Music / CD Reviews | LISTENING POST Aug 28, 2020
Phew alternates between jagged noise and soft vocal elements at a dizzying pace on 'Vertigo KO'
by Russell Thomas
Phew takes inspiration from the pandemic and her punk roots on "Vertical KO."
People | WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN? May 25, 2019
Avant-garde artist Yoshiko Chuma traverses disciplines, nations and causes
by Mika Eglinton
Avant-garde artist Yoshiko Chuma challenges the conventions of dance, traversing disciplines, nations and causes.
Art Feb 5, 2019
Gentaro Komaki: A pioneer of surrealism
by Matthew Larking
Gentaro Komaki (1906-89), the son of a Kyoto Prefecture silk crepe wholesaler, lived a decadent youth of literature and philosophy, until seeing the work of Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy inspired to pursue surrealist art.
Art Mar 20, 2018
Koga: A pithy affair with the avant-garde
by John L. Tran
There are two good reasons to see the exhibition on the short-lived photography magazine Koga, now on at the Tokyo Photographic Art (TOP) Museum. One is that it is full of powerful images that will linger in the memory despite their relative simplicity. The ...
Art Jan 2, 2018
The zero hour of Kobe's avant-garde
by Matthew Larking
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art's present draw card is the Saint Petersburg collection, "Old Masters from the State Hermitage Museum." But on a lower level, at the far end of a long corridor gallery, are photos and grainy videos — the small-scale documentation of ...
Music Jul 18, 2017
Keiji Haino at 65: 'I want to be a bad boy, right until the end'
by James Hadfield
"I don't want people to treat me like a god," says Keiji Haino, chuckling. "I want to be a bad boy, right until the end." An audience with the 65-year-old iconoclast, a towering figure on Japan's underground music scene, is always memorable. When I meet ...
Books / Reviews Feb 25, 2017
by Adrian Favell
Reiko Tomii's profound and accessible study of 1960s avant-garde art from Japan offers an answer to a perennial problem in the appreciation of Japanese culture. Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan, by Reiko Tomii.320 pages THE MIT PRESS, Nonfiction. International observers often ...
Music Dec 6, 2015
Punk survivor Phew changes direction on 'A New World'
by James Hadfield
Even as a child, Phew realized she was a bit different. "When I was at school, if the teacher told a joke and everyone else in the class laughed, I was always the one who couldn't see what was funny," she says. "I've always ...
Art / Openings Outside Tokyo Oct 13, 2015
by Daisuke Kikuchi
Oct. 10-Dec. 6 Takesada Matsutani was a member of Kansai's renowned but controversial Gutai Art Association, which challenged conventional definitions of art. Strongly influenced by the Gutai leader Jiro Yoshihara, Matsutani often used glue for his surrealist and abstract expressionist paintings. After winning the opportunity ...
National Oct 27, 2014
GENPEI AKASEGAWA Avant-garde artist Genpei Akasegawa died of blood poisoning at a Tokyo hospital Sunday morning. He was 77. Born Katsuhiko Akasegawa in Yokohama, he attended Musashino Art School, now Musashino Art University, in Tokyo, but dropped out before graduating. He started exhibiting at shows in the ...
Art / Openings Outside Tokyo Apr 9, 2014
'Finding Modigliani: From Parisian Avant-garde to Classicism'
by Daisuke Kikuchi
In 1906, Amedeo Modigliani, an Italian painter and sculptor, moved to France to join the School of Paris, a group of young talented international artists inspired by the capital's avant-garde movement of the early 20th century. A popular artist among his peers, he became ...
Art / Openings In Tokyo Jan 22, 2014
'Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde'
by Hanna Lange
In London, 1848, a group of young pioneering artists began to shake the mid-19th-century British art world by combining rebellion and revivalism with scientific precision and the imagination. They took inspiration from early Renaissance painting and willfully challenged artistic conventions, calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite ...