Blockbuster solo shows now running at the Bunkamura (Rene Magritte) and the Setagaya Art Museum (Joan Miro) are already ensuring this is one of Tokyo's best summers in years for aficionados of 20th-century art. Now, thanks to a bit of bold curating by Taro Amano, the Yokohama Museum of Art is host to another of this hot season's must-see shows.
Jean-Marc Bustamante -- although certainly not as well-known as Magritte or Miro -- has nonetheless brought a first-rate exhibition to Yokohama in "Private Crossing." Featuring 75 works by the 51-year-old artist, who has been chosen to represent France in 2003 at the 50th-anniversary Venice Biennale, the exhibition focuses on Bustamante's large photographic works executed between 1978 and 2001.
Bustamante's painterly landscapes, which he titles "Tableau," picture the nexus between man-made and natural environments. Shot mostly in Europe, though more recently in Japan as well, they depict places where the footprint of man is both particularly pronounced -- a construction site, an old pipeline, a freshly poured concrete retaining wall -- and set against a backdrop of nature -- fields, trees, mountains and the wide-open sky.