Monty Dipietro - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 27, 2003

Although she has only recently turned 28, I am starting to think Tabaimo is one of Japan's most important artists. Here's why.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 13, 2003

'Girl! Girl! Girl!' just wants to have fun

I've been looking forward to the new show at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. Trying not to sound sexist here, there was more than a little appeal in the show's title: "Girl! Girl! Girl!" I guess I'm just a regular guy, sweltering through summer, looking for some easy distraction. A Steve McQueen film festival, or an exhibition titled "Beer! Beer! Beer!" would have had a similar effect.

CULTURE / Art

Jul 30, 2003

Confessions of a Frida lover

In the interest of full disclosure: I have been hopelessly enamored with the beautiful, communist, bisexual artist Frida Kahlo ever since I happened across -- and was shaken to the core by -- a print of her painting "Broken Column" (1944) in a Montreal art book shop back in 1979. I also wept uncontrollably when I saw the film "Frida" on a Europe-bound flight last month.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 23, 2003

The high priestess of rock 'n' roll 'n' . . . art

Patti Smith has shown her drawings and paintings before in Japan -- some years ago at the Museum Eki in Kyoto. But it is a safe bet that most of her Japanese fans are more familiar with Smith the rock'n'roller, that sexily disheveled female version of Mick Jagger who kicked out prepunk jams from New York City during the 1970s.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 9, 2003

At play in the (magnetic) fields of Roppongi

With August just a few weeks away, the new Roppongi Complex group of galleries is running its last shows before the O-bon break and the October debut of their raison d'etre (location-wise) -- the Mori Art Museum, which will be Japan's largest contemporary art space.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 25, 2003

Under the spell of Tiki, the Polynesian man-god

I'm in a trendy Berlin eatery. The chef has sat down at my table and is expounding on archeology, and everything he is saying is wrong.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 4, 2003

Saint Phalle, in living color

Imagine the blue of a desert sky, the rich greens and browns of an old-growth forest, the rainbow hues in a bowl of tropical fruit -- and you can appreciate how diminished our world would be without color. But as you contemplate the wonder of color, the characteristics of differing wavelengths of light and the different absorbent and reflective qualities of pigments are not likely to cross your mind. Generally, people experience color, but they do not understand it.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 21, 2003

Who, what, when, where -- why?

My good friend Tatsumi Orimoto, now one of Japan's best-known artists, has made his mother a central subject in his work for the last several years. This, he once explained to me, is because she always supported him in his creative efforts -- efforts that are, in a word, unorthodox: in one, he famously ties baguettes to his head and travels the world as "Bread Man."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 7, 2003

One door opens, another one closes

"The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort -- the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing -- the opening a wonderfully joyous moment."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 23, 2003

Could it be you, baby?

My mind is weary, and this is because since last weekend I have been thinking hard about how different the world would be if men could get pregnant.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 9, 2003

Complex reasons to paaaarty!

Judging from the scene in Roppongi Friday night, no one would suspect that U.S. and British warplanes are blasting Iraq, French auction houses are facing a boycott, and the world's art market has landed in the toilet. It was happy time here on the Tokyo contemporary art scene. With smiles on their faces, hundreds of artists, dealers, curators and assorted freeloaders at the gala opening of the Roppongi art complex (which has been dubbed, artlessly, "Complex"), gobbled samosas and salmon and roast beef, raised plastic glasses of Champagne (no bubbly boycott here), and -- for a single night anyhow -- partied grim reality right out of mind.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 26, 2003

Life: the home movie, Japan: the video game

Two very different female video artists have brought pleasantly complementary exhibitions of their recent work to the Tokyo Opera City Gallery. Elija-Liisa Ahtila, 43, from Finland, and Japanese artist Tabaimo, 27, both opened with impressive solo efforts at the spacious Shinjuku gallery Friday.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 12, 2003

Art or 'action'? Who cares

I would describe the 64-year-old Swiss man behind the current show at Ginza's Shiseido Gallery as part conceptual artist, part performance artist, and part video artist -- but Roman Signer would have none of these labels. He considers himself a sculptor -- pure, if not so simple.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Feb 26, 2003

Back to life, back to reality

LONDON -- More so than in any previous era, the development of modern art has been characterized by a healthy international cross-pollination of styles and movements. I have on many occasions remarked, sometimes disparagingly, on the strong influences Japanese artists have absorbed from their Western contemporaries. But I am in London this week (researching the tradition of English stained glass, while also enjoying many pints of beer in pubs), and so I think it appropriate to look a little at the influence that Japan has had on some British artists.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Feb 12, 2003

Bright white, big city

Something interesting I recently learned about anatomy: There are 26 bones in the human foot, and if you break just one of them, your entire leg is basically useless.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 29, 2003

A true master of the art of making photographs

I remember once playing a little mind game with Tokyo-based photographer Torin Boyd. We were sitting in a Kabukicho bar, looking through his portfolio. Every time I said something about "taking pictures," in his response he substituted the verb "make" for the verb "take," as in "I made this picture last year." As the pages were turned and the beers were drunk, I consciously stuck with "take," and he stubbornly parried with "make."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 15, 2003

MoT showcases artists who draw deeply from real life

"Art," wrote the French artist Robert Filliou (1926-87), "is what makes life more interesting than art." And this, dear reader, is just about my favorite quote. Profoundly mystifying, it serves as an M.C. Escher-esque comeback when the old "What is art?" line is thrown out less as a question than as bait for an argument. After all, what is art, if not a new and improved version of life, carefully folded back onto and reflecting itself?

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 1, 2003

So you thought '02 was good? Well, there's Mori to come

It looks, at first glance, like a refreshing case of "out with the old, and in with the new": In late 2002 the Tokyo art community bade a teary goodbye to its Mecca, when the falling-down old Sagacho building, home for years to some of Japan's most progressive gallery spaces, finally closed its doors for good. And now 2003 is here, with the promise of a bright and beautiful future in the form of the Mori Art Museum, set to open in October. Designed by architect Richard Glickman -- who also did the Andy Warhol Museum and the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin -- the nine galleries of the Mori Museum will occupy a total of 2,995 sq. meters on the 52nd and 53rd floors of the glittering new Roppongi Hills complex.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 18, 2002

Under the skin of strangers

Goldsmith's College is generally associated with the wave of Young British Artists (or YBA, as they are famously known) that rocked the contemporary art scene during the 1990s.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 4, 2002

The secret language of janitors

Although it is my pleasure to cover contemporary art by living artists in this column, I hope readers will give me leave to discuss a dead one this week, because the Henry Darger exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Art is just too fantastic an event to ignore.

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