"Fuyuko Matsui: Becoming Friends with All the Children in the World"
Yokohama Museum of Art
Dec. 17, 2011-March 18.
www.yaf.or.jp/yma
The tall and strikingly good looking Fuyuko Matsui confirmed her status as the nation's most media-friendly artist when she was included as one of just 10 judges on public broadcaster NHK's New Year's Eve musical extravaganza, "Kohaku Uta Gassen" ("Red and White Song Battle"), on Saturday night.
But the 37-year-old's slightly too serious live-to-air comment about one of the performance's "construction of a uniform beauty" showed that all the attention has not yet gone to her head. She still cloaks her media persona in the same veil of studiousness and mysteriousness that characterizes her uniformly dark and occasionally grotesque nihonga (Japanese style) paintings which are featured in this mid-career retrospective.