Monty Dipietro - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Feb 9, 2005

Feminist life actually: singing in the pain of Japan

The word "feminist" has been stripped of the luster it had back in the 1970s, and few Japanese women are more aware of this than Michiko Kasahara. Widely regarded as one of Japan's leading feminist curators, Kasahara was responsible for groundbreaking exhibitions such as "Gender: Beyond Memory" at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 1996.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 26, 2005

Time to reflect on transition

Japan is in the midst of a "Korea boom." It seems that the smiling face of Bae Yong Joon is everywhere, and almost 10,000 (mostly) female fans greeted the superstar Korean actor when he arrived at Narita airport last November. Perhaps sparked by 2002's jointly hosted soccer World Cup, films, fashion, food and all things pop-cultural are cross-pollinating between the two nations at an unprecedented rate.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 12, 2005

Blue skies over architectural utopias

The latest offering from the Mori Art Museum lives up to its big name: "Archilab: New Experiments in Architecture, Art and the City, 1950-2005." The first architecture exhibition at the Mori, this is a big show, ambitious in both scale and manner of presentation. Featuring drawings, videos and maquettes of some 220 projects by 90 architects, "Archilab" is being presented in association with FRAC (Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain du Centre), a radical architecture center located on the Loire in Orleans, France.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 29, 2004

Cheers to contemporary art

The years are passing too quickly for this no-longer-young critic. Lest you think me embittered, let me start this year in review on a high note by trumpeting the star of 2004, a grand old dame who looks as bright and new as the day she was born -- the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. Built in the Bauhaus style by Jin Watanabe in 1938, the wonderfully comfortable Hara marked its 25th year as a museum this past November.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 22, 2004

An improviser of lines

When we hearken back to the revolutionary 1960s, a decade increasingly "remembered" by people who in fact weren't even alive at the time, the soundtrack that rings in our ears is, of course, rock 'n' roll.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 1, 2004

Instruments of invention

It has been 91 years since Luigi Russolo published his manifesto "The Art of Noises," in which the Italian Futurist implored, "We must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Nov 24, 2004

A view through the looking-glass

The stories of her terrible childhood and of haunting hallucinations have created the widely accepted view that Yayoi Kusama's art emerges from unimaginable suffering. It is difficult to find anything said about Kusama that does not dwell on her mental illness and she herself does little to dispel this image.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Nov 3, 2004

Feeling the joy of painting

Much has been made, in art and elsewhere, of the "East meets West" cliche. Here in Japan in the latter decades of the 19th century, the Meiji government sent boatloads of painters to Europe to study yoga (Western-style painting). They brought back oils and chiaroscuro, but their work -- as with the Japonisme then in vogue with Western artists -- was frequently derivative or superficial.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Oct 20, 2004

Stuff of nightmares

Dear Reader,

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Oct 6, 2004

A leaf out of a scrapbook of depravity?

In this world, most people get to be teenagers for exactly seven years. And then there's the artist Larry Clark. Born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1943, Clark has been living and reliving the teen experience for some six decades.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Sep 22, 2004

Project seeks new sites for sore eyes

I would estimate that for every artist sipping champagne at an opening reception -- clad in Gaultier and coiffed with contrived insouciance -- there are hundreds of other artists sitting alone in cheap apartments eating cold noodles. "Starving artist" may be a cliche, but the truth is that most people making art don't make much money at all. They do have those noodles, and have about as much social status as an earthworm.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 25, 2004

Artists remap Americas

Bombarded as we are with the media's sound bites and video clips, it is difficult to imagine a time when the task of recording and recounting the news of the world was assigned to artists and their paintings.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 11, 2004

Artist builds from zero

Suspicious of the pervasive role of Western culture in his homeland, Katsushige Nakahashi resolved to become a "Japanese artist."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 9, 2004

Ozawa show gives no straight answers

When the Mori Art Museum opened its doors almost a year ago, media attention naturally focused on its prime location atop the Roppongi Hills complex (with a dazzling panoramic view of Tokyo), the debut exhibition "Happiness," and the talented and affable British gallery director, David Elliott. Less visible, but no less important, was the who's who of Japan's most established and promising arts professionals the Mori hired as staff. One of these was the young curator Mami Kataoka, who was lured away from the Opera City Gallery in Shinjuku. Although she had a hand in the "Roppongi Crossing" show this spring, Kataoka's curatorial debut at the Mori comes with Tsuyoshi Ozawa's solo show, "Answer with Yes and No!" currently running there -- and it is a terrific success.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 28, 2004

Photos bloom in Ebisu's garden

Conceived during the halcyon days of Japan's economic boom, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (TMP) has seen plenty of ups and downs in its 10 years of operation. The fact that the TMP's entrance is hidden within Yebisu Garden Place has been one issue, but the bigger problem is that the TMP has never really found its direction. During the late '90s, the museum was running debts at a rate well over 10 times its revenues, which prompted management changes and attempts to schedule more popular exhibitions, including nonphotography shows.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 14, 2004

Down by the river

Tucked behind a gas station on a side street out near the Sumida River, a 12-minute walk from the nearest subway station, the Shinkawa Building is not the easiest place to find on Tokyo's art map. But the nondescript two-story structure is a worthwhile visit for anyone interested in Japanese contemporary art. A trio of Tokyo's leading gallery owners are based here.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 30, 2004

Skeletons come out of the closet

For a decade now, Yoshiko Shimada has been a lonely but tireless torchbearer of feminist consciousness in Japanese contemporary art. After spending time in Germany and America, the 44-year-old returned to Japan in the mid-1990s to tackle taboos -- subjects such as the Emperor's complicity in World War II sex slavery, the re-emergence of nationalism and militarism, and the second-class status of women in contemporary Japanese society.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 16, 2004

A 'Brazil-ness' beyond soccer and samba

I suppose that without some sort of unifying theme, every exhibition of artworks would be titled, simply and dully: "Art Exhibition." And so museums base their shows on a period, genre or, more recently, an intriguing turn of phrase. This I welcome, but exhibitions curated on the basis of the artists' nationality, I generally do not. We live in an era of unprecedented cultural cross-pollination, so isn't a show where the only link between participating artists is country of birth or residence more than a little out of date?

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 2, 2004

The challenge of not knowing your place

It is a shame that Ilya Kabakov was not feeling well enough to make the trip to Tokyo for the opening last Friday of his Mori Art Museum exhibition, "Where Is Our Place?" I met the New York-based Kabakov and his wife, Emilia, years ago when they were involved with the now-defunct Satani Gallery in Ginza, and they are the sort of people -- conceptualists with a sense of humor -- who make the contemporary art world a warmer, friendlier and more "human" place. We missed you Ilya, get well soon.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 19, 2004

The sorrows of superficiality

On Oct. 31, 1999, race driver Mika Hakkinen finished first at the Suzuka Speedway to win the Japan GP and that year's F-1 Driver's Championship. It was a close and dramatic victory for the likeable Finn, and among his delirious fans on that day was the French artist Sylvie Fleury. Soon afterward, when clothing designer Hugo Boss asked Fleury to design a limited-edition outfit as part of a German exhibition they were sponsoring, she decided to make the garment a tribute to Hakkinen.

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