Art May 2, 2013

The disconcerting unity of Raphael

by C.B. Liddell

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). In his ...

Art May 2, 2013

An art expedition to Southeast Asia

by Jeff Michael Hammond

Confronting the ongoing state of transformation that characterizes their native Singapore, two artists exhibiting at a new exhibition, “Welcome to the Jungle,” adopt quite different approaches and media. Francis Ng in “Constructing Construction #1″ turns his camera on an unfinished section of an ugly ...

Art | On: Architecture Apr 30, 2013

Hall of fame: Toyo Ito, Sou Fujimoto, Setouchi, OMA

by Julian Worrall

With Toyo Ito winning this year’s Pritzker Prize last month — “architecture’s Nobel” — Japan’s architects continue to bestride the international architectural world as colossi.

Art Apr 25, 2013

In front and behind closed temple doors

by Matthew Larking

While largely beneath the contemporary-art radar, painting for Japanese temples by the stars of the postwar art world is a relatively common activity, though largely restricted to nihonga.

Art Apr 25, 2013

On the mechanics of anime illustration

by Erik Luebs

The 1970s was an important decade for the development of Japanese pop-cultural icons. Kindergarten children back then would likely have been introduced to the characters Doraemon (1969), Anpanman (1973) and Hello Kitty (1974).

Art Apr 23, 2013

Shigeru Ban: between function and beauty

by Julian Worrall

Architecture is rooted in the basic human need for shelter. But the profession today pays little attention to situations where the need for shelter is most urgent, such as after a disaster.

Art Apr 18, 2013

Scroll displays the human side of Perry's arrival

by Victoria James

“It’s come pretty much out of nowhere,” says British Museum curator Tim Clark, placing a small wooden box on the table — it’s about the dimensions of a shoebox, slightly weathered and lightly inscribed with fluid kanji characters. “It was in Japan until last ...

Art Apr 18, 2013

Early photos of northern Japan capture a time of change

by Alice Gordenker

Although photography entered Japan in the mid-19th century, it took time to spread beyond the few port cities permitted to engage in trade with the West at that time. As a result, it was several decades before this imported Western technology reached outlying districts, ...

Art Apr 18, 2013

Smuggling art into fashion

by Mio Yamada

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, a U.S. Army propaganda drop over Berlin distributed leaflets bearing gruesome images of Adolf Hitler’s face partially obscured by a calf’s skull. Those who dared to pick one up would never have guessed that the ...

Art Apr 17, 2013

Fighting for Hong Kong graffiti king's legacy

by Laura Mannering

His graffiti once plastered Hong Kong, dense black-ink calligraphy applied with a brush to any public surface, telling the outlandish story of why he believed the territory belonged to him. The self-declared “King of Kowloon,” Tsang Tsou-choi, lived in poverty but became a local ...

Art Apr 11, 2013

Idiosyncrasies of the Kano school explored in Kyoto

by Matthew Larking

Kano Masanobu (1434-1530) founded the Chinese-art influenced painting school that bears his family name and flourished in different forms through to the Meiji Era (1868-1912). A familiar tale is that as it became the dominant hierarchical painting academy of political and military patronage, it ...