For Marie Omata's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Founded in Milan in 1881, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum houses the extensive collection of an aristocratic art collector. Nobleman Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli (1822-1879) devoted his life to decorating his home with artworks of the Renaissance, amassing around 3,000 pieces, including paintings by Botticelli, ...
Most people associate Impressionism with the famous colorful impasto paintings of Renoir, Monet or Manet. Few, however, are familiar with its influence on 19th-century ceramics. In 1882, Charles Haviland, an avid collector of Japanese works, asked Félix Bracquemond, an etcher who was strongly influenced by ...
Pure Land Buddhism, which began in India around the 2nd century B.C., offered a path to salvation for those who found difficulties with the more rigorous forms of Buddhist practice. It later spread to China and, by the 6th century, to Japan, where it ...
French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) is best known as a leading mural painter whose masterpieces are displayed on many monumental buildings in France. His paintings often use delicate colors suggestive of Italian Renaissance fresco painting, and though he trained with Romanticists, such ...
This is the 16th annual show of up-and-coming Japanese artists who have studied on the Overseas Study Program for Artists, funded by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. This program has offered young, promising artists in all genres overseas opportunities since 1967, and the "Domani" ...
Hokusai Katsushika (1760-1849), one of Japan's best-known Edo Period ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artists, has garnered admiration from across the world for more than a century. His prints are still sought after by collectors and he was the only Japanese to be selected by Life ...
"Museum of the Magic, Art in Wonderland" has already visited 18 locations across Japan, drawing in a total of more than 500,000 visitors. Due to popular demand, it was even repeated at some of its venues. This is the 23rd showing of the exhibition ...
The ceramics in this exhibition date to the late-Momoyama Period (1573-1615) and all hail from the Mino Province in modern-day Gifu Prefecture. Four kinds of Mino ceramic ware became representative of the Momoyama Period — Shino (thick white glaze with red marks), Ki-Seto (yellow ...
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), the leading French Symbolist painter, was also a professor at Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. He taught many well-known artists but he was particularly enamored with Georges Rouault (1871-1958), who he sometimes referred to as his "son." Moreau encouraged Rouault throughout ...
Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) was a man of many talents — a poet, filmmaker and artist — whose cerebral and witty approach to art often resulted in unusual and amusing works. He used found objects, everyday items, photography and text to create visual puns in ...
