Tokyoites, that is to say the 13 or so million people who somehow manage to live with the certain knowledge that chaos and confusion will be wrought on the city by a massive earthquake in the not too-distant future, have the opportunity to ponder Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 16th-century depiction ...
Design Festa Summer x Gakuten 2017 is expected to give 4,000 exhibitors a chance to showcase their artistic talent to 20,000 visitors at Tokyo Big Sight, in Tokyo’s Koto Ward, on Aug. 5 and 6. Design Festa is a celebration of art that allows ...
British artist Ryan Gander does the spread of contemporary art polysemy through objects, installations, paintings, photography and video. All is brought under the rubric of “conceptual” art, for which the catalog of “These wings aren’t for flying” at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, ...
“Realism” can be a frustratingly indeterminate term. It can be used to refer to individual paintings, and it can be a conceptual placeholder that seemingly encapsulates the entire history of the Western Renaissance, and other, fine arts through to modernism. The critical afterlives of ...
Mix up Miles Davis, some French post-impressionism, Max Ernst, haiku by Matsuo Basho, experimental scores of Morton Feldman, Cubism, Utamaro shunga (erotic art) and Hokusai ukiyo-e, plus some Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. Steep for 60-odd years. Saul Leiter’s work is all ...
While many people in Japan undoubtedly know someone who owns a brand name handbag, few may know anyone who owns a work of art. If Tokyo-based artist Satoshi Maruhashi has his way, that will soon change. “In Japan, houses are small, but some people ...
Kamakura Period (1185-1333) Buddhist sculptures often come down to us under the individual names of makers (when known) though they were often fashioned in workshops by multiple hands. A significant 13th-century work would employ a dozen or so team members and assistants and draw ...
A Japanese billionaire bought a Basquiat masterpiece for $110.5 million in New York on Thursday, setting a new auction record for the 20th century great nearly 30 years after his death, Sotheby’s said. The 1982 “Untitled” of a skull-like head in oil-stick, acrylic and ...
As the phrase goes, “s—- happens.” Walead Beshty explores different ways that it may happen, and in doing so, he gently suggests that we consider the implications. His solo show at Rat Hole Gallery exemplifies this. There are two series of works: a selection ...
The Edo Period (1603-1868) is renowned for the flourishing of material culture — a time when major advances and innovations in Japanese folk crafts and design were prized by the burgeoning commoner class of Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Osaka. “The Golden Age of Mingei: ...
How has Ryuichi Sakamoto been able to harness melancholy so skillfully? How has he created such desperately sad music, and then managed to get up in the morning and do it again and again, over several decades? Perhaps the beauty and delight of the ...
The Momoyama Period (1573-1615) artist Kaiho Yusho (1533-1615) was renowned among the elite painters of his time, and still is. More remarkable, however, is that fame came when he was in his 60s during what is called his “early” period. Over the following two ...
Kyotographie — the brainchild of photographer Lucille Reyboz and lighting artist Yusuke Nakanishi — is 5 this year. Conceived and nurtured in Kyoto, it is now one of few substantial photography festivals in Japan, inarguably rivaling, even surpassing, many of the country’s other calendar ...
