Matthew Larking - The Japan Times

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Matthew Larking

For Matthew Larking's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 17, 2006

Exploring her selves

Modern culture is deeply interested in constructed and changing identities. The mutability of the individual is an obsession that stretches from stories about Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" being a portrait of the artist in drag to Oprah Winfrey's very public weight-loss programs; from Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura's self portraits as celebrities from the arts and entertainment worlds to the bizarre transformations of Michael Jackson.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 6, 2006

Three artists piece together contemporary Japanese art

Art since the 1960s has reveled in a directional pluralism devoid of dominant mediums or movements, with no consensus on how the range of artists and styles might add up to a more significant whole.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 15, 2006

Nihonga painter captured Taiwanese beauty

The scene was tranquil in 1927 at the newly established "Taiten" annual fine arts exhibition in the Japanese colony of Taiwan, which had been ceded by China in 1895 as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. None of the artists practicing in the Qing Period (1644-1911) styles of Chinese painting were accepted for the "Toyoga (Eastern)" painting section. In all, only three Taiwanese artists had any work selected in that division. Two of them had actually lived in Japan and all three were producing nihonga -- Japanese style paintings. The majority of paintings in the exhibition were the work of Japanese officials or other Japanese living in Taiwan.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 27, 2006

Embracing an organic modernism

At one of the extremes of 20-century architecture there were the modernists Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier and Bauhaus' Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. They made impersonal and cool buildings in the "International Style" in vogue at the time that celebrated whiteness, straight lines and steel and glass as primary building materials. The descendents of the style -- the box-like apartments and skyscraper office blocks that are ubiquitous in any modern city -- function as the architectural emblems of capitalism.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 16, 2006

Swept along in the winds of war

The year World War I began, the sculptor Ernst Barlach cast "The Avenger" (1914), a powerful and ambiguous work showing an onrushing figure with a sword raised high. The sculpture's enlivened dynamism conjures the ominous patriotic tensions that seethed in Germany in the months leading to the war. The following year Barlach volunteered for the German reserve infantry,

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 2, 2006

GERMAN PHOTOGRAPHY: Reconfiguring your pasts

It is mostly an unremarkable location, except for the fact that it is in a bit of a shambles. Something has obviously taken place here, but the smooth surfaces and sharp edges of the architectural detail simply do not offer up any artistic intention.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 12, 2006

ALPHONSE MUCHA: Modern, not Modernist

For Alphonse Mucha, being a "Modernist" in the 19th and 20th centuries was never as important as being in the right place at the right time: which is why for critics the Impressionists of the late 19th century are Modernist and Mucha, their contemporary, was merely modern.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 24, 2005

Considering Vietnam's modern history, it is hardly surprising that about a third of the exhibits in "50 years of Modern Vietnamese Paintings: 1925-75" at Tokyo Station Gallery depict warfare and soldiers in uniform, or are propaganda images fashioned from the odds and ends of figurative painting. Here, the art is very much a mirror reflecting national experience and history.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 29, 2005

A painter of his time?

When Alfred H. Barr (the founder of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) was sketching out the shape of modern art in the 20th century -- its movements, influences and directions -- he drew a kind of family tree showing how all the different "isms" connected to one another in an evolutionary way.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 30, 2005

The influence of a literary titan lasts for 200 years

Renowned as a poet, novelist, dramatist and critic, Victor Hugo was a figure of legendary proportions whose funeral procession through Paris in 1885 attracted more than 2 million devotees.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 23, 2005

A great selection from the Electors' finest treasures

Dresden -- from the Sorbish, meaning "dwellers in the marshy forest," was transformed in the late Renaissance from a Slav village to the jewel in the crown of the Duchy of Sachsen. This evolution had much to do with the art patronage of two monarchs, Frederick Augustus I, Elector of Saxony (1670-1733) -- also known as August the Strong due to his imposing stature and physical strength -- and his son Frederick Augustus II (1696-1763) -- later Augustus III, King of Poland.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 9, 2005

Chimeras and shadows

In the service of the imagination of photographer Yuki Onodera, familiar objects become dreamily unsettled by memories and movements and, by degrees, disengage to the point of of unreality.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 2, 2005

All the glory that was Florence

Before the 15th century in Florence, the guilds had their own highly developed hierarchy with artisans fairly near the top. Visual artists were higher-grade craftsmen, and their work was considered a kind of manual labor. As religious and secular demand for art increased, and conscious reflection on the idea of art started to develop, the Renaissance artisan began to ascend in social rank and art began a transition from rough trade to something worthy of study. Over the decades, the arts would slowly be liberated from the guilds, which regulated most of the business activities in the city, and begin to develop independent professional roots.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 8, 2004

Art stripped bare by mass produced ideas

The National Museum of Art, Osaka, relocated this year from Expo Park to elegant new premises in the commercial Nakanoshima district. The architect Cesar Pelli -- who is also responsible for the recent redesign of Haneda Airport in Tokyo -- resisted contesting the air space of the surrounding and soaring Osaka office blocks, and instead had the new building plunge deep underground.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 24, 2004

The heyday of body art

"Traces: Body and Idea in Contemporary Art," a new exhibition showing at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (soon to be seen in Tokyo) fleshes out what has been distinctive in art since the postwar '50s right up to recent times.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 3, 2004

And never the twain shall meet, on canvas

Modernism, which was born in Paris and came of age in New York after World War II, was one of Europe's most successful cultural exports of the 20th century, making it to South Africa, Vietnam, Brazil . . . and Japan.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 3, 2003

In between art and life

"Gokann," the umbrella name given to three exhibitions of contemporary Finnish art now showing in Kyoto, is an accommodating term. The Japanese title was chosen for its multiplicity of meanings, all derived from typing in "g-o-k-a-n-n" on a computer then pressing the kanji-convert key. Those varied meanings are: "five senses"; "sense organs"; "sense of language"; "compatibility"; and "language stem" -- as well as more nebulous connotations covering pretty much anything to do with our relations to the world and to each other. Still, if the term is broad, so too is the range of artwork it is used to cover: 80 pieces from 26 artists working in a variety of media.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 29, 2003

The end of art history and the last laugh

Since 1984, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, have been examining trends in contemporary art in a series of exhibitions titled "A Perspective on Contemporary Art." Pay a visit to the latest in the series, though, and you might be forgiven for wondering exactly what "perspective" is being offered. That's because the works on show are grouped under the title "Continuity/Transgression," categories so broad as to embrace almost all significant art, in one way or another.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 30, 2002

Louis XIV understood power, absolute power

Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (composed 8 A.D.) described the palace of the sun, tall-columned and fashioned from precious metals, inside which sat the radiant god Apollo on a throne studded with emeralds. The Roman poet's description was pure fantasy, but Louis XIV, King of France from 1643-1715, seemed set on turning Ovid's myth into reality. The palace of the sun would become the king's official residence of Versailles -- and Louis himself, like the radiant Apollo, was named the "Roi Soleil (Sun King)."

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