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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 9, 2013

Japan's Gutai artists celebrated like never before

"Do what no one has done before," was the rallying cry that Jiro Yoshihara, founder of the postwar Japanese art group the Gutai Art Association, demanded of his fellow members.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 26, 2013

Kan Yasuda's tactile art brings new life to Bibai

Kan Yasuda's art somehow draws in the landscape, and entices in people, so that it is natural to explore the view through his structures and keyholes, to sit awhile atop a sculpture or to pose within their frames.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2013

Hong Kong artists emerge from the shadow of China in new show

Some artists suffer more to create their work than others. Angela Su certainly has.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / WEEK 3
Mar 17, 2013

How an American collector brought Jakuchu to Tohoku

Including loans from each of Japan's six national museums as well as the Imperial Household Agency, 'Jakuchu's Here!' represents to a gift from Japan's art establishment to an audience that it has neglected for decades.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 14, 2013

Japan still paying for war sins through international copyrights

If you're a copyright holder, you have a special reason to be happy if your work is sold in Japan.
EDITORIALS
Feb 1, 2013

Budget shows old LDP stripes

The nearly ¥93 trillion initial general-account budget for fiscal 2013 approved by the Abe Cabinet shows that the old Liberal Democratic Party is back.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 29, 2013

Few chinks in Abe's armor as Diet reconvenes

The 150-day ordinary Diet session that kicked off Monday will be an opportunity for the opposition camp to confront the new Liberal Democratic Party administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Age in the runup to the July Upper House election.
EDITORIALS
Dec 24, 2012

Risks of Mr. Abe's economic policy

Financial markets and people appear to hope that the economic policy to be adopted by the incoming administration of Liberal Democratic Party chief Shinzo Abe will improve the Japanese economy. Clearly people want deflation to end, the economy to pick up and the reconstruction from the effects of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 8, 2012

Communion with the spirits of wood

When you first encounter the sculptures of Koji Tanada, you might get the initial impression that he's being facetious or whimsical, and assume that his sculptures are all part of an elaborate practical joke, designed to drive home some droll but not very profound point. And why not? After all, this...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 9, 2012

From Comme des Garcons to Somarta, Japanese fashion excels at weaving past, present and future

In 1981, while Western designers focused on shoulder-padded power suits, bright colors, sharp stiletto heels and statement jewelry, Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons' Rei Kawakubo sent their models down the runway in defiant black, voluminously draped garments, accessorized with nothing but flat shoes....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 26, 2012

Replicas allow the public a detailed understanding of Vermeer's paintings

Johannes Vermeer, one of the best known artists from the Dutch Golden Age, appears particularly popular in Japan. Once in a while, one or two of his works show up in Tokyo galleries and are used as bait to attract fans to otherwise dull and uninteresting exhibitions. There, his masterpieces are surrounded...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 20, 2012

Yoshitomo Nara puts the heart back in art

The induction of manga-style painting into Japan's contemporary art canon over the last 15 years can be put down to the work of not one but two artists. Sure, it was Takashi Murakami who laid the theoretical foundations, spelling out links with classical painting and ukiyo-e prints. But it was another...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 28, 2012

Expressions that lie between functionality and art

"Function Dysfunction" at the Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto, brings together the ceramic works of three Americans: ceramicists Adam Silverman and Ani Kasten, and sculptor Alma Allen. Silverman, who felt that their works shared an aesthetic DNA, brought the three together, explaining that their pieces,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 21, 2012

The photographs that leave a paper trail

In today's complex world, in which we are routinely overburdened with data, intuition and a visceral response to imagery is increasingly trumping rational discourse, according to Thomas Demand. But this is something the German artist, whose work is the subject of a major solo show at the Museum of Contemporary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 29, 2012

The precious qualities of today's art jewelry

"The difference between art jewelry and a painting or a sculpture is that jewelry is closer to the heart — literally. Because you can wear it, it's actually even more intimate and personal than other artwork."
CULTURE / Art
Mar 29, 2012

The precious qualities of today's art jewelry

"The difference between art jewelry and a painting or a sculpture is that jewelry is closer to the heart — literally. Because you can wear it, it's actually even more intimate and personal than other artwork."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 15, 2012

Let the theater help you become as free as a bird

One day, William Tuckett's big sister decided that she wanted to take ballet classes. Soon after, Tuckett's mother realized that if both her children went to the class, she could have two hours free to herself. He may have had no choice attending classes at age 6, but the now world-renowned dancer and...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 1, 2012

The varied colors of artistic process

There is a misconception about the avant-garde artist. It is routinely assumed by the general public that they are fountains of creativity, bristling with ideas and inspiration. A couple of major retrospectives at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art, however, challenge this view.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 1, 2012

The varied colors of artistic process

There is a misconception about the avant-garde artist. It is routinely assumed by the general public that they are fountains of creativity, bristling with ideas and inspiration. A couple of major retrospectives at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art, however, challenge this view.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES
Feb 26, 2012

Venturing into the zone on Showajima

In his "Meditation XVII," the English Metaphysical poet John Donne wrote in 1623 that "no man is an island, entire of itself." Well, yes — but some islands are entirely more manly than others.
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Dec 8, 2011

Celebrating New Year's in the traditional way

As people in Japan prepare to celebrate New Year's Day, among the most notable tasks of the season are housecleaning, which echos the timeworn ritual of susuharai ("cleaning soot from the timbers under the roof") and placing shimenawa (sacred straw rope traditionally hung at the entrance to Shinto shrines)...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Nov 10, 2011

Breathing life into the nature of architecture

Staging an exhibition of architecture, perhaps more than any other art form, demands a curatorial grasp of space-making. In the inevitable absence of the built reality, stand-ins in the form of drawings, models, photographs and film are drafted in to explain and evoke architectural ideas and experiences....
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 4, 2011

Innovation abounds at Tokyo Designers Week

If ever proof was needed of the efficacy of Tokyo Designers Week, the annual designers' trade show currently under way at Tokyo's Meiji Jingu Gaien park, then it is apparent at booth D14, where designer Atsuhiro Hayashi is showing his wares.
CULTURE
Nov 4, 2011

Innovation abounds at Tokyo Designers Week

If ever proof was needed of the efficacy of Tokyo Designers Week, the annual designers' trade show currently under way at Tokyo's Meiji Jingu Gaien park, then it is apparent at booth D14, where designer Atsuhiro Hayashi is showing his wares.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 7, 2011

Tadanori Yokoo: An artist by design

In conversation, Tadanori Yokoo jumps nimbly between the past and the present. One moment he's watching the sky glow red as bombs rain down on Kobe during World War II. The next he's riding in a taxi with Yukio Mishima. And then he's back in the present, here at his studio in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, discussing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 4, 2011

Japan's interpretation of all creatures great and small

We still don't know the true meaning or purpose behind the earliest examples of artworks depicting animals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 23, 2011

Impressionists and friends: on the verge of the modern

There seems to be an exhibition of Impressionist art somewhere in Tokyo every year, such is its popularity in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 21, 2011

A shot of Ardbeg in temple grounds

There's a faint scent of incense as you crawl through a knee-high door into a pebble-filled corridor that leads into a white igloo-like space, just big enough to fit three people. "This is my meditation room," says Akiyoshi Taniguchi, the curator who is introducing Kurenboh, a tiny modern gallery located...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 17, 2010

Today's artists 'paint' a new vision of 2-d art

The term "Primary Field" can either mean a group of aspirant candidates (in the United States) or an idea from physics that most laymen will find hard to understand; so the title of the "Primary Field II" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Hayama is surprisingly apt. Like many group shows of contemporary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 10, 2010

When followers outdo the master

R. D. Laing, the leading light of the 1960s anti-psychiatry movement, believed that mental illnesses were natural responses to the unnatural stresses and strains of modern life. Something similar can be said about Surrealist art, which, at times, seems like an artistic reaction to a world that throws...

Longform

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