John H. Francis Polytechnic High School alumni Otis College of Art and Design alumni Japanese emigrants to the United States 20th-century American male artists