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.
It's hard to imagine, though, a theme that could link the diverse work of the six artists showing here. The exhibition's overriding impression is one of disunity, of the stylistic fragmentation of contemporary art. There is the combination of abstract and representational imagery in the paintings of Daisuke Nakayama, which are showing in the same room as Ron Mueck's photo-realistic sculpture. Then there is the neat arrangement of fluorescent lights across the gallery floor in Jun Aoki's "U bis," and the electromagnetic panels of Toshikatsu Endo's 'Trieb Hippocampus III" that hum when you walk between them.
The eclecticism of contemporary art is nothing new. It's been taking place since the "Brillo Boxes" of Andy Warhol, or the eccentric "happenings" of Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono and the Fluxus group in the early '60s. It arguably began in 1917 when Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal, complete with a compositional title, "Fountain," and signed "R. Mutt."