Culture Talks: Kuwata & Colour

Be prepared to think and see differently while learning something new from experts on campus. 

Culture Talks are a new series of short talks from University of Warwick academics inspired by the exhibition, Takuro Kuwata, Tea Bowl Punk. 

In this talk, Professor Paul Smith will use Takuro Kuwata’s vivid ceramics as a starting point and look at traditions of using colour, and theorising about it, across Japan and Europe. This talk will be illustrated with Japanese colour books from the 1820s and 1870s.

"On the one hand, Kuwata’s work is clearly related to traditional Japanese ceramic practices, and to time-honoured Japanese ideas about colour more generally. On the other hand, it incorporates the bold and striking colours of Pop Art, Punk, and advertising. This combination is a fascinating lens through which to explore different cultural approaches to colour theory. 

Many of Kuwata’s works are shiny metallics, with transparent colours revealed by glazes, emphasising the emergence of colour from layers beneath the surface. Colours of this kind, which only manifest themselves within three-dimensional space, were considered an additional dimension in Japanese colour theory to those colour theories popularised in Europe."  

— Professor Paul Smith

Professor Paul Smith is a researcher and lecturer within the University of Warwick, History of Art Department. He has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, a visiting scholar and a scholar at the Getty Research Institute, and a summer fellow at the Clark Institute. Paul works closely with galleries and museums. He has written an essay on colour theory to accompany an exhibition in 2025 at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid.