One of the words most often associated with the art of Kaii Higashiyama is spiritual. But what exactly does this mean? The exhibition “Kaii Higashiyama: A Retrospective ” at the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (MOMAT) — celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth ...

Japanese artists, as they age, often benefit from the “Hokusai Effect.” This is the notion, based on a famous quote from the great ukiyo-e (genre painting) artist, that they only attain real greatness well beyond the normal retirement age for other professions. “Nothing I ...

Nishimura Gallery Runs till Nov. 17 Perspective, by its invocation of distance, divides things and people from each other. While such divisions help us to organize things mentally and visually, they can also deaden the sensuousness and warmth we feel for objects around us. ...

The Fascist dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea — but he did manage the unusual feat of transcending time. Franco’s restoration of the old aristocracy and the Catholic Church in Spain effectively turned the clock back, while his restrictive economic policies ...

Museum of Modern Art, Saitama Closes in 53 days Hiroshi Teshigahara, who died in 2001, is chiefly remembered as the avant-garde film director who gave celluloid form to author Kobo Abe’s surreal, Kafkaesque novel, “The Woman in the Dunes” (1964). One of the things ...

R esearch the biography of any prominent Japanese artist in the last 100 years and you’ll likely run into terms such as Bunten, Teiten, Shin Bunten and Nitten. Though the plethora of names may be off-putting, they all refer to the same thing: Japan’s ...

Bunkamura Closes in 25 days The French artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) liked to depict strange amoebic and insectlike creatures in his drawings and lithographs. His career, too, resembled the life cycle of a rather odd bug. While studying art in Paris, he became disillusioned ...

When an important date comes around — like a centenary — and an artist has to be commemorated and celebrated, the problem museums and galleries often have is how to get hold of artworks that best represent him. The Museum of Modern Art Kamakura, ...

Japanese modernist art is often described as being derivative of its Western counterpart, but beneath the surface a real difference between them can be likened to that between religion in Japan and the West. In the West, mainstream religion has often been overly serious ...

Cibone Gallery Closes in 55 days A main appeal of art has always been its proximity to genius: showing us daring images, new forms, and astounding techniques that more mundane minds could never aspire to. But alongside this, there has also always been art ...

Sexuality is polymorphous. It has to be. This is because — rightly or wrongly — it often faces rigid repressive structures that it can only outflank by changing its forms and pouring its energy in new directions. Sigmund Freud wrote about artistic creation as ...