One take on the past two centuries of artistic development is as a cacophonous cache of "isms." With latter-day Japanese museum curation, impressionism regularly glistens as the golden-haired, oft-cited draw among recurrent "ism"-titled exhibitions — historical precedents, collection-building imperatives, curatorial agendas and crowd-pleaser incentives all impacting on the state of play.

Exhibitions whose retrospective glances are not pigeonholed by labeling are welcome. "Van Gogh and Gauguin: Reality and Imagination," at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, avoids typecasting the artists as simply personifying the tenets of a movement, namely post-impressionism. As the title intimates, viewers are afforded insights into the artists' intrinsic makeup as individuals, and artistically, in tandem with their milieu.

Their oeuvres have been seen on these shores over the years, albeit in exhibitions highlighting one or the other, three of these being "Van Gogh in Context" at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2005, the simply-titled "Paul Gauguin" at the same venue in 2009 and "Van Gogh: The Adventure of Becoming an Artist" at the National Art Center, Tokyo in 2010.