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Kate Thomson
For Kate Thomson's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 20, 2006
First Ikebukuro International Art Festival
Ikebukuro Closes in 18 days
CULTURE / Art
Feb 16, 2006
"ART/ROOM -- Bedroom"
Art Front Gallery Closes in 13 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2005
Filling an emptiness with public play
Just before Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi died of pneumonia in 1988, he completed his final legacy, the master plan for Moerenuma Park north of Sapporo in Hokkaido. Seventeen years later, the 189-hectare park envisaged by Noguchi as one large sculpture was finally completed in July at a cost of 25 billion yen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 29, 2005
Communal individuals
World-famous sculptor Antony Gormley has spent the last 25 years "infecting" public spaces with sculptures that transform viewers' imagination and challenge their preconceptions. In "Children's Field," a Gormley-inspired community art project produced by the American School in Japan (ASIJ) and A.R.T. (Artist Residence Tokyo), it was children who caught the bug first.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 11, 2005
Dolls' surreal influence
Kachina dolls, embodying the beliefs, social structure and moral values of the Native American Hopi have fascinated and inspired artists for a century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 17, 2004
A new world order in a school gym
British sculptor Antony Gormley (born in London in 1950) is one of the foremost sculptors of his generation. A winner of the Turner Prize in 1994, Gormley is a conceptual artist working in a physical medium: He revitalized the sculptural vocabulary of the human form to articulate the universal abstract qualities of human experience.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 29, 2004
An Eastern art show to rival Venice
On May 18, 1980, the city of Gwangju, South Korea, hit the headlines with an explosion of civilian dissent against the military junta that had seized power the day before. The junta's brutal crackdown culminated in the Gwangju Massacre of hundreds of students and civilians. The uprising would spark South Korea's democracy movement, and ultimately the overthrow of the military dictatorship and the installation of its first civilian-led government in 1993.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 1, 2004
Kaleidoscope of colorful fashion
Viktor & Rolf are internationally renowned as the Gilbert and George of the fashion world for presenting conceptual work as sophisticated art performances in haute couture and pret-a-porter shows. Take their installation of their Spring/Summer 1996 collection in a contemporary art gallery in Paris October 1995. Titled "L'Appearance du vide" as a reaction against the fickle focus on supermodels of the fashion industry, golden dresses hung in the air like empty shells while the black clothes were cast like shadows or discarded second skins on the floor. The models were only present in the form of their names projected on the walls and whispered through speakers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 5, 2004
Re-presenting the modern by any means
"So what's modern art all about?" is a question I am often asked. It's about as easy to answer as "What is the meaning of life?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 24, 2004
Sculptor who molded open-air art
I have been a professional sculptor for 20 years, and in that time Henry Moore has toppled from the pedestal I put him on when I was 14 and first saw his "Helmet Head" series of bronze sculptures on display in my home city of Edinburgh.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2002
International ideas take shape in Lebanon
Though the word "symposium" comes from Plato's ideal of a drinking party held to facilitate philosophical discussion, most of us are familiar with its modern usage, meaning a conference or meeting. Few people, however, know about the sculpture symposium movement, started by Karl Prantl in Austria in 1959.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002
Let there be light in the urban darkness
Naoya Hatakeyama's stunning photographs use finely tuned modern techniques to discover harmonious beauty in places where we often perceive only competing layers of chaos. They filter our all-too-familiar environment, revealing its underlying complexity and, in the process, leading us to question the true "nature" of the world and our place in it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2002
Mastering the fine art of science
"Japanese Botanical Art and Illustrations from Siebold's Collection," on show at the Iwate Museum of Art till July 28 (then traveling to Chiba and Tokyo), is the kind of exhibition one expects from a public museum trying to attract and please a wide audience. The creators of this show, it's tempting to speculate, were appealing to the Japanese passion for gardening and flower arranging -- and the affection with which the Bavarian-born physician and naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866) is remembered here for pioneering European advancements in natural sciences in Japan, and for introducing the fascinating wealth of Japanese flora to the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2002
Impressionist master of time and space
If the world seems like a dark place at the beginning of the present century, an exhibition of work completed at the beginning of the last may help put things back in a more optimistic perspective. "Monet -- Later Works: Homage to Katia Granoff," is on show at the Iwate Museum of Art till Feb. 11 and then travels to Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, and to Nagoya.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 7, 2001
Putting the regions back in the spotlight
There is cultural life thriving outside Kanto and Kansai. As proof of this, if proof were needed, the new Iwate Museum of Art in Morioka City opened to the public last month. Its core collection -- of 20th-century prints, paintings and sculptures by artists born, trained or resident in the region -- gives visitors a chance to appreciate the immense contribution of rural regions to Japan's cultural wealth.

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