Local commentators have long bemoaned Japanese art historians' apparent inability to contextualize their country's artistic output within the global art-history narrative. Thank goodness for MoMA.
New York's Museum of Modern Art will from Nov. 18 host a large exhibition devoted to the artistic ferment that occurred in Tokyo between 1955 and 1970. And, although the focus of the show sounds narrow, what seems likely to set it apart from anything seen in recent years in Japan will be a curatorial perspective that encompasses the world.
"Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde" will bring together more than 300 works by painters such as Hiroshi Nakamura, conceptual artists such as Yoko Ono and Atsuko Tanaka, street-savvy photographers Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu and Eikoh Hosoe, the graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo, and Metabolist architects such as Kenzo Tange, Kisho Kurokawa and Arata Isozaki.
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