An Eye for Line, a Flair for Color: The Design Works of Seifu Tsuda
J.M. Hammond
During the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) eras, artists in Japan met with new challenges and opportunities as the country opened up more to the West, but they also had to make certain tough decisions on where to focus their energy. Some felt they needed to side with either "art" or with "design" -- a distinction that had never been clear or important in Japan. The approach of Seifu Tsuda (1880-1978) was to simply do whatever he was interested in, regardless of labeling and categorization. more...
Farewell to the Nakagin Capsule Tower: A Brief but Exquisite Glimpse into a Metabolist Future
James Lambiasi
Tokyo is a city of rapid change. Its insatiable appetite for new construction has persisted through economic highs and lows ever since the postwar construction boom, and there is little room for sentiment when a building succumbs to the pressures of its own land value and is replaced. This is the environment that gave birth to the Nakagin Capsule Tower in 1972, a revolutionary micro-apartment building by architect Kisho Kurokawa that became the iconic representation of the Metabolist movement in Japan. more...
The Yoga of Yoga: How Western-Style Painting Gained a Foothold in Meiji Japan
Alan Gleason
The early Meiji era, which began in 1868 with the abolition of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the official restoration of the emperor as the supreme power in the land, is a period that never ceases to fascinate. Though often treated as a time of breakneck modernization, the process was anything but smooth. An exhibition currently on view at the Fuchu Art Museum introduces the generation of early-Meiji Japanese artists who adopted Western realism as their muse and applied it to paintings, primarily in watercolor, of landscapes and scenes of daily life. more...
