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 the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo is designed so that most visitors will be able to find something to take from it.

One of the key concepts needed to understand Takamatsu is his deep and profound interest in epistemology — the study of what can be known — and his view that human subjectivity prevents us from perceiving things as they actually are. The bilingual exhibition catalog sums up his views as follows:

"Ultimately human beings cannot sufficiently comprehend those things that exist outside of themselves. These things are immediately sullied by our biased perceptions. This being the case, even if we try to pursue the consummate form of things, we can never hope to attain them. Therefore, we should make this process itself into art."