Monty Dipietro - The Japan Times

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Monty Dipietro

For Monty Dipietro's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Art

Mar 18, 2001

This way to youthful adventure

For a few wine-toasted moments, it almost felt like a New York City art night. Sure, Tokyo is half a world away, but there were three new shows up in a big old warehouse, critics and collectors floating about, photographers snapping the smiles on the faces of the beautiful people and, most of all, the art was untamed and good -- shades of West Chelsea in an otherwise dismal little Koto Ward neighborhood called Saga.

CULTURE / Art

Mar 11, 2001

Bottling everyday beauty on film

With an oeuvre more than a quarter-century in the making, Mamoru Sugiyama is due for a retrospective exhibition. So that is exactly what Tokyo's respected Photo Gallery International has given the 49-year-old photographer, in a show featuring some 30 of Sugiyama's representative black-and-white still-life studies. The thing is, if you didn't know that this was a retrospective, you'd never guess by looking at the pictures. So true has Sugiyama remained to his original vision that the pictures taken 25 years ago have exactly the same atmosphere as those done no more than a few months ago.

CULTURE / Art

Mar 4, 2001

Into the dark maw of Kabukicho

There are a few Tokyo districts sufficiently unique and well-known to stand independent in their respective identities, glamorous Ginza, chic Shibuya and rockin' Roppongi being among the most obvious examples.

CULTURE / Art

Feb 25, 2001

The best of young modern art

Once a year, Tokyoites have the opportunity to see some of the best contemporary painting and photography from across Japan in one location, the Ueno Royal Museum.

CULTURE / Art

Feb 17, 2001

Going behind the scenes to explore the in-between

The meandering video and haunted music of perennial outsider Ken Ikeda, 35, make up the latest exhibition at SCAI The Bathhouse, that enduring home for Japanese avant-garde culture located out on the edge of the Yanaka cemetery in Tokyo's Taito Ward. "Behind the Scenes" seems a rather uncomplicated multimedia installation -- that is, until one takes a look behind the scenes and at Ikeda himself.

CULTURE / Art

Feb 10, 2001

Happiness is a warm bar, with artwork

It appears that Tokyo curators have assumed a new duty as of late: that of thinking up catchy, metered titles for their exhibitions. First we had "Point of Purchase" at Parco, then "The Gift of Hope" at MoT, and now "The Place of Happiness" at the Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art in Aoyama.

CULTURE / Art

Feb 4, 2001

The elephants walk

Peter Pommerer likes to think big. Like, elephant big. His drawings, paintings and installations almost always revolve around depictions of the herbivorous mammal. Actually, there is a rumor floating around the art world that the Stuttgart artist actually believes he is an elephant.

CULTURE / Art

Jan 27, 2001

Wear black, be seen -- and be photographed

She is there week after week, down on the Ginza strip, up in Aoyama and over in Shinjuku, maneuvering from gallery to gallery on the Tokyo contemporary art exhibition opening party circuit. She is Kazumi Sugita, a retiring middle-aged woman (she does not give out her age, thank you very much), and chances are that before you see her she will spot you, and probably snap a picture.

CULTURE / Art

Jan 20, 2001

Patience finds something from nothing

Tokyo galleries are back in swing after the New Year's holiday, and the surprise toast of the town is an emerging artist, Anne Daems. A look at the 34-year-old Belgian's biography reveals that Daems has had only four solo shows in her short career, and that is exactly the number of local exhibitions featuring her work right now.

CULTURE / Art

Dec 30, 2000

'Discovering' Heinrich Vogeler

With most Tokyo galleries closed during the New Year's break, it can be difficult to find an interesting contemporary art show in the city.

CULTURE / Art

Dec 23, 2000

Freshly packaged desires on sale at Parco's "Point of Purchase"

Visually speaking, "Point of Purchase" has to be the busiest art exhibition in Tokyo at the moment. The pageantry of graffiti tags-cum-advertising signs is a lot of things: a throwback to yesterday's dorky company logos; a reminder that advertising is far more insidious these days; and a warning that tomorrow we may well find ourselves in a pseudo reality, dumbly and endlessly alternating, as theorists predicted 40 years ago, between production time and consumption time.

CULTURE / Art

Dec 17, 2000

Quiet scenes from an ordinary life

"London NW11, July 1993" (from ("Ruthbook") color photograph by Nigel Shafran If national stereotyping has not fallen completely out of fashion, it would probably be accurate to say that Nigel Shafran is the quintessential British artist. It is necessary, however, to qualify this so as to differentiate Shafran from the bumper crop of YBAs, or Young British Artists, who have taken the art world by storm over the last five years. For while Shafran is, at age 36, still "young," his style includes little of the flash found in the oeuvre of YBA look-at-me's like Damien Hirst. Shafran's approach better fits the tradition of the English eccentric: quiet and studied and weird. One is not so much shocked by what the London-based photographer is doing as intrigued.

CULTURE / Art

Dec 9, 2000

Bringing Russia and Japan together

Permit me a brief personal anecdote if you will: Some 20 years ago, a cold December night in Toronto found me inspired to chip, using my house keys, a few raisin-sized shards of concrete from the base of that city's newly-constructed CN Tower. Friends I mailed the little gray jewels to would later remark that they felt a little thrill sitting in their Montreal flat or Budapest apartment and holding in their hands an actual piece of the "the world's tallest free-standing structure."

CULTURE / Art

Nov 25, 2000

Farewell to art world's jewel

Some five weeks from today, a few artists and friends will gather in the Sagacho Exhibit Space.

CULTURE / Art

Nov 18, 2000

Hara celebrates new facelift with show of Zhou Teihai

Two developments this autumn serve to illustrate both what is good and what is bad about the current condition of the Japanese contemporary art scene.

CULTURE / Art

Nov 11, 2000

Love, oil and Bangkok traffic jams

If you've ever been caught in a Bangkok traffic jam, it's a fair bet that "beautiful" would not be a word you'd use to describe the scene. But asurvey of Takanobu Kobayashi's new paintings gives the impression that the 40-year-old painter loves the buses and big trucks and little tuk tuks that choke the Thai capital's streets.

CULTURE / Art

Nov 4, 2000

The good, the bad and the confusing

"No. 7 Needles" (1975) oil on canvas Like many of his paintings, Luc Tuymans is a man easily misunderstood. At first glance, the tall and hulking Belgian seems more like the president of a stodgy old European corporation than the internationally acclaimed avant-garde artist that he is. Tuymans, 42, moves slowly, purposefully, and when he looks you in the eye, it is as if he is examining you. He speaks in a measured, deep voice, and if you make a little joke Luc Tuymans does not laugh.

CULTURE / Art

Oct 28, 2000

Identity found among shifting personas

A tour-group traveler posing in front of the Empire State Building; a junkie punk jonesing on a dirty park bench; a mail-order bride photographed standing beside her snaggletoothed, shotgun-toting redneck husband -- Nikki S. Lee is all of these people, and then some.

CULTURE / Art

Oct 21, 2000

In the cavern of the Industrial Age

The first thing you notice is the strong odor, which is somewhere just on the forgiving side of rank. Imagine the refrigeration breaking down for a couple of August days in a provincial French cheese shop, and the aromatic quickly turning miasmatic, andyou'll begin to get an idea of just how the Rontgen Kunstraum contemporary art gallery is smelling right now.

CULTURE / Art

Sep 16, 2000

Pointing a laser at a detached future

Marcel Duchamp, the supreme artist's artist, was often asked about his role in the making of art. The line of inquiry was inspired largely by the enigmatic Frenchman's series of "ready-mades," store-bought objects such as shovels or coat racks he exhibited under his name.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.

The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

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