Japan's Gutai artists celebrated like never before

Jun 9, 2013

Japan's Gutai artists celebrated like never before

by Bronwyn Mahoney

“Do what no one has done before,” was the rallying cry that Jiro Yoshihara, founder of the postwar Japanese art group the Gutai Art Association, demanded of his fellow members. A work by one of the group’s important painters, Kazuo Shiraga, fulfilled the edict ...

Jun 5, 2013

Ohio art museum to open new Japanese exhibition

The Cleveland Museum of Art will open a new exhibition room for its Japanese art on June 16 as part of a $350 million renovation and expansion project. “We regard it as one of the most important Japanese collections in North America,” museum President ...

Taking anime too seriously

Jun 2, 2013

Taking anime too seriously

by Michael Hoffman

"Why study anime?" the author of this study of anime asks himself. Good question, thinks the reader. Why indeed "study" a pop art whose appeal is less to thought than to mass, unreflecting, spontaneous enjoyment?

Hitoko Urago's 'Connected': blot-tests of portraiture

Mar 7, 2013

Hitoko Urago's 'Connected': blot-tests of portraiture

by Matthew Larking

Hitoko Urago pairs paintings — portraits with abstractions — though each work is not necessarily conceived at the same time. “Untitled (Lynda)” (2012), for example, depicts a profile of a black woman with big hair against a green background. She is paired with a ...

In New York, the Guggenheim goes Gutai

Feb 28, 2013

In New York, the Guggenheim goes Gutai

By now, the looks, character and history of Gutai, the post-World War II Japanese art movement born in 1954 in Ashiya, between Osaka and Kobe, are familiar to regular viewers of modern-art exhibitions in Japan. Last summer’s “Gutai: The Spirit of an Era,” a ...