Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan @ MFAH, Houston

Meiji Modern 

Fifty Years of New Japan 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

July 7 – September 15, 2024

Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912) was a period of unprecedented cultural and technological transition. Over these remarkable decades, the country experienced radical social and political shifts, which propelled the historically inward-facing society into a new modern, global era. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents a fresh look at the art of this transformative era with the landmark exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan.

Following over two centuries of near-total isolation, the archipelago of Japan was thrown into chaos with the arrival of the American Commodore Perry in 1853; following a series of international trade agreements, the feudal fiefdoms of Japan were transformed into a modern nation-state, with the Emperor “restored” to the throne. Through more than 150 extraordinary objects borrowed from over 70 public and private collections, the exhibition reveals the profound cross-cultural impact of the country’s developing relationships with the wider world.

Paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and fine examples of enamel, lacquer, embroidery, and textiles all evidence a blending of cultures and techniques and the innovative interchange of old and new. Uniquely, the exhibition features a diverse selection of both export wares and items made for display in Japan, reflecting the diversity of tastes and aesthetic discourse in the Meiji period. The exhibition also features several recently discovered masterpieces of Japanese art, many of which have never been shown publicly.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is organized into five thematic sections that reveal the varied cross-cultural influences on Japanese history and identity over the course of the Meiji period.

• Crafting a Modern State highlights the emergence of a country opening up to the outside world through prints, and other objects depicting Western scenes and motifs. Depictions of Meiji rulers in Western clothing and portrayals of American dignitaries in Japanese clothing underscore these new international connections. This also illustrates the importance of art and artwork both as industry and as a tool of diplomacy to the fledgling Meiji state.

• Navigating Changing Seas demonstrates the continued cultural importance of the sea in Japanese art, conveying its role in bringing the outside world to Japan, and bringing Japan to the outside world. A massive bronze masterpiece, nearly life size, of the Dragon King of Sea presenting a warrior with a magical tide-controlling jewel, the most significant piece of Meiji Period metalwork in the United States, is one of the highlights of this section.

• Fashioning the Self assesses the emergence of a new Japanese identity as a non-white, modern nation-state, and considers the changing gender roles of the period, the end of samurai status, the creation of a Meiji bureaucracy, and the growing embrace of modern conveniences as seen in clothing items and prints such as Telephone Call: A Merchant’s Wife. This section also highlights the unprecedented new social freedom enjoyed by women, using a series of woodblock printed illustrations from women’s magazines, a new genre that emerged during the period as women in Japan achieved widespread literacy for the first time. Another highlight of this section is a bowler hat by Hayakawa Shōkōsai I, woven entirely out bamboo reeds.

• Making History, Enshrining Myth examines the importance of a national religion, traditions, and myths to the formation of a modern nation-state, and considers how a self-conscious reinterpretation and re-articulation of the past helped inform a contemporary nation and its global future through unique new expressions. Crucially, this section also considers the role of China and the appreciation of Chinese art and culture during the Meiji Period and includes a rare and important two-sided painted screen by Noguchi Shōhin, one of the few female painters of the Meiji Period.

• Cultivating a Modern Aesthetic shows the traditional themes of plants and animals as the motifs and subject matter most eagerly embraced by foreigners, and therefore commonly made for export. Such artistic production translated to diplomatic soft power as well as a lucrative way to fund industry. It also fueled Western expectations for and definitions of “Asian tradition,” setting precedents for cultural and geopolitical relations and tensions that continue to unfold in the global arena today. This section features several important painted screens that have not been shown publicly for over 100 years and an imposing but beautiful ceramic painted made by Itaya Hazan, the father of Japanese studio ceramics. This vessel, the only known work by the artist in North America and one of only a handful outside of Japan, was acquired directly from the artist by Henry Walters in 1915, and is one of many such works in the exhibition that were purchased during the Meiji Period as contemporary art, highlighting Japan’s importance and might on the world stage by the end of these tumultuous five decades of new Japan.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan has been organized by the Japanese Art Society of America. The exhibition is co-curated by Bradley Bailey, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Chelsea Foxwell, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with essays and entries, published by Yale University Press.

Meiji Modern

Fifty Years of New Japan

by Chelsea Foxwell and Bradley M. Bailey

Published by Yale University Press, 2023

272 Pages, 11.30 x 9.25 in, 275 color illustrations

Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, noted, “Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan provides a fascinating window onto this transformative era, a collision of culture and identity that forged newly modern approaches to esthetics, trade and statehood in Japan. It also shows to great effect the unprecedented achievements of Japanese artisans and artists, culminating centuries of technical perfection. We are pleased to partner with Japanese Art Society of America, on their 50th anniversary, to bring this unprecedented exhibition to the MFAH.”

“Late-19th-century Japan represents an early and compelling chapter in the history of global modern art, as Japan became one of the first non-Western nations seeking to repel colonization by making the case for the integrity of its art and culture,” commented Bradley Bailey. “While seemingly opposed, these two ambitions intertwined to produce a distinct form of expression that helped to define Japan’s classical past as well as its global future.” 

Previous Venues:

Asia Society, New York, October 3, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, March 21 – June 9, 2024

MFAH - MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS / HOUSTON

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi @ Philadelphia Museum of Art - Spirit and Spectacle

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Spirit and Spectacle
Philadelphia Museum of Art
April 16 – August 18, 2019

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an exhibition devoted to the colorful and expressive prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), widely-known as the last great master of the traditional Japanese woodcut. Spirit and Spectacle celebrates the full scope of his achievement, tracing his efforts to champion the artistic culture of feudal Japan while addressing the new realities of his modern world. The exhibition features nearly one hundred works drawn primarily from the museum’s holdings—the largest collection of the artist’s prints outside of his native country—to highlight the ways in which Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, in a remarkable display of inventiveness and imagination, re-energized the art of the woodcut before it fell out of favor in Japan. While other exhibitions have often dramatized aspects of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s personal life—his bouts with mental illness, his complicated relations with women, and his personal misfortunes—Spirit and Spectacle takes a broader view of the artist’s achievements through the lens of the social and political upheaval that characterized 19th-century Japan and other external factors that shaped his artistic production.

Timothy Rub, the museum's George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, stated: “This exhibition offers an opportunity to share a truly exceptional, but perhaps lesser known aspect of our collection with the public. While Yoshitoshi was among the finest Japanese artists of his age, he was also a contemporary of the Impressionists, many of whom became inspired by ukiyo-e prints just as the genre began to decline in popularity in Japan. We are delighted to present the artist’s achievements in tandem with an in-depth exploration of Impressionism nearby in the Dorrance Special Exhibitions Galleries, to illuminate the various ways in which artists working at the same time in different parts of the world benefited from a growing artistic exchange.”

The exhibition begins with select examples of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s work in the 1860s following his apprenticeship with the master Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). These prints reveal his mastery of the woodblock technique and his exploration of various conventions of ukiyo-e printmaking, or “pictures of the floating world,” through subjects such as actor portraits, historic battles, legends and ghost stories. By the mid-19th century, such prints were characterized by exaggerated foreshortening, asymmetry of design, and cropping of figures. As Tsukioka  Yoshitoshi honed his technical skills, he also developed his own artistic voice, creating inventive approaches to subject matter that reflected major cultural shifts as the isolationist policies of the shogunate rulers of Edo Japan (1603-1868) gave way to international exchange and modernization under the newly restored Meiji emperor (1868-1912). His triptych General Masakiyo at Shinshū Castle during the Invasion of Korea in 1590, (1863) reflects a growing global awareness; the image of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background is a subtle reference to Japan's battle with the British at Kagoshima in the year the print was made.

While the depiction of gruesome subjects had entered the repertoire of Japanese prints earlier in the 19th century, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi gained a reputation for his visceral portrayal of violence, as reflected in selections from his Twenty-Eight Famous Murders with Verse, (1866-67), and One Hundred Warriors, (1868). The latter was his last series before he took a short hiatus from printmaking. This was a period of financial struggle and residual health complications for the artist, one that coincided with a waning market for traditional prints and social upheaval during the Meiji Restoration.

A section of the exhibition explores how the rapid growth of the newspaper industry in the early 1870s provided new opportunities for Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and renewed his career as a print designer. Beginning in 1873, he produced imaginative designs for The Postal Newspaper, which led to other commissions. Increasing competition from the introduction of photography and lithography to Japan led Tsukioka Yoshitoshi to seek new ways to invigorate the woodblock print. He alternated between traditional subjects and styles and a more expressive approach that combined western perspective with energetic lines. Additionally, he imbued his prints with vivid colors made possible through the use of aniline and other inks that were newly available due to trade. A striking example of his application of intensely colored inks is found in the series, Beauties and Seven Daytime Flowers, (1878), which presents beautiful women of the Imperial court paired with flowers. Two other prints displayed in this section demonstrate the different approaches Tsukioka Yoshitoshi took in his portrayals of women, from a more traditional ukiyo-e example, The Courtesan Usugumo Holding a Cat, 1876 to the modern style reflected in the color woodcut, Strolling: A Fashionable Married Woman of the Middle Meiji Period (1880s) Dressed in Western Style, 1888.

Prints demonstrating the significance of fires and firemen in everyday life in Japan are juxtaposed with other objects such as A Fireman’s Coat and a Fireman’s Hood from the mid-late 1800s. As the population grew and cities became crowded with wooden structures in the late Edo and early Meiji periods, fires were a frequent occurrence. A rare early triptych of a fireman’s parade from 1858 and another recording a devastating fire in Tokyo from 1876, as well as a single-sheet print from his series Fireman’s Standards of All Great Districts,1876, among other examples, illustrate Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s fascination with these contemporary subjects.

The last decade of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s life was his most productive and successful. By the early 1880s, he had gained financial stability through his newspaper commissions and headed an active studio with loyal students. Additionally, a new concern for the preservation of Japanese cultural and literary traditions arose in the 1880s, following the rapid modernization of the previous two decades, which created more opportunities for Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. It was during this time that he completed his most celebrated series, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-92). Images of the moon in its many phases is the common backdrop for the characters in this series. Stoic warriors, samurai, everyday townspeople, demons, poets, and courtesans reference stories relating to the moon and are drawn from Japanese and Chinese history and folklore, literature, and theater. Twenty-four highlights from the museum’s entire set are featured in the final gallery. In these mature works, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi achieved his distinctive aesthetic – combining flat design with a more realistic approach to perspectival space that conveys suspended moments of action. These dynamic prints made him the most popular artist in Edo (present-day Tokyo) at the time of his death. His passing signaled the end of an era for the genre in Japan.

The exhibition is organized by Shelley Langdale, the Park Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings. Langdale noted: “Over the last ten or so years, there has been a new appreciation, a sort of revisionist history, of Yoshitoshi’s life and work. While he remains best-known for his unforgettable scenes of gruesome violence, this exhibition demonstrates the range of his achievement as an innovative image-maker. Yoshitoshi’s challenges were not so different from our own– he was a traditionalist who sought ways to advance the cultural heritage and distinctiveness of his native country within an increasingly transnational world. As his work contains many elements that offer a rich dialogue with manga and anime today, we’ll be hosting a variety of programs that address these striking visual and literary connections.”

Select loans supplementing this presentation of works from the collection have been generously provided by Dr. Robert and Mrs. Linda Rudolph and by the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.

This exhibition has been made possible by The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund.

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130
www.philamuseum.org

Early Modern Japanese Prints, Toledo Museum of Art - Fresh Impressions

Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio
Through January 1, 2014

Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints

Toledo Museum of Art

In 1930 the Toledo Museum of Art played a critical role in popularizing modern Japanese woodblock prints in North America by organizing the largest exhibition ever devoted to the movement and producing an authoritative catalog to accompany it on its nationwide tour of 10 museums. Installed in four special exhibition galleries with works that spanned a decade, the landmark 1930 show presented 343 prints by 10 leading artists of the shin hanga (“new prints”) movement. 

Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints reassembles and revisits that historic exhibition. The Museum has also produced a major catalog in conjunction with the show that for the first time reproduces all 343 prints together in full color. The exhibition is organized by the Museum’s chief curator and curator of Asian art, Carolyn Putney. 

Hashiguchi Goyo (Japanese, 1880–1921)

Woman Combing Her Hair (Kami sukeru onna), March 1920. 

Color woodblock print. 

Toledo Museum of Art. Museum Purchase, 1930.109 

“The Toledo Museum of Art’s momentous 1930 exhibition is considered a touchstone of the early-twentieth-century Japanese shin hanga movement, which revived the traditional woodblock print for the modern era,” said Museum Director Brian Kennedy. “I am delighted that a new generation of Museum visitors can experience this rare opportunity to view these incredibly vibrant and compelling images for themselves.” 

Natori Shunsen (Japanese, 1886–1960) 

Actor Jitsukawa Yenjaku as Danshichi, 1926. 

Color woodblock print. 

Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Hubert D. Bennett, 1939.225

The shin hanga movement began in Japan around 1915 and is noted for combining traditional Japanese woodblock technique with an interest in Western aesthetics and a vivid, modern color sensibility. The new exhibition underlines the importance of the early 20th-century resurgence of Japanese woodblock printmaking, which has been described as “a period of Renaissance” in the field. The prints encompass a variety of subject matter, including traditional landscapes, seascapes, rivers and lakes, beautiful women (bijinga), actors (yakusha-e), the natural world and wildlife, cities and towns and temples, as well as Western-inspired still life and genre scenes. 

Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957) 

Zojoji in Snow (Shiba Zojoji), 1925. 

Color woodblock print. 

Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Hubert D. Bennett, 1939.165

The 10 artists in the exhibition are Hashiguchi Goyō (1880–1921), Itō Shinsui (1898–1972), Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), Miki Suizan (1887–1957), Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), Oda Kazuma (1882–1956), Ohara Shōson, also known as Ohara Kōson (1877–1945), Yamamura Toyonari, also known as Yamamura Kōka (1885–1942), Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950) and Yoshikawa Kanpō (1894–1979). 

All but five of the 343 prints are now in the Museum’s collection. Most of these were purchased around the time of the original show and donated to the Museum in 1939 by local businessman and print collector Hubert D. Bennett. (The Museum is borrowing the additional five prints.) The Toledo Museum of Art’s collection of shin hanga is considered to be one of the finest in any museum in the country. The prints have only rarely been out of storage since the 1930s and as a result are in pristine condition. 

In addition to the 343 woodblock prints, the exhibition will present companion objects depicted in the prints—such as kimonos, netsuke and samurai swords and armor—not included in the original 1930 show. A companion exhibition, Ebb and Flow: Cross-Cultural Prints, in the Works on Paper Gallery, covers the period from the 1930s to the present and explores the global influence of these modern Japanese printmakers. 

Hiroshi Yoshida (Japanese, 1876-1950), 

Sailing Boats, Afternoon (Hansen, Gogo), from the Inland Sea Series (Seto-Naikai Shu), 1926. 

Color woodblock print. 

Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Hubert D. Bennett, 1939.335

Shin hanga was introduced to the American public in the 1920s through several smaller exhibitions organized to benefit artists affected by the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. But it was not until the Toledo Museum of Art’s 1930 show, A Special Exhibition of Modern Japanese Prints—co-organized by Toledo curators J. Arthur MacLean (1879–1964) and Dorothy L. Blair (1890–1989), in collaboration with shin hanga artist Hiroshi Yoshida—that the movement’s scope was fully grasped and examined. The original catalog, which was fully illustrated in black-and-white and featured artist biographies, signatures and seals, became an invaluable resource on the work of modern Japanese printmakers for scholars and enthusiasts; it was reprinted and sold out twice.

Ohara Shoson (Japanese, 1878–1945) 

Camelia and Rice Birds (Tsubaki ni Shiro Buncho), 1929. 

Color woodblock print.

Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Hubert D. Bennett, 1939.271

Blair, the subject of Putney’s essay in the new catalog, was a pioneering authority on Asian art and culture in a field dominated by men. In 1927 she spent a year studying in Japan at Kyoto Imperial University—the first woman and first foreigner accorded that privileged status. She became assistant curator at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1928, after stints at several other noted museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. 

The 352-page catalog accompanying Fresh Impressions, with essays by Putney, scholars Kendall H. Brown and Koyama Shukō and artist Paul Binnie, was published with the assistance of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. 

TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART 

2445 Monroe Street at Scottwood Avenue, Toledo, Ohio 43620
www.toledomuseum.org

Japanese Lacquer, Jacqueline Avant Collection at Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas

Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas 
Through September 15, 2013

Showcasing the delicate beauty of Japanese lacquer dating from the early-17th to the early-20th century, Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection on view at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, USA, features over 40 Japanese lacquer items that would have been used primarily for arts and entertainment purposes. 

Ancient Japanese Lacquer

Writing Box (suzuribako) with design of Ono no Komachi, Japan, circa 1800. 

Lacquer, gold, silver, carved purple glass, black lacquered metal, gold metal on wood, suzu (tin alloy) rims

Courtesy The Jacqueline Avant Collection, Photograph Susan Einstein, Los Angeles.

Californian Japanese Art Collector Jacqueline Avant’s interest in collecting exquisite lacquer works used for poetry writing, poetry matching games, enjoyment of food or smoking, ceremonial display, wear, or personal care, such as boxes for combs, mirrors, tooth blackening powder, or incense, comprise the majority of the pieces selected for this exhibition. Also on view are boxes to hold objects of religious devotion, such as Buddhist holy texts (sutras), and even weapons for self-defense, including a decorated baton or knife.

“The Japanese have long been attributed with bringing the art of lacquer to its highest technical and aesthetic development,” says Crow Collection of Asian Art Executive Director Amy Lewis Hofland. “However, Japanese lacquer remains a subject rarely presented in American museums. When we learned of these works we knew our audiences would love the beauty and history of this painstakingly refined art form. It is a natural fit for the Crow Collection.”

Many works featured in Gold on Black originated from the dowries of feudal lord families, with family crests recording marriages of power and influence. Others were collected to delight wealthy merchants and reflect their personal tastes in dress and activities, from tea to smoking or composing poetry.

Recent finds suggest that lacquer has been employed in Japan as a protective film for at least 11,000 years. The lacquer is painstakingly harvested from twenty-year-old cultivated urushi trees; each tree is bled for its sap, producing less than a cup of liquid and giving up its life in the process of harvest. The lacquer is then filtered and applied in about thirty thin layers to a paulownia wood or lacquered hemp core. After each layer is polymerized in a humidor and then sanded, the upper layers are sprinkled with gold or silver powders and flecks to create designs. The final coat of clear lacquer is then ground down to reveal the metallic design. The care and skill required for application of both ground lacquer layers and design, and the rarity and expense of materials, meant that lacquer work was the most revered of family treasures in Japan, just as silver would have been in Europe or the Americas.

Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, selected the works featured in Gold on Black: Japanese Lacquer from the Jacqueline Avant Collection. 

China Through the Lens of John Thomson remains on view along with Peninsulas and Dragon Tails: Southeast Asian Art from the Crow Collection and with the acclaimed collection of Tantric sculpture from Trammell S. Crow’s private collection.

Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art Website: www.crowcollection.org

Contemporary Kogei Art Craft, Kanazama, Japan, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art

Art Crafting Towards the Future
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Curator: AKIMOTO Yuji, Museum’s Director
April 28 - August 4, 2012

Artwork by MITSUKE Masayasu, Untitled, 2009
Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts
Private collection
Image Courtesy of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Since becoming director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, in 2007, Yuji AKIMOTO has had contact with the vital spirit of Kanazawa's kôgei

Art Crafting towards the Future inquires into the contemporary validity of kôgei (Japanese artisan craft) and universalness of its appeal. The exhibition, this is to say, asks: Is kôgei an art genre expressive of our times, capable of speaking to people everywhere? Like other visual media, today’s kôgei is subject to the post-modern trends of the times. Like animation, manga, design, and contemporary art, it is an expressive medium used to create compelling new images. To this end, it employs methods specific to kôgei, and it references kôgei’s historical vision. Yet, today’s kôgei takes a clearly different approach from past kôgei.
In its visual imagery, for example, today’s kôgei resonates with animation, manga, design, and contemporary art—genres from which it has previously stood apart. In its attitude towards exhibiting, as well—while exhibit methods differ contingent on the creativity of each artist—today’s kôgei is turned to face the world at large. There is, thus, a clear trend of kôgei artists working in widely varying styles who are showing their works as art of the present day.
For this exhibition, I would like to refer to kôgei work of such character as “futurist,” in the sense of “kôgei of a new age” and “future-oriented kôgei.” The exhibits by the 12 featured artists are all kôgei, but I would like viewers to see and enjoy them as today’s art."

AKIMOTO Yuji, Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Exhibition’s curator

CONTEMPORARY KOGEI FEATURED ARTISTS
AOKI Katsuyo, b. 1972, Tokyo
HAYAMA Yuki, b. 1961, Arita, Saga
IKURA Takashi, b. 1962, Toki, Gifu
KITAMURA Tatsuo, b. 1952, Wajima, Ishikawa. Unryuan (lacquer craft studio)
KUWATA Takuro, b. 1981, Fukuyama, Hiroshima
MITSUKE Masayasu, b. 1975, Kaga, Ishikawa
NAKAMURA Kohei, b. 1948, Kanazawa, Ishikawa
NAKAMURA Shinkyo, b. 1957, Fukuoka
NOGUCHI Harumi, b. 1948, Tokyo
OHI Toshio, b. 1958, Kanazawa, Ishikawa
TAKEMURA Yuri, b. 1980, Nagoya, Aichi
YAMAMURA Shinya, b. 1960, Chofu, Tokyo

Art Crafting towards the Future is organized by the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation)

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Museum's Website: www.kanazawa21.jp

Nobuyoshi Araki, Love and Death at Museo d’Arte Lugano

Araki, Love and Death 
Museo d’Arte Lugano
October 23 - February 20, 2010

© NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, A’s Lovers, s.d.
Courtesy the artist and Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo

 

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI ranks today as one of the most well-known and celebrated artist photographers in the world with more than four hundred publications to his name. Despite his great celebrity, Araki Love and Death is one of only a very few retrospectives dedicated to him in Europe. 

Nobuyoshi Araki's photography expresses and updates many of the themes most closely connected to Japanese culture. The Lugano exhibition bears witness to the artist's work in its many varied expressions: in addition to the autobiographical series – including Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, which documents the relationship between the artist and his wife Yoko from the day of their marriage till the tragic illness and premature death of Yoko in 1990– urban landscapes, the suggestive images of flowers and food, the poetic series dedicated to the sky and, of course, the series of female nudes and bondage which are, more than any other of his subjects, so clearly linked to his renown. 

From this short list of subjects it is clear just how much Araki's work expresses Japanese culture, in the exaltation of the changing of the seasons, the ephemeral beauty of flowers, and of feminine sensuality. The artist's work is not limited to a simple registration of these subjects, but they make evident and almost tangible, even to a Western audience, the perturbing character that they have in Japanese culture. 

The exhibition mirrors Araki's urgency to capture the continuous transformation of reality, through a continuous photographic documentation. The display features nearly two thousand medium and large format pictures alongside an impressive installation of three thousand Polaroids taken by the artist over the years are presented in a highly dense, mosaic format. The audience is both overwhelmed and disoriented by the visual impact created not only by the single shots, but by the greater whole of the images. 

Finally, and perhaps what makes the Lugano exhibition unique, is the showing of his latest works, including the series dedicated to his beloved cat Chiro and a series of large format photographs over which the artist intervenes with calligraphy, paint and collage which is presented here to the public for the first time.

Museo d'Arte Lugano
Villa Malpensa
Riva Caccia 5
CH-6900 Lugano

www.mdam.ch

Manga Kamishibai The Art of Japanese Paper Theater

 

Eric P. Nash

MANGA KAMISHIBAI

The Art of Japanese Paper Theater

Abrams ComicArts

 

  Book Cover © Abrams ComicArts

 

Before giant robots, space ships, and masked super heroes filled the pages of Japanese comic books--known as manga--such characters were regularly seen on the streets of Japan in kamishibai stories. Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater tells the history of this fascinating and nearly vanished Japanese art form that paved the way for modern-day comic books, and is the missing link in the development of modern manga.

During the height of kamishibai in the 1930s, storytellers would travel to villages and set up their butais (miniature wooden prosceniums), through which illustrated boards were shown. The storytellers acted as entertainers and reporters, narrating tales that ranged from action-packed westerns, period pieces, traditional folk tales, and melodramas, to nightly news reporting on World War II. More than just explaining the pictures, a good storyteller would act out the parts of each character with different voices and facial expressions. Through extensive research and interviews, author Eric P. Nash pieces together the remarkable history of this art and its creators. With rare images reproduced for the first time from Japanese archives, including full-length kamishibai stories, combined with expert writing, this book is an essential guide to the origins of manga.

About ERIC P. NASH
Eric P. Nash has been a researcher and writer for the New York Times since 1986. He is the author of several books about architecture and design, including Manhattan Skyscrapers and The Destruction of Penn Station. Frederik L. Schodt is an author, interpreter, and translator who has written extensively on Japanese culture and Japan-U.S. relations.

 

Manga Kamishibai
The Art of Japanese Paper Theater
By Eric P. Nash with introduction by Frederik L. Schodt
Abrams ComicArts 
January 2009 
ISBN: 0-8109-5303-X
8 5/8 x 9 1/4 - 304 pages
Hardcover with jacket
250 full-color illustrations, also includes a poster jacket
$35.00