Peddlers, Porters, Pawnbrokers and More: Hokusai's People at Work
Susan Rogers Chikuba
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) lived most of his 90 years in what is now Tokyo's Sumida ward. Not far from Ryogoku Station, just off the street on which he was born, the Sumida Hokusai Museum opened in 2016 to showcase the legacy of this neighborhood's most acclaimed native son. Its present exhibition, Edo Livelihoods by Hokusai, reveals the artist's sharp and often playful eye as he captured people at work. more...
The Painting Demon: The Wondrous World of Kawanabe Kyosai
Christopher Stephens
Born in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889) was a painter and printmaker who studied with some of the greatest artists of his day, including Utagawa Kuniyoshi and members of the Kano school. Dubbing himself a "painting demon," Kyosai turned his hand to everything from advertisements to satirical caricatures, and dealt with subjects that ranged from charming animals at play to grisly scenes of violent death. Kyosai was one of the last masters of traditional Japanese art, but more importantly, as a figure who straddled the Edo and Meiji periods, he deftly infused the old with the new. more...
The Surrealist Moralist: Ichiro Fukuzawa at MOMAT
Alan Gleason
Ichiro Fukuzawa (1898-1992) is commonly credited as the painter who introduced Surrealist art to Japan in the 1930s. Laugh Off This Hopeless World, the retrospective currently at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, supplies plenty of evidence to support this, then goes on to show that he was a relevant presence in the postwar avant-garde as well. The chronologically arranged exhibits help one make sense of the revealing transitions Fukuzawa's art underwent in the days leading up to, during, and immediately after World War II. In many ways his trajectory mirrors the changes the entire country went through during the tumultuous Showa Era (1926-89). more...
