Authority, Autonomy, and the Early Taisho ¯ “Avant-Garde” Alicia Volk Open one of the astounding number of books (most in Japanese) on the his- tory of Japanese modern art, and chances are you will ind art organizations, or bijutsu dantai , featured prominently inside. Whether cast as protagonists or in supporting roles, art organizations have performed a key hermeneuti- cal function for critics and historians alike. Bewildering in variety and over- whelming in quantity, they have nonetheless provided a means of taming into interpretative submission that unruly phenomenon captured in the tidy phrase “Japanese modern art.” We see this manifested graphically in the ubiquitous, carefully plotted art historical maps that chart the progressive unfolding of Japanese modern art through the appearance (and disappear- ance) of a myriad of art organizations and artists’ collectives (igure 1). The pervasive emphasis on the phenomenon of groups stands in striking contrast to the general tendency of European art history, in which, as Anna positions 21:2 doi 10.1215/10679847-2018310 Copyright 2013 by Duke University Press