Congratulations to Art History PhD Candidate Yuri Yoshida for receiving the prestigious Research Fellowship for Young Scientists from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Yuri will begin the three year postdoctoral fellowship next April to conduct research in Japan and abroad to develop his dissertation into a book manuscript.
His research project develops the arguments in his dissertation on Barnett Newman, including several other figures, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, and Robert Motherwell. By examining their somewhat self-repeating practices and techniques in the 1960s, Yuri will explore how the establishment of these methods and systems related to the fact that Abstract Expressionism was becoming historicized in the decade, and how it was also related to gender and race, in order to gain a new understanding of the potential of their abstractions—or the models of abstraction—that they achieved in the early stages of their careers.
The competitive JSPS fellowships are awarded to excellent young researchers to provide them an opportunity to focus on a freely chosen research topic based on their own innovative ideas. Ultimately, the program works to foster and secure excellent researchers.
Yuri Yoshida is completing his dissertation on the Abstract Expressionist artist Barnett Newman. In Japan, Yoshida has engaged in curatorial work at the Kawasaki City Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art, and Mori Art Museum. He has also translated numerous English art-historical texts for Japanese books and exhibition catalogues.