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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering commentary by a variety of reviewers about current or recent exhibitions at museums and galleries around the country.
Note: Due to a recent surge in Covid cases, parts of Japan are currently under a state of quasi-emergency, and some museums have temporarily closed. Others may require reservations or have other anti-Covid measures in place. If you are planning a visit, please check the venue's website beforehand. |
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| Keisuke Tsuchida Exhibition |
| 8 January - 27 February 2022 |
Kichijoji Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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Tsuchida (b. 1974) creates elaborate, intense, phantasmic monochrome images from countless vertical strokes of a pencil. His underlying motif, he says, is kokoro -- heart and mind: "We can express the workings of the heart in words, but not in form. In my work I explore what happens when we try to give form to something formless." Indeed, these images seem like excavations of something deep inside the artist, gentle renderings in pencil of his own quiet scrutiny of the heart. |
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| Miquel Barceló |
| 13 January - 25 March 2022 |
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Born in Spain and active primarily in Europe, Barceló (b. 1957) has been a commanding presence in the world of contemporary art since the 1980s, yet this is the first comprehensive presentation of his work in Japan. Populated with such motifs as the sea, land, plants, animals, history, and religion -- not to mention portraits and bullfighting -- his works are grounded in the palpable love, admiration, and awe he feels for nature and humanity. |
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| Christian Marclay: Translating |
| 20 November 2021 - 23 February 2022 |
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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Marclay (b. 1955) first made his mark as a prominent figure on the avant-garde music scene, but has since established himself as an artist doing pioneering work at the interface between music and contemporary art, with a focus on how music is visually represented and commodified in society today. This, the first solo show in Japan for Marclay, provides a solid overview of his career to date, from early works to recent pieces that address the rampant anxieties generated by modern life. |
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| Jiro Taniguchi Exhibition |
| 16 October 2021 - 27 February 2021 |
Setagaya Literary Museum
(Tokyo) |
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Taniguchi (1947-2017) is the rare manga artist who earned a devoted following both inside and outside Japan. This major retrospective features some 300 original drawings that provide a priceless window into Taniguchi's utterly unique world. His meticulous draftsmanship and compositional style draw the reader into that world and never completely let go. |
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| Chimei Hamada: Irony and Humor |
| 11 December 2021 - 6 February 2021 |
Chigasaki City Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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One of postwar Japan's greatest print artists and sculptors, Hamada (1917-2018) first garnered notice for his Elegy for New Recruits series, which drew on his horrific experiences as a soldier with the Japanese Army in China during World War II. Later he would expand his targets to include himself and humanity in general. The caustic sense of humor and irony imbuing his social commentary earned him accolades both at home and abroad. Producing copperplate prints on a wide range of themes, Hamada is credited as a seminal influence on contemporary print art in Japan. |
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Ukiyo-e Viewed through Japonisme |
12 January - 6 March 2022 |
Chiba City Museum of Art
(Chiba) |
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It's a well-known fact that ukiyo-e woodblock prints had a profound impact on many 19th-century Western artists. But just what was it they saw in ukiyo-e that was so novel and inspiring that they were moved to incorporate it into their own art? This exhibition attempts to identify the special attributes and appeal of ukiyo-e by examining the ways in which the genre influenced art associated with the Japonisme movement. An innovatively configured presentation of some 220 works, it juxtaposes famous ukiyo-e masterpieces with Japonisme-tinged art from Europe, Russia, and North America. |
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| Egypt, Land of Discoveries |
| 20 November 2021 - 27 February 2022 |
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo) |
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The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, boasts a collection of Egyptian antiquities rivaling those of the British Museum and the Louvre. This selection of some 250 items from that trove of 25,000 includes 13 mummies and plenty of burial accessories. The centerpiece is a display of 12 sarcophagi in standing position, enabling visitors to savor the coffins' distinctive colors and ornamentation from all sides. |
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| Yuko Higuchi: Circus |
| 19 December 2021 - 23 February 2022 |
Okayama City Museum
(Okayama) |
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Higuchi is a multifaceted creator who not only paints fanciful pictures that float between reality and fantasy, but also publishes her own picture books. This show, her first large-scale solo outing, presents over 500 works culled from some two decades of output. Per the title, it's a veritable circus populated by cats, little girls, mushrooms, and otherworldly creatures -- a wonderland that is at once smile-inducing and tinged with a bit of pathos. |
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| Whereabouts of Japanese Painting: Inheritance and Disconnection, Imitation and Creation |
| 29 January - 21 March 2022 |
Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts
(Tochigi) |
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The transition from the Edo Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration in the late 1860s was a dramatic and wrenching one. The precipitous modernization campaign that followed buffeted Japan's art milieu, as did the importation of a new, foreign concept of "fine art," known as bijutsu. Through the works assembled here by contemporary artists active in the Nihonga (Japanese painting) genre, the exhibition poses questions about that tradition's future. Born and raised in the tempestuous decades of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras, is Nihonga reaching the end of its lifespan today, or is there a "New Nihonga" in the offing? |
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