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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 13, 2017

At 104, Toko Shinoda talks about a life in art

The only living Japanese on a postage stamp, 104-year-old Toko Shinoda reflects on a lifetime devoted to art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jul 16, 2016

Anime discovers a rural outpost

For the past few years, the beginning of July has found me on a flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles to attend Anime Expo (AX), the largest annual North American convention devoted to Japanese popular culture, and its related industry-only event, Project Anime (PA). Both continue to break attendance records....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2016

Richard Aldrich on the plurality of painting

Richard Aldrich's "Eight Paintings" is his third solo exhibition with Misako & Rosen, but his first in their current exhibition space in Tokyo's Otsuka district. As the title suggests, it comprises eight small-scale works. It opens as his show "Time Stopped, Time Started" closes at Gladstone Gallery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 19, 2015

Impressions of spiritual intimacy

There are two theories about post-impressionist art. One is that it was a continuation of the modernist spirit of the impressionists, with the application of ever-more scientific principles of color and light to the depiction of objects. The other is that post-impressionism was a re-assertion of an artistic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2015

There's method in artistic 'madness'

Jiro Takamatsu is not easy to understand. He was an idiosyncratic avant-garde artist who worked with a variety of materials to create arcane art that expressed philosophical ideas. This is immediately off-putting to some and intriguing to others. However, the exhibition "Takamatsu Jiro: Mysteries" at...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2014

Sculpting the uncanny space between permanence and evanescence

Sculpture is supposedly the most solid and permanent of the creative arts, so it is a paradox that an artist like Junichi Mori — whose work often focuses on impermanence and evanescence — has chosen to work in this style, using materials like marble and wood, instead of something more fleeting and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 11, 2014

Tomoo Gokita's painterly coup

In a 2000, Gokita likened the relationship between fine artists and illustrators to that of martial artists and professional wrestlers. 'These days, though, wrestlers beat martial artists in MMA matches,' he noted. 'If I could do that in art, then I'm fine being an illustrator.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2014

Artist veils photos showing his genitalia to parry police censorship

The censorship action taken by police last month at an Aichi museum showing photos of a photographer's genitals constitutes a human rights violation and highlights the nation's shift toward a more controlling society, the artist said Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 25, 2013

The influences on and of Tetsumi Kudo

"Collection 3 — Works Related to Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective: From Anti-art of the 1960s to Art of the Present Day" is a contextual exhibition accompanying the superb "Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. It brings together foreign and Japanese artists,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2013

Portraits of an artist as a young man — and an older one

Yasumasa Morimura is a weird mixture of curator, artist and simple art lover. Throughout his career he has selected famous portraits and paintings of people and then faithfully recreated them, with the exception of superimposing his own face on the subjects.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2013

Outsider drawn to the circle of life

The discovery and promotion of works by self-taught or outsider artists — those who are not academically trained and create their works primarily for themselves, mostly beyond the cultural-commercial mainstream — are still relatively new activities in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2013

The Powers behind American Pop Art

Brash, bold and unabashedly low-brow, much of Pop Art took inspiration from the imagery of popular culture to forge what many consider to be the preeminent art form of the mid-20th century.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 2, 2013

Why acupuncture is giving doubters the needle

You can't get crystal healing on the National Health Service. It doesn't fund faith healing. And most doctors believe magnets are best stuck on fridges, not patients. But ask for a treatment in which an expert examines your tongue, smells your skin and tries to unblock the flow of life force running...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2013

Crawling through the mud in style

It's quite fitting that the major Osamu Suzuki (1926-2001) retrospective, the first since the ceramicist's passing, is taking place at The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the hometown of the artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 27, 2013

Art that bloomed with the Feinbergs

As a simple matter of economic convenience, some of the best art collections in the world started out going against established taste. By avoiding what was already highly valued — and therefore expensive — collectors could build up impressive collections that could then help to dictate future tastes....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2013

The disconcerting unity of Raphael

Harmony can sometimes have a disconcerting side. This is one insight to emerge from the Raphael exhibition at the National Museum of Western Art, the centerpiece of which is one of the artist's acknowledged great works, the "Madonna del Granduca" (c. 1505).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 6, 2012

Reading between the lines of realism

Nineteenth century Russia is far better known for its composers and writers than for its artists. While the likes of Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy have a global resonance, the most famous Russian painters of the period remain internationally obscure. But this state of affairs is starting to change...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 24, 2012

The shaping of a Post-Impressionist

When the influential art critic Clement Greenberg described a particular painter as "the most copious source of what we know as modern art, the most abundant generator of ideas and the most enduring in newness," it wasn't, as some might expect, Pablo Picasso he was referring to but Paul Cezanne, a generation...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Jul 7, 2011

Public to benefit from art indemnity system

If you've ever thought that the ¥1,500 admission ticket at the average touring exhibition in Tokyo is too expensive, consider this: The cost of insuring artworks for trips to Japan is around 0.2 percent of their appraised value.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 15, 2011

Yoshihiko Takahashi's messages in a bottle

The obvious property of glass is that it is transparent, but for Yoshihiko Takahashi this is only one of its essential characteristics. The prolific glass artist, whose career is being honored by a retrospective at the Crafts Gallery of the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, clearly has several handles on the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 7, 2011

The Kandinsky narcissistic blues

Anyone who has seen the unrefined figurative works of Mark Rothko can easily understand why he later turned to his abstract Color Field works. Because of examples like this, there is always a suspicion that abstract art is merely the last refuge of the technically inept. Wassily Kandinsky — often seen...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 29, 2010

Modern serving of traditional tea

If you've ever been fortunate enough to attend a tea ceremony, then you know that within the simplicity of movements, the quiet beauty of the room and the refined elegance of the utensils, there is a deep world where the moment becomes living art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 15, 2010

Fischli and Weiss: Creative pile ups

I n 1987, the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss completed a film of what can best be described as a dysfunctional experiment carried out in an anonymous warehouse space.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 23, 2010

Reflections of Chekhov's Russia in modern-day Japan

"People compare me with Bertolt Brecht, and I am glad to hear that — but why won't anyone call me Anton Inoue?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2010

Visions of art in an alternative key

In its own quiet way, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions was one of the standout art events of 2009.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2010

Yang Fudong on the beauty of living

Based in Shanghai, Chinese artist Yang Fudong has gained worldwide recognition for his multimedia installations incorporating material shot on richly textured, black-and-white 35 mm film. His five-part film cycle "Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest" (2003-07) was one of the defining works in the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 11, 2009

Hiroshima city tracks down elusive artist

Upon entering his current exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), it is clear that although what he does can be described as making art, Tsuyoshi Ozawa is not an artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 11, 2009

The eyes have it in this light show

When you have a venue that provides such ample exhibition space as the National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT), it can be quite a challenge to find a single contemporary artist worthy to fill it. Earlier this year, Hitoshi Nomura, with a long, varied career and many large installations to his name, just about...

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Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.