NEWSWORTHY
Kichizaemon Raku reads between Wols' lines
Kichizaemon Raku, the eldest son of Kakunyu XIV, succeeded to the role as the 15th head of the revered Raku family of tea bowl craftsmen in 1981, a tradition founded in the Momoyama Period (1573-1603) by Tanaka Chojiro (d. 1592). His latest exhibition, "Raku ...
Duchamp and Japan: No rest for the urinal
If you want someone to blame for Banksy's stunt of shredding "Girl With Balloon" after selling it for $1.4 million at auction, your prime suspect currently has a major retrospective at the Tokyo National Museum. Skepticism of the British graffiti artist's aesthetic value may not ...
Kazuo Okada's all-star cast of Asian art
To celebrate its fifth anniversary, the Okada Museum of Art in Hakone is bringing out all its major works by the masters — from 16th- and 17th-century Rinpa painters Tawaraya Sotatsu and Ogata Korin to 18th- and 19th-century ukiyo-e artists Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika ...
In art, there are no rules, only new challenges
For the director of the Japan Society in New York, it was a teenage encounter with a Shoichi Ida print that led to her love of art and its international influence
Keiichi Tanaami's visually trippy past
Sometimes innocent, sometimes pornographic, influences percolated, exploded and re-formed in multiple and mutant ways during Keiichi Tanaami's career, which took off in the 1960s and is still going strong.
The painterly prayers of Higashiyama
Kaii Higashiyama's best-known works are often called "quintessentially Japanese landscapes," but they were also examples of the artist's conservative dialogue with European and American abstraction.
Indulging in post-apocalyptic nostalgia
With a theme of total annihilation and a techno-horror aesthetic, Hiroki Tsukuda's exhibition at Nanzuka sounds like it would be grim, but this isn't the work of a hopeless nihilist.
Kazunori Hamana: Simple vessels of complex self-reflection
Inspired by a love for the craftsmanship of traditional items, Kazunori Hamana abandoned his vintage clothing business in Tokyo to make clay tsubo jars that have since won him critical acclaim.
The Louvre has a new seat of power
Kohei Nawa talks about his 3-ton golden "Throne," which takes a seat of honor at the Louvre as one of the works for Japonismes 2018, Paris' large-scale event celebrating 160 years of France-Japan relations.
Tanaka Isson: Better late than never
Limited success in Tokyo led Tanaka Isson (1908-77) to burn his sketchbooks, sell his house, and move to Oshima, where he lived in near poverty painting in a vibrant style that posthumously captured the nation's heart.
Mami Kosemura says it with flowers
Where Flemish still-life painters combined fruit, vegetables and flowers that could not normally be picked in the same season, and portrayed them together in an imaginary, but highly realistic pictorial space, Kosemura uses contemporary tools to achieve the same with photographic detail.
Jomon art: Japan's prehistoric charm
Fertile periods of artistic endeavor are not hard to come by in Japanese history. Many would cite the Edo, Muromachi or Heian periods. The Tokyo National Museum, however, reminds visitors of one era often forgotten — the ancient Jomon Period.
