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November 24, 2024
 

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C.B. Liddell
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2006
Outer turmoil and art as therapy
One of the quickest ways to understand an artist is to look at his self portraits. Van Gogh's reveal his intensity and passion, while Rembrandt's show the calm dignity to which he aspired in his art and his life, and with which he faced aging. But what is to be made of the self portraits of Horst Janssen,...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 16, 2006
Yoshihiko Ueda "Standing Full Nude Series"
Galerie Sho Contemporary Art Closes in 31 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 9, 2006
Young, fresh and traditional Japanese artists
Some people complain that poetry has never been the same since poets were absolved of their obligations to rhyme and rhythm. The same people also think that since the 1968 scrapping of the Hollywood Production Code that regulated sexual content, movies have lost a lot of their sexual sizzle.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 2, 2006
"Yamaguchi Katsuhiro "Pioneer of Media Art"
Teatrine Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura Closes in 21 days
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2006
"Positioning -- In the New Reality of European"
Museum of Contemporary Art Closes in 38 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2006
Teppei Ujiyama: Ad hoc accumulations create musical universes
While the exuberance of youth has played its part in countless artistic breakthroughs, the power of the midlife crisis should not be underestimated either, especially in a society where the wisdom or follies of age are afforded much more respect (or tolerance, as the case may be) than those of youth....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 2, 2006
PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: A Requiem, not a festival
The exhibition of Paula Modersohn-Becker's paintings, and of artists associated with her, at the Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, is titled, "A Short, Intensive Festival." The overall emotional atmosphere generated by these paintings, however, is closer to a wake or a funeral than a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 5, 2006
Meissen porcelain: Europa's bulls in the China shop
Fragility can sometimes add to beauty -- one of the reasons for the affection for the short-lived cherry blossom. The more fleeting, unstable, or breakable something is, the less likely its beauty will be taken for granted.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 22, 2005
Elemental expressions
Art comes in many forms, but all those forms have in common their intimate dependence on light (something to bear in mind on this, the shortest day of the year). Without this miraculous form of energy you wouldn't know the difference between an Old Master canvas, an Abstract Expressionist work or an...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 24, 2005
Artifacts so old they're modern
Civilization seems to have its own enormous bell curve. If you go back a few hundred years, everything looks old, quaint, dated. The aesthetic of those times immediately tells you that people were looking at the world in quite a different way from you. However, if you keep the pedal of your time machine...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 3, 2005
Pushkin delivers the goods
It's no secret what the mainstream art public really like -- soft, flowery Impressionism and cute, colorful Post-impressionism, with, possibly, a smattering of Picassos and Matisses thrown in to add grit. Hold a show with this kind of art, and you'll have to hang the paintings high so that people can...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2005
Pop mystification
Sigmar Polke has a lot in common with the medieval alchemists with whom he identifies. Like them, he is interested in transmutation, sometimes employing pigments and techniques that make his paintings change over time. Like those pseudo-scientists of the past, he uses a combination of mystification and...
CULTURE / Art
Jul 6, 2005
Consciously painting the subconscious
One of my favorite paintings is one by a trained elephant that I picked up on holiday in Thailand daubed by a trained elephant. It's not a very good one, but the story behind it makes it special -- highlighting one of the aspects by which art has come to be judged.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 1, 2005
Silk Road was the path to peace and war
As standards of history teaching are supposed to be falling around the world, it might be worth trying to captue the imagination of students of world history by presenting much of it in terms of romantic sounding trade routes. This approach has clearly paid dividends with centuries of obscure Central...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 25, 2005
Designs to refresh the spirit
Some Westerners, when faced with Oriental creativity, have a tendency to gush. Instead of taking a calm, rational, inquisitive point of view, they tend to ascribe the aesthetic effect of what they see to some mysterious, spiritual force -- whether they call it Zen, Tao, yin and yang -- something they...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 4, 2005
Mad artist myth no longer holds
The name Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) invariably invokes a legend -- the legend of a wild, creative genius, out of sync with the stilted, repressive atmosphere of Victorian Europe; who exploded in passionate art and self-destructive disregard of the banal parameters of everyday life; who followed his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 16, 2005
Candle held up to a rediscovered master
Most great artists are instantly recognizable. As soon as you see one of their works, you know that it can't be by anyone else. If this is truly the mark of a great artist, then Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) must be among the greatest.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 18, 2002
Yuki Ogura: The other side of modern
Visitors to the current exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo might be excused for thinking they'd been misled. Instead of encountering a display of works expressing the essence of 20th-century Japanese art, perchance, or the challenge of assimilating Western artistic techniques, this...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002
Designed to dazzle: a lacquerware celebration
The quintessential Japanese aesthetic is that of wabi sabi, a beauty associated with things that are simple, rustic, unpolished or even plain rundown. It is perhaps surprising, then, that this aesthetic is so little in evidence at an extensive exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum of one of Japan's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002
Toil -- you're on candid canvas
In the mid-19th century, the French village of Barbizon was the artistic equivalent of the reality-TV show "Big Brother." In this tiny village with a population of just 352 (according to the 1872 census), the locals were under constant observation by the 100 or so artists reputedly living among them....
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
Tokyo police care for lost umbrellas, keys and flying squirrels
An employee at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo bags, tags and organizes thousands of items.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
Tokyo’s newest three-star chef wants ‘harmony across every detail’
British-born Daniel Calvert earned his third Michelin star last month — a stunning achievement considering his restaurant, Sezanne, has only been open for just over three years.
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”

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