Monty Dipietro - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Nov 17, 2005

This week brings some good news and some bad news to Tokyo's contemporary art scene. The good news is that a group of galleries that have been sharing a building in Shinkawa since January 2003 have relocated en masse, and now all boast significantly bigger spaces. The bad news is that the galleries vacated their remote and inconvenient location only to land in an even more obscure place. Their new home is across the Sumida River in east Tokyo, a 10-minute walk from Kiyosumi Shirokawa Station in Koto-ku.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Nov 3, 2005

The Showa 40 select six

The usual reasons for the formation of artists' groups are similarities in media, style or philosophy. But the only link for the six members of the "Showa 40" group, who rank among Japan's best contemporary artists, is the year of their births, 1965. There is nothing else distinctly in common among the six, although one can identify threads such as dark humor, gadget fetishism and otaku manga culture running through their work. But the 1965 time post does unite the Showa 40 gang rather well. Their roller coaster of shared history -- rising from the quiet comfort of the post-baby boom to the halcyon optimism of Japan's bubble era before delving into the hikikomori culture of social withdrawal visited on the X Generation -- is, I believe, the reason the Showa 40 artists have found both their unique inspiration and their considerable success.

CULTURE / Art

Oct 20, 2005

A circus on the harbor

Following on its impressive inauguration in 2001, the second Yokohama International Triennale of Contemporary Art is finally here, albeit a year late, and I have to say it has turned out far better than I had anticipated.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Oct 6, 2005

New fairy tales of gloom

I have been an admirer of Miwa Yanagi since encountering her series "My Grandmothers" at the 2001 Yokohama Triennale. In that body of work the artist displayed extraordinary skill in using makeup and staging to transform a number of young women into images of their ideal grandmothers, such as screamingly insouciant sexagenarians motorcycling over the Golden Gate Bridge -- that sort of thing. The large photographs were colorful, funny and full of life, suggesting it was only natural to leapfrog the spirit of childhood over the conventions of middle age, and catch hold of it again in one's senior years.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Sep 22, 2005

Becoming Japanese to satisfy the American eye

The elegant and enigmatic new exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, "The End of Time," is a retrospective on four decades of work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. One of Japan's most internationally acclaimed artists, Sugimoto uses photography to condense events in celebrated time-exposure series such as "Seascapes" and "Theaters," and explores the viewer's perception and understanding of reality with series such as "Portraits" and "Diorama," which take as their respective subjects Madame Tussaud's lifelike wax mannequins and the wildlife mis-en-scene found at museums of natural history.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Sep 7, 2005

'Palookaville' gets gallery treatment

I was chatting with old friends in Toronto last week, and our conversation came round to the subject of Japanese manga. I made clear my reservations regarding the popularity of pulp manga in Japan, and bemoaned the fact that many manga artists have even had gallery shows here.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 24, 2005

The best from a bygone era

I was recently tempted to term the handsome old Bridgestone Museum as "the last of a dying breed." But that hardly seems appropriate any more, considering the Nihonbashi art space's ongoing evolution. Instead, the Bridgestone might be better described as "a survivor" -- and one of the best -- from a bygone era.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 10, 2005

Market dreams of glory

Tokyo art collectors were out in force as the first-annual Tokyo Art Fair (TAF) debuted this past weekend (Aug. 6-8) at the Tokyo International Forum in Yurakucho. The fair saw participation from 81 galleries and art-related companies.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 27, 2005

Funhouse of the avant-garde

Like many people of my generation, I became aware of Laurie Anderson in 1981, when her song "O Superman" was an improbable radio hit. The eight-minute number featured a simple and hypnotic, breathy backing track, over which Anderson half spoke and half sang through a vocorder. The quirky lyrics repeatedly referenced Superman, "mom and dad" and the ominous approach of "American planes, made in America."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 13, 2005

Interesting times in China

Chinese contemporary art made a splash in the late 1990s with the so-called Mao Goes Pop movement, which broke big among Western gallerygoers and collectors.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 29, 2005

World Press prizewinning photos get to the heart of the story

Every year the Dutch-based non-profit organization World Press Photo sifts through thousands of news photographs from around the world in search of images that "represent an event, situation or issue of great journalistic importance and demonstrate an outstanding level of visual perception and creativity."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 15, 2005

The art that rocks the boat of war in Iraq

If you don't like U.S. President George W. Bush -- particularly if you don't support his war in Iraq -- then there is a new gallery exhibition in Tokyo that you will relish.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 1, 2005

A voyeur for today

The photographer Richard Kern grew up in a small town in North Carolina, the son of a newspaperman. As a teenager, Kern had a part-time job changing the marquee at the local cinema, and one of the perks was free films. It was during a screening of Roger Vadim's camped up 1968 sci-fi flick "Barbarella" -- featuring the comely Jane Fonda as a frolicking space kitten -- that Kern experienced a sexual awakening while masturbating in the balcony.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 18, 2005

Roppongi's art gallery boom

Roppongi, which used to be chiefly known as a pick-up party pit for Tokyo's ex-pat population, has recently begun to emerge as a contemporary art center. Spurred by the Mori Art Museum's opening in 2003, the neighborhood now presents the possibility of a short walking tour of new and interesting art spaces.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 4, 2005

Girls in the company of wolves

For more than a decade female Japanese artists have been a dynamic force in contemporary photography, and now they are making big waves in other artistic media as well, as the phantasmagoric work of Tomoko Konoike best illustrates.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 27, 2005

Soft-focus images to unsettle us

The first Yokohama Triennale, held back in 2001, was a critical success, and so I was delighted to hear that the second incarnation of the contemporary art extravaganza has been set for September.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 6, 2005

From Zen to story, a tale of artists East and West

The Mori Art Museum in Roppongi is not yet two years old but the two new Mori shows that opened last weekend -- "The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art from East Asia" and "The World is a Stage: Stories Behind Pictures" -- suggest a space now comfortable with its potential and its limitations.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 23, 2005

Drawing circles is the secret to a new visual language

It is exceedingly rare for a contemporary art show to sell out at the opening reception, and especially so in Japan. It is rarer still to arrive at a vernissage to discover that the show has sold out even before it opened. But that was the case with the Keegan McHargue exhibition that debuted at the Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Roppongi last week.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 9, 2005

Thank you to all art

Today, in case you didn't know it, is Thank You Art Day, a day to celebrate contemporary art made by anyone anywhere. Artist Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, a Tama Art University graduate, began the annual event in 2001 with an eye to, as he says, "vitalizing the Japanese art scene, because the Japanese art market is very weak."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Feb 23, 2005

Lights up on gifted artist

The Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts is the ne plus ultra of honors in Canadian art. Some 2,000 of the country's cultural elite attend the annual awards ceremony, a black-tie affair held at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. But last year, organizers faced a dilemma: Performance artist Istvan Kantor, due to receive the award, was officially banned from entering the National Gallery.

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