Terror and tragedy are widely considered entirely disagreeable in principle. But audiences have for millennia taken pleasure in the pain of narrative spectacles in the arts. Fear is popular because it arouses curiosity in addition to revulsion. So, too, does the assemblage of Western works from the 16th to 20th ...
As Akiko Miki, one of the three curators of this year's Yokohama Triennale, tries to wrap up a roundtable discussion titled "The Connecting World and the Isolating World" at the Yokohama Museum of Art, a question is shouted out from the back of the ...
Popularly known as Genshin (942-1017), the high-ranking Buddhist prelate Eshin Sozu was said to have been born following his devout mother's prayers to the Kannon of Takaoji Temple in Taima, Nara Prefecture. Genshin began the road to monkhood in youth, studying at Kyoto's Enryakuji Temple ...
Every photo has a story to tell, and the eldest son of Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara is hoping that the photographs taken by his father will give people a fuller view of his life. An exhibition starting in Tokyo next Wednesday will showcase ...
The natural beauty of flowers has inspired artists for centuries, but for American nature photographer Terri Weifenbach, flowers have given rise to reflection on the cycle of life. In the spring of 2015, a garden near the slopes of Mount Fuji at Izu Photo Museum ...
Diabolic torture inflicted on the ungodly; unspeakable yearnings straight out of the subconscious — the country now known as Belgium has given the world over five centuries' worth of depictions of the unimaginable. "Fantastic Art in Belgium" at The Bunkamura Museum of Art places Hieronymus ...
A few years ago, at the press conference for Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei's solo show at the Mori Art Museum (MAM), Fumio Nanjo, the museum director, talked about the direction the museum would be taking from then on; they were no longer so interested ...
Hybridity and eclecticism may be key concepts in much contemporary art, yet they are not new phenomena. In the Taisho Era (1912-1926), Tetsugoro Yorozu virtually personified the idea of hybrid art: As Japan rushed toward modernization, he not only experimented with the very latest ...
What happens when you take the Nazi zombies, coin collecting, cuddly creatures, xenomorphs, etc., out of video games and you just wander around virtual reality? While pondering that, we could also ask, "How realistic is it to be Utopian?," "What is life without work?" and "How ...
Photographer Mao Ishikawa, whose work frequently depicts personal, political and racial intersections in her native Okinawa, has published a new volume revisiting her 1970s portraits of Japanese bar hostesses and U.S. servicemen near the Kadena Air Base. "Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa" ("Akabana: Okinawa ...
The pairing of Hideki Kimura's prints with the seemingly sculptural assemblages of Sadaharu Horio is perhaps unexpected. What draws them together, however, are conceptions of their practices as painting. Both veterans of Japan's contemporary art scene, they pursue painting by other means, working within ...
"Kurai" ("It's dark") says someone as we open the door at the new entrance of Nanzuka gallery in Shibuya, Tokyo. Yet, the freshly painted black walls and dimly lit stairs inside set the mood for a gallery specializing in underground art, and provide the ...
Mercedes Benz Art Scope is an exchange program that allows Japanese artists to spend time in Germany and German artists to visit Japan. The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art has been a partner in this project since 2003, and in this year's group show, Stuttgart-based ...
