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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering commentary by a variety of reviewers about exhibitions at museums and galleries in recent weeks, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists.
1 November 2012
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The 70s in Japan, 1968-1982
15 September - 11 November 2012
The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama
(Saitama)
For Japan the seventies was a decade of transition, as the high-growth era peaked out and made way for a consumerist, information-driven society. Culturally it was a tumultuous time. This ambitious and possibly first-of-its-kind retrospective aims to "look back at the art, design, architecture, photography, theater, music, and manga that reflect the era" of about 15 years that loosely defines the seventies. The museum has stuffed its galleries with works that all bear looking at. Hats off to the curators who pulled all this material together.

Aiko Miyanaga: NAKASORA - the reason for eternity -
13 October - 24 December 2012
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
(Osaka)
In the service of her overarching theme -- the changes that occur with the passage of time -- Miyanaga works with a variety of media: objects made of naphthalene that gradually disintegrate at room temperature, or the bits of sound that emanate from pottery as it cools after removal from the kiln. The title of the show, nakasora, is a word connoting an emotional state of suspension, unease, indecision -- and Miyanaga's pieces provoke just such feelings in the viewer. Along with newer works she presents her monumental installation from last year, Beginning of the Landscapes, a fabric-like object made of fragant-olive leaves.
Tatsuno Art Project 2012: Arts and Memories
16 - 25 November 2012
Usukuchi Tatsuno Soy Sauce Museum, etc.
(Hyogo)
In its second year, this contemporary art festival occupies former soy-sauce warehouses and other traditional structures in the old castle town of Tatsuno, outside Himeji. The featured artists, all of high repute and many of whom make their home overseas, span the generations from the venerable painter Takesada Matsutani (b. 1937), a former member of the legendary Gutai art collective who now lives in France, to Madrid-based sculptor Toshiro Yamaguchi (b. 1956), to young lion Ryosuke Imamura (b. 1982), an installation artist from closer by in Kyoto. The weeklong event includes plenty of workshops, artist talks, and guided tours.
Chair as Design / Chair as Art

8 September - 4 November 2012
The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama
(Toyama)
Selecting from its own collection, the museum exhibits over 100 chairs in a solid retrospective of chair design in the 20th century, ranging from the art nouveau era of Otto Wagner and Antonio Gaudi to the postmodernism of Ettore Sottsass and Arata Isozaki. Especially gratifying is the display of concurrently produced artworks alongside the furniture. This makes for some surprising juxtapositions, such as a painting by Tadanori Yokoo paired with a chair by Shiro Kawamata.
Women in Early Noritake Tableware

14 September - 11 November 2012
Hachioji Yume Art Museum
(Tokyo)
Early or "Old" Noritake conjures up visions of dishes with Western-style landscapes or women's portraits framed by a ring of sumptuous ornamentation. This show focuses on images of women found on some 100 art-deco-style pieces from the 1920s. The ladies are inevitably lovely and thoroughly modern, embodying the glittering, all-too-brief period of moga fashion between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression.
Kazutomo Tashiro: When hamayuris are in bloom

23 August - 9 September 2012
photographers' gallery / Kula Photo Gallery
(Tokyo)
Tashiro began snapping portraits of people living in and around the earthquake and tsunami disaster areas in April 2011. His sojourns produced the series When hamayuris are in bloom (the hamayuri is a lily native to northern Japan), which the photographer has followed up on most recently with a summer 2012 edition, the sixth in a series of portfolio books portraying over 800 subjects. Tashiro's method is simple: when he finds someone he'd like to photograph he calls out to them, has them stand facing the camera, and establishes enough distance to include something of the surrounding environment in the frame. As one peruses this massive collection of portraits, the significance of those middle-distance views becomes poignantly clear.
Nao Tsuda: Storm Last Night / Earth Rain House

20 August - 25 September 2012
Canon Gallery S
(Tokyo)
This was a dual show of two series by photographer Tsuda. Storm Last Night features scenes, printed in an elongated 6 x 17 inch format, of Ireland's Dingle Peninsula and the Aran Islands. Earth Rain House chronicles Tsuda's travels by boat and small plane to the Orkney, Shetland, and Outer Hebrides islands north of Scotland. In both series the central motif is ancient ruins left by indigenous inhabitants during the pre-Christian era.

Bijutsu no Kusuri (Medicine of Art)

4 - 16 September 2012
Kunst Arzt
(Kyoto)
Artist Mitsuhiro Okamoto has opened his new Kyoto gallery (the name means "Art Doctor" in English) with the aim, he says, of "providing stimulating 'medicine' to visitors and society in general." This inaugural show introduced works on the medicinal theme by six artists or art units: Taro Yamamoto, shimoken, Gendaibijutsu Nitouhey, Takashi Kiuchi, Shunichi Ogawa, and Okamoto himself. Laced with an invigorating wit, the works filling the gallery consistently elicited appreciative grins and guffaws.
Mugi Nakajima: wandering
1 - 23 September 2012
Nagi Museum Of Contemporary Art
(Okayama)
Subtitled "color, time, travel, a record of memory," this was a fulfilling show that provided an overview of Nakajima's evolution as an artist, the changes his mode of expression has undergone, the breadth of his viewpoint, and the way-stations on his artistic journey. In an artist's talk he spoke of his everyday experiences, his stance as an artist, and what he likes to collect -- all delivered with a calm, reflective demeanor that was contagious to the audience.
Masayoshi Sukita: Sound & Vision
11 August - 30 September 2012
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo)
As befits a retrospective of the celebrated photographer (best known overseas for his shots of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and the like), this show focused on his work since the 1970s across the spectrum of Japanese culture -- particularly in music and film, represented by record jackets, posters, and movie stills, but interspersed with examples of more personal work as well. Classified under such titles as "Early Days / Mother, Kyushu, Osaka," "70's / New York and Rock 'n Roll," "Vision 1: Afterimage Spectral," and "Vision 2: Tokyo Images+," the works occupied several small sub-galleries, an effective way of showcasing both the origins and methodology of Sukita's oeuvre.
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