Tag - contemporary-art

 
Menu
Search
 
May 05, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access

CONTEMPORARY ART

Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 21, 2015
'In Our Time: Art in Post-industrial Japan'
April 25-Aug. 30
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 7, 2015
'Sayoko Yamaguchi: The Wearist, Clothed in the Future'
April 11-June 28
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 12, 2015
Art Fair Tokyo seeks to educate
Art Fair Tokyo, the city's premier art showcase, is always a pleasure to experience, and I'm sure this year's event, to be held March 20-22 at the Tokyo International Forum, will have much to offer. But part of the fun of following Art Fair Tokyo is observing the constant struggle the event has to get into its groove.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 12, 2015
Masaru Iwai digs the dirt on cleanliness
Masaru Iwai, a Ph.D. graduate from Tokyo University of Arts, tells me that he only showers once every two days. This fact causes the two gallery directors in the room to gasp in horror. In an ill-advised moment of sharing I let slip that in Britain this wouldn't be so unusual. It's not that Iwai is a slob, or an Anglophile, but that the notion and value of "cleanliness" are not to be taken at face value — they should be questioned and considered as socially constructed phenomena.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 5, 2015
The flickering of Japan's contemporary art
Art used to be about what you could see, but now, thanks to a more "conceptual" approach, it is often about what cannot be seen. Except the artist still has to demonstrate in some way what it is that can't be seen — in other words, to make it visible.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 26, 2015
Gabriel Orozco's connections with Japan
The photographer and I have been waiting for about half an hour to interview Gabriel Orozco. It's a little disappointing, but that's OK. Orozco has famously made disappointment part of his creative practice. While waiting we chat about how much we have been impressed and influenced by the artist's work, and also about the press conference last week, where Orozco was also late and stared fiercely at the crowd of journalists like a cornered honey badger until the microphone broke down, at which point his mood lightened and a mischievous and comedic side emerged.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jan 30, 2015
Japan's fertile architectural evolution
Today, Japanese contemporary architecture enjoys an outstanding international reputation, but the story of its emergence to a position of such accomplishment and acclaim has not yet been told comprehensively. A pair of exhibitions at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa presents a postwar history of Japanese architecture — "Japan Architects 1945-2010" — and the tendencies that are gathering momentum now and will shape the future — "Architecture since 3.11."
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jan 30, 2015
Building social change after the earthquake
In 2011, the devastation of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami forced Japanese architects to rethink their understanding of architecture at a fundamental level — to consider closely society's systems and the affect buildings had on not only the life of, but also the psyche of the people.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 22, 2015
'Gabriel Orozco: Inner Cycles'
To kick start their 20th anniversary year, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is showcasing the work of Mexico-born contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco as one of their three special exhibitions opening this week. This will be Orozco's first solo exhibition in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2014
The man who turned his modernist home into an art museum
It's not all roses being the director of an independent art museum, but for Toshio Hara, the human interaction of the art world is still a more attractive prospect than that of being a businessman. In 1979 he turned the family seat — a small cluster of white modernist buildings in a quiet residential street in Shinagawa, Tokyo — into the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, which has been one of Japan's foremost venues for exhibiting art ever since. An inherently eclectic and informal space, the museum celebrates its 35th anniversary this December and its director shared some thoughts with The Japan Times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2014
Taking flight with Arata Isozaki
I once almost got to interview the architect Arata Isozaki, but it was canceled due to his ill health at the time. No doubt a consideration in the cancelation was the fact that interviews with him can go to extreme lengths, as Isozaki has much to tell, having collaborated with almost every big name in postwar Japan — and not just architects, but also artists, musicians and other creative types.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2014
'Architecture for Dogs'
Despite dogs being "man's best friend," we rarely design our world around the happiness of our pets.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 4, 2014
'The Power of a Pencil: Susumu Kinoshita and Yoshio Yoshimura'
A special exhibition focusing on pencil works, "The Power of Pencil" features the drawings of Susumu Kinoshita and Toshio Yoshimura. Both artists focus on portraits for this show, though each produces very different works. Kinoshita illustrates models, capturing their lives through the careful observation of body features, while Yoshimura focuses on self-portraits drawn on newspaper pages, thus also commenting on social issues.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2014
'Ikiru Monotachi e: The message from the nature'
Himeji City Museum of Art has been holding exhibitions featuring contemporary artists from Harima and Tajima in Hyogo Prefecture since 1986. This year, under the theme "Ikiru Monotachi e" ("To living things"), the exhibition explores the value of life and our environment through the works of four artists — Sakio Fujiwara, Kazuki Matsuda, Kiyoshi Shimizu and Tomohiro Higashikage.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2014
Kunisaki Art Festival shows works worth the hike
To visit Antony Gormley's "Another Time" — a life-sized iron figure which looks eastward across Oita Prefecture's Sento district of Kunisaki from atop a mountain ledge — is a breathtaking experience. Not just because it's a stong piece of art or that the location offers a stunning vista of verdant treetops and rolling hillsides, but because it also involves a bit of a trek to get to it — 20 minutes if you start from the reception hut, 70 if you take the full hiking course.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2014
'10th Anniversary Special Exhibition: Japan Architects 1945-2010'
To commemorate its 10th anniversary, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, invited Frederic Migaryou, the deputy director of Paris' Pompidou Centre, to present this exhibition charting the evolution of Japanese architecture from 1945 to 2010.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2014
'Yokoo By Kishin'
Photographer Kishin Shinoyama's book of images "Kioku no Enkinjutsu," which he began in 1968, documents the graphic designer, illustrator and painter Tadanori Yokoo dressed as, and posing with, his personal idols.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 18, 2014
Blum & Poe gets closer to its artists
Some people just can't help liking Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 6, 2014
Yoshio Taniguchi: thriving in the shadow of greatness
Architect Yoshio Taniguchi generally doesn't like having his photograph taken for use in the media. In a way, it's a logical extension of his approach to his work, which could be described as architecture by subtraction. Having painstakingly removed everything extraneous from a design, and having overseen the creation of a building whose every element has been interrogated and found to be absolutely essential, why would he then allow it to be tainted through association with a face, a personality, an architect brand?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 18, 2014
Contemporary art is not lost in space
While space art is a relatively small field — in which works that have actually been created in space is an even smaller subset — it can only become more commonplace as costs fall and the private sector promises to open up space travel to non-specialists, albeit very wealthy ones.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
Japan drops to 70th in press freedom rankings
A businessman reads a newspaper outside a train station in Tokyo.
Traders spooked by intervention risk trim record yen shorts
Traders edged back from record bets on yen weakness this past week, in a period that included a likely bout of intervention by Japan to prop up the currency.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass
Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER