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.
Alternative realities of realism
"Realism" can be a frustratingly indeterminate term. It can be used to refer to individual paintings, and it can be a conceptual placeholder that seemingly encapsulates the entire history of the Western Renaissance, and other, fine arts through to modernism. The critical afterlives of realism, ...
Japan's conflicted art of World War II
The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art's current exhibition, "1945±5: The Works that Survived through the Turbulent and Reconstruction Era," showcases modern Japanese art five years either side of the pivotal end of World War II. It addresses oil painting and mostly follows a conventional ...
'MOT Collection: Postwar Art in Close-Up'
July 18-Oct. 12 The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and its own 20th anniversary with a "Postwar Art in Close-up" show of works drawn from its collection. Tracing the progression of art since World ...
'Japanese Painters Under World War II: How Did They Survive War?'
July 18-Sept. 23 During Japan's 15 turbulent years of war — from the Manchurian Incident of 1931, through the Second Sino War from 1937 to the end of World War II in 1945 — artists, despite difficulties, continued to explore means of expression. For some, ...
