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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering commentary by reviewers and curators about current or recent exhibitions at museums and galleries around the country.
Note: Although Japan's state of quasi-emergency has been lifted, many museums and galleries still 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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1 December 2022 |
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| Rika Noguchi: Small Miracles |
| 7 October 2022 - 22 January 2023 |
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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Noguchi's photographic world is in flux. Best known for a macroscopic approach that maintains a certain distance between photographer and subject, she is now presenting works that scrutinize the familiar and the everyday in minute detail. Yet even if her perspective has shifted somewhat from the macro to the micro, her fundamental commitment to apprehending the phases of the real world and conveying them through the filter of the photograph remains unchanged.
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| Arts & Crafts and Design: From William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright |
| 23 September - 4 December 2022 |
Fuchu Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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A look back at the Arts and Crafts movement, which first emerged in England and spread throughout Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Interestingly, the name of the movement does not include the word "design," even though its most prominent figure, William Morris, is known as the "father of modern design." This show explores the relationship between the movement and design, which, from a contemporary standpoint, might well be defined as the study of how to make people's lives better.
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| Picasso: The Blue Period and Beyond |
| 17 September 2022 - 15 January 2023 |
Pola Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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Among Picasso exhibitions, this one stands out for its thematic orientation, taking the artist's early Blue Period as a point of departure and demonstrating how the styles and motifs of those works would crop up again throughout his career. The Blue Period was also a time of poverty for Picasso, and he often reused his canvases, painting over earlier works. A highlight of this show is its examination of these previously hidden Picassos, only recently made visible through modern technology.
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| Art and Railway: 150th Anniversary of Railway in Japan |
| 8 October 2022 - 9 January 2023 |
Tokyo Station Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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This year marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of Japan's first railway. But that's not all: 1872 was also when Japan embarked on its march to modernization with the full-fledged adoption of Western systems; moreover, it's the year when the newly imported concept of "fine art" was given a name: bijutsu. This look at the ties between railroads and art begins with a woodcut depicting a model steam locomotive gifted to the shogunate by Commodore Perry in 1854 and takes us up to the postwar era of avant-garde art performances in trains and stations. (For a detailed review, see this issue's Here and There.)
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| Ghibli Park and Ghibli |
| 29 October - 25 December 2022 |
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
(Aichi) |
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Ghibli Park, a theme park that promises to immerse visitors in the world of Studio Ghibli animation, opened on 1 November in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture. In tandem with the opening, this exhibition in nearby Nagoya offers a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the studio's celebrated films.
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| Okamoto Taro: A Retrospective |
| 18 October - 28 December 2022 |
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
(Tokyo)
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The exhibition extends from the museum basement to the first and second floors, and the curators want to make sure you start at the bottom and give every work a thorough look. To that end they have kept explanatory texts to a minimum and the lighting low, save for a spotlight on each exhibit. The focus is on Okamoto's fascination with Japan's ancient Jomon culture and his ethnological fieldwork around the archipelago, particularly in Tohoku to the northeast and Okinawa in the far southwest. His interest in Japan's outer margins is explained by his belief that these were where the Jomon DNA was still alive in local folkways, unsullied by the later Yayoi culture that arrived from the continent.
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| Kohei Kobayashi: Teleportation |
| 23 September - 18 December 2022 |
Kurobe City Art Museum
(Toyama) |
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Kobayashi (b. 1974) explores interchanges of things and their meaning via a form of conceptual "teleportation" carried out by processes of disconnecting, moving, and reconnecting. Works themed around the scenery and culture of the Kurobe area are constructed in parallel presentations as "tourist information" and "fabrication instructions." Content is further diversified by incorporating accidents and errors that occur in the course of shifting back and forth between these two contexts.
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| Dali Prints Exhibition |
| 8 October - 4 December 2022 |
The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art
(Niigata) |
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The prodigious talents of Salvador Dali (1904-1989) were not limited to painting. In his late fifties he began making prints that amply testify to his love and mastery of the medium, producing more than 1,600 over his lifetime. The soft lines and superb sketchwork we see in his etchings are emblematic of the artist's sensitivity and dedication to his craft. This show features some 200 Dali prints, most of them from the 1960s and '70s.
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| Flower of Life |
| 23 April - 25 December 2022 |
Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum
(Shizuoka) |
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Commemorating the outdoor sculpture museum's 20th anniversary, this exhibition brings together works by 39 artists, some displayed in past shows here and others newly created for the occasion. The emphasis is on works inspired by the artists' personal experiences or daily lives. Imbued with the penetrating insights and sensibilities of their creators, these pieces and their natural ambience stimulate our own imaginations and offer new perspectives on the world around us. The curators express the hope that our encounters with these works will help instill renewed vigor in us as we face life today.
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