Tag - japanese-art

 
 

JAPANESE ART

Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 15, 2018
Tokyo art space battles against the current
Repurposing old buildings to show art is becoming increasingly mainstream in Japan, but the route by which Koichiro Osaka ended up creating the Asakusa gallery has been circuitous, and an odd mix of chance and determination.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2018
Tomoo Gokita: Exposing the underbelly of pop culture
Tomoo Gokita's deformations of his subjects are surrealistic with a precision mix of austere black, white and grays, low-brow culture imagery, kookiness and powerfully evocative draftsmanship.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2018
The funny side of Edo Period culture
Sometimes vulgar or ridiculous, and occasionally cliched, the toba-e of Nichosai, Kuniyoshi, Hokusai and Kyosai at the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts offer a panorama of what the historically amusing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 24, 2018
Ike no Taiga: The 'true view' travel painter
"The Genius of Ike no Taiga: Carefree Traveler, Legendary Painter," at Kyoto National Museum, is magisterial. Edo Period (1603-1868) Kyoto teemed with big name painters, but Taiga (1723-1776) was superlative.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 20, 2018
Koga: A pithy affair with the avant-garde
There are two good reasons to see the exhibition on the short-lived photography magazine Koga, now on at the Tokyo Photographic Art (TOP) Museum. One is that it is full of powerful images that will linger in the memory despite their relative simplicity. The other is that, as the story of art continues...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 16, 2018
The cosmic talents of Noriyoshi Ohrai
It must have been nonstop monsters, warships, hunks and epic boobage for much of Noriyoshi Ohrai's life.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Jan 13, 2018
Mural painter can't relax in bathhouses
Name: Mizuki Tanaka
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 2, 2018
The zero hour of Kobe's avant-garde
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art's present draw card is the Saint Petersburg collection, "Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum." But on a lower level, at the far end of a long corridor gallery, are photos and grainy videos — the small-scale documentation of one of Japan's little-known postwar...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 12, 2017
Asia in the wings of Japan's art scene
"Tis the season to be jolly ... circumspect. As regards art, despite suggestions from some art professionals that biennials and other recurring art festivals are an exhausted format, 2017 offered up an embarrassment of riches, some more embarrassing than others as it turned out.
CULTURE / Art
Dec 12, 2017
Bohemia along the Sumida: In search of cultural capital
On paper, the Japanese government supports the arts, which are considered important vehicles for promoting Japanese culture globally, enhancing the country's image as a tourist destination and stimulating declining regional economies. But, where does the content for Japan's increasing number of art festivals...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 5, 2017
Hokusai's great wave that swept Europe
Innovative, creative, and immensely prolific, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was celebrated during his lifetime in his native Japan. His works were among the first major examples of Japanese art to be widely appreciated overseas in the second half of the 19th century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 28, 2017
The beginning, end and rebirth of sculpture
The subtitle given to the retrospective of the 60-year career of Osaka-based Michio Fukuoka is oxymoronic: "A Sculptor Who No Longer Sculpts." He used to, but became frustrated and filled with doubt about creativity and so he made sculpture anyway, often about "doing nothing."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 14, 2017
Sachiko Kodama's laws of attraction
Entering the tatami-mat tearoom-style exhibition spaces at the back of Kyoto's specialist pewter art craft gallery, Seikado, spectators are apprised that the magnetism of the pieces on display might interfere with the strips on their credit cards. Those fitted with pacemakers are also asked to stand...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 31, 2017
What makes a National Treasure?
Together, Japan's National Treasures provide a cacophonous ode to the nation and its heritage for its historical, cultural, geographical and stylistic dissonances. Yet, this is the first time in 41 years that 210 such works (or sets) have been displayed en masse.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 24, 2017
Motonobu: The father of Kano styles
A family-run enterprise, the Kano school of painting was a consistent force in Japan's art world for more than 300 years, from the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) up until its fortune waned in the 19th century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 21, 2017
'Okinawa': Remembering Takuma Nakahira in a different light
A figure stood on Zushi Beach in Kanagawa Prefecture one night in 1973, silhouetted against a fire as he fed piles of prints and negatives — the bulk of his photographic work so far — into the flames.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 3, 2017
In the right light, every detail counts
At the tail end of an unexpectedly long conversation, the last question I ask photographer Keizo Kitajima is why it's important for him to have even lighting across the image. The photographs he is showing at the Photographers' Gallery in Shinjuku are part of his long-running "Untitled Records" series...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 5, 2017
A somber prelude to riots of color
Koji Kinutani's entire career — from his student work to his metaphysical portraiture, which inaugurated a manga trend in contemporary art; his Styrofoam sculptures; the "Goddess of the Silvery Peak" (the basis for the official 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games poster); and his sometimes frightening...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 8, 2017
Buddhist hells are frighteningly human
Popularly known as Genshin (942-1017), the high-ranking Buddhist prelate Eshin Sozu was said to have been born following his devout mother's prayers to the Kannon of Takaoji Temple in Taima, Nara Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 25, 2017
Straddling East and West in art
Hybridity and eclecticism may be key concepts in much contemporary art, yet they are not new phenomena. In the Taisho Era (1912-1926), Tetsugoro Yorozu virtually personified the idea of hybrid art: As Japan rushed toward modernization, he not only experimented with the very latest forms of Western art...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan