Maruyama Okyo's legacy of drawing from life
In his 1808 book, "Chronicle of Audacity and Timidity" ("Tandai Shoshinroku"), scholar and poet Ueda Akinari satirized, "When Okyo came on the scene, sketching from life (shasei) became popular, and ...
'Mina Perhonen / Minagawa Akira: Tsuzuku'
Nov. 16-Feb. 16, 2020 Akira Minagawa is a Japanese designer best-known as the founder of the clothing brand Mina Perhonen. Minagawa later expanded his business to the hospitality field through collections of tableware and interior design. Today, his brand — which celebrates its 25th anniversary in ...
'I Found Myself in the Traveling Carnival'
Nov. 16-Dec. 14 Tokyo-based contemporary artist Shintaro Miyake's seventh solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery is based on the motif of a traveling carnival. Through the context of a carnival, Miyake's works explore fundamental themes such as life and death, and self-awareness. Highlights include works that ...
Nov. 15-Dec. 14 Daisuke Ida is a Japanese contemporary artist whose artworks highlight various social issues such as income inequality and excessive productivity. Ida's recent focus has been on researching and photographing mannequins, which made him realize that the invention of photography has caused the image ...
'Man, God & Nature in the Ancient World: Masterpieces from The Al Thani Collection'
Nov. 6-Feb. 9, 2020 From a collection of more than 6,000 works amassed by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani of Qatar, this exhibition highlights 117 artworks produced by ancient civilizations around the globe. It's split into three "chapters," focusing on the themes ...
Nov. 7-Dec.1 Born in Kyoto, Masumi Nakaoka is a Japanese contemporary painter whose art has been inspired by the relationship between humans and nature, often depicting uncommon urban motifs. Her works, depicted with soft yet vivid brushstrokes, have won her multiple awards, including the 2004 ...
The power of cultural and economic capital
Compared to exhibitions in which art objects are meant to seduce us into epiphanic transcendence, the works in "Surface and Custom," a group show at Shiseido Gallery organized by Berlin-based artists Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, are more akin to frank expositions about ...
'Umeda Tetsuya: On the Origin of Voices'
Nov. 2-Jan. 13, 2020 Tetsuya Umeda is an internationally acclaimed Japanese contemporary artist, largely known for his live interactive installation and performance works that incorporate daily objects, waste and human-generated "phenomena" such as sound and movement. He also produces site-specific works in rural and urban spaces, ...
The scrolls that keep immortal poets truly alive
The Kyoto National Museum brings together the largest number of fragments of the 13th-century scrolls "Satake Version, Thirty-Six Immortal Poets," since it was cut up into pieces and dispersed among the wealthy in 1919.
'Reading Nihonga Through Color: Kaii's Blue and Genso's Red'
Nov. 2-Dec. 22 Colors have always played an important role in nihonga (Japanese-style painting), sometimes featuring as significant aspects of artists' signature styles. For Kaii Higashiyama (1908-1999), for example, blue is often used, while the work of Genso Okuda (1912-2003) predominantly features red. Nihonga pigments were ...
'Aono Fumiaki: Mono, Sleeping, Koejiyama, Voice-over'
Nov. 2-Jan. 12, 2020 Fumiaki Aono is known for his work with found objects from various regions of Japan. He has worked with worn-out furniture and items washed up on beaches, "repairing" them into works of art based on imagined narratives, histories and memories of ...
Nov. 1-Dec.15 Led by pop artist Shinjiro Okamoto, "Earth Attack" is an art project by nine collaborators — Yoshio Isaka, Giichi Ichikawa, Miho Otsubo, Reiko Kobori, Yoko Shimizu, Miho Shirai, Akira Matsumoto, Keisuke Yamaguchi and Wang Shuye. Inspired by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World ...
