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April 29, 2024
 

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NEW ART SEEN

Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jun 4, 2003
Saint Phalle, in living color
Imagine the blue of a desert sky, the rich greens and browns of an old-growth forest, the rainbow hues in a bowl of tropical fruit -- and you can appreciate how diminished our world would be without color. But as you contemplate the wonder of color, the characteristics of differing wavelengths of light and the different absorbent and reflective qualities of pigments are not likely to cross your mind. Generally, people experience color, but they do not understand it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 21, 2003
Who, what, when, where -- why?
My good friend Tatsumi Orimoto, now one of Japan's best-known artists, has made his mother a central subject in his work for the last several years. This, he once explained to me, is because she always supported him in his creative efforts -- efforts that are, in a word, unorthodox: in one, he famously ties baguettes to his head and travels the world as "Bread Man."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 7, 2003
One door opens, another one closes
"The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort -- the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing -- the opening a wonderfully joyous moment."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 23, 2003
Could it be you, baby?
My mind is weary, and this is because since last weekend I have been thinking hard about how different the world would be if men could get pregnant.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 9, 2003
Complex reasons to paaaarty!
Judging from the scene in Roppongi Friday night, no one would suspect that U.S. and British warplanes are blasting Iraq, French auction houses are facing a boycott, and the world's art market has landed in the toilet. It was happy time here on the Tokyo contemporary art scene. With smiles on their faces, hundreds of artists, dealers, curators and assorted freeloaders at the gala opening of the Roppongi art complex (which has been dubbed, artlessly, "Complex"), gobbled samosas and salmon and roast beef, raised plastic glasses of Champagne (no bubbly boycott here), and -- for a single night anyhow -- partied grim reality right out of mind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Mar 26, 2003
Life: the home movie, Japan: the video game
Two very different female video artists have brought pleasantly complementary exhibitions of their recent work to the Tokyo Opera City Gallery. Elija-Liisa Ahtila, 43, from Finland, and Japanese artist Tabaimo, 27, both opened with impressive solo efforts at the spacious Shinjuku gallery Friday.
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Mar 12, 2003
Art or 'action'? Who cares
I would describe the 64-year-old Swiss man behind the current show at Ginza's Shiseido Gallery as part conceptual artist, part performance artist, and part video artist -- but Roman Signer would have none of these labels. He considers himself a sculptor -- pure, if not so simple.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 26, 2003
Back to life, back to reality
LONDON -- More so than in any previous era, the development of modern art has been characterized by a healthy international cross-pollination of styles and movements. I have on many occasions remarked, sometimes disparagingly, on the strong influences Japanese artists have absorbed from their Western contemporaries. But I am in London this week (researching the tradition of English stained glass, while also enjoying many pints of beer in pubs), and so I think it appropriate to look a little at the influence that Japan has had on some British artists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 12, 2003
Bright white, big city
Something interesting I recently learned about anatomy: There are 26 bones in the human foot, and if you break just one of them, your entire leg is basically useless.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 29, 2003
A true master of the art of making photographs
I remember once playing a little mind game with Tokyo-based photographer Torin Boyd. We were sitting in a Kabukicho bar, looking through his portfolio. Every time I said something about "taking pictures," in his response he substituted the verb "make" for the verb "take," as in "I made this picture last year." As the pages were turned and the beers were drunk, I consciously stuck with "take," and he stubbornly parried with "make."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 15, 2003
MoT showcases artists who draw deeply from real life
"Art," wrote the French artist Robert Filliou (1926-87), "is what makes life more interesting than art." And this, dear reader, is just about my favorite quote. Profoundly mystifying, it serves as an M.C. Escher-esque comeback when the old "What is art?" line is thrown out less as a question than as bait for an argument. After all, what is art, if not a new and improved version of life, carefully folded back onto and reflecting itself?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 1, 2003
So you thought '02 was good? Well, there's Mori to come
It looks, at first glance, like a refreshing case of "out with the old, and in with the new": In late 2002 the Tokyo art community bade a teary goodbye to its Mecca, when the falling-down old Sagacho building, home for years to some of Japan's most progressive gallery spaces, finally closed its doors for good. And now 2003 is here, with the promise of a bright and beautiful future in the form of the Mori Art Museum, set to open in October. Designed by architect Richard Glickman -- who also did the Andy Warhol Museum and the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin -- the nine galleries of the Mori Museum will occupy a total of 2,995 sq. meters on the 52nd and 53rd floors of the glittering new Roppongi Hills complex.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Dec 18, 2002
Under the skin of strangers
Goldsmith's College is generally associated with the wave of Young British Artists (or YBA, as they are famously known) that rocked the contemporary art scene during the 1990s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Dec 4, 2002
The secret language of janitors
Although it is my pleasure to cover contemporary art by living artists in this column, I hope readers will give me leave to discuss a dead one this week, because the Henry Darger exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Art is just too fantastic an event to ignore.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Nov 20, 2002
Getting emotional as the Sagacho closes its doors
Last Friday evening, as a waxing moon arced low across a clear autumn sky, more than 600 people made what for most would be their final pilgrimage to the Mecca of Tokyo's contemporary art scene. Alone or in clans -- some boisterous, others silent -- they crossed the Sumida River, wound their way through Koto Ward's back streets, then filed into a European-style courtyard, through peeling-paint corridors, and up a narrow stairway to the rooftop of the beloved old Shokuryo Building, a century-old, converted rice warehouse that has played host to some of Tokyo's premier art spaces.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Nov 6, 2002
Feminist charts no-woman's-land between peaceniks and the SDF
On Sept. 3 and 4 this year, soldiers at a Ground Self-Defense Force base in Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu were joined by an improbable guest: Japan's premier feminist and antiwar artist, Yoshiko Shimada.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 30, 2002
Afloat but not adrift on the sea of dreams
As the fall exhibition season moves into high gear, there are a number of good shows going up at Tokyo's leading contemporary art galleries, and what is notable is that a fair number of them are based on well-defined themes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 23, 2002
They don't make revolutions like this anymore
Way back when I was in college, images of Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro (or Che Guevara, his right-hand man) were to be seen everywhere. Posters hung in student apartments and dorms, in teachers' offices, and in clubs, cafes and shops that catered to the campus crowd. The scruffy yet charismatic figure was even celebrated on the airwaves, in Quebec pop singer Robert Charlebois' hit single, "Mon Ami Fidel."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 16, 2002
Educational crazy golf is a hole in one
If life is a crap shoot, then the Japanese educational system is a game of mini-golf, or so reckons Peter Bellars: That's the message behind the English artist's current Yokohama Museum of Art Gallery exhibition.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 9, 2002
A celebratory cake to get your teeth into
The good news: Sensational Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist, 40, is doing but a single gallery show this year, and it is happening here in Tokyo, right now, at the Shiseido Gallery on the Ginza strip.
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JAL cancels international flight after captain gets drunk at Dallas hotel
A Japan Airlines' flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled last week after its captain got drunk at a local hotel.
In Japan, regional revitalization fails to halt population decline
Sakiyama elementary school in Tamba, Hyogo Prefecture, in March .Over the past decade, the government has directed efforts toward policies designed to give young people incentives to base themselves in rural areas.
Putin’s war will soon reach Russians’ tax bills
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting in St. Petersburg on Friday.
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.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.

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