Okinawan Art at Nippon Club

A couple weeks ago, I dropped by the Nippon Club, here in New York, to check out their Okinawan Art exhibit. I’m afraid it closes today, so, I apologize for the delay in posting this post.

It is really fantastic to see Nippon Club host an exhibit of Okinawan Art. Okinawa tends, all too often, to get rather sidelined. Whether because it is different, and Japanese tend to focus on representing [mainland/mainstream] “Japan,” feeling it’s okay (or even expected) to leave Okinawan matters to the Okinawan clubs, or whether it’s the simple logistical matter that Okinawa is only one (or several) of so many topics or regions or aspects of Japan, and so logistically Okinawa can only come around again so often. After all, it’s not that frequently that we have exhibits specifically about Gifu, or specifically about fan-making, either.

The Nippon Club exhibit was curated by Onaga Naoki, former assistant director of the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, and curator of several of the museum’s most impressive and groundbreaking exhibits. So, we know that he is an expert on the subject, and someone extremely well-informed as to the range and depth and breadth of contemporary Okinawan art. That his selection of objects is deliberately and carefully chosen from the full range of contemporary Okinawan art; that this is neither arbitrary, nor the product of a curator with only a narrower, or even misguided, awareness of the field.

So, why is it that we only see certain types of styles, approaches, and themes here, and not other ones? I find it very interesting to see how the Okinawan artists included here represent themselves, and Okinawan identity. Is this a reflection of Onaga’s personal preferences and biases? Or is it a relatively accurate representation of what the majority of Okinawan artists are doing?

Either way, I think it a terrible shame that Okinawa’s vibrant, colorful, upbeat, culture, a culture with such strong connections to history and traditions, should be represented almost exclusively by such extremely modern(ist) works. In a brief news article talking about the exhibit, Onaga says “this is the first real introduction of Okinawan art to be carried out in the United States.” I’m not sure that that’s true, but if it is, it introduces Americans to a decidedly different Okinawa than the one I study, the one I love. He speaks of the exhibit “help[ing] Americans and people of Japanese descent to gain a better understanding of the history and culture of Okinawa,” and Nippon Club’s director says that “While Okinawa has an image in the United States as an island full of military bases, we hope to get people to understand aspects of its culture.” Yet, the complete absence of anything in the exhibit related to the glorious history of the Ryukyu Kingdom, traditional folk songs, architecture, painting, or clothing, and only very little relating to ceramics or textile traditions is quite revealing as to what these people believe Okinawan culture and identity to be; or, what they desire the American audiences to believe it to be.

This is not the first time that I have seen an exhibit of Okinawan art (or just read the catalog) where the art is extremely modern(ist) and global in its aesthetic, approach, and content. There are hints of a Japanese quality to the art, in so far as that they are not so different from what a lot of (mainland) Japanese modern(ist) artists of the last 50 years have done; also, in that the exhibit includes ceramics and textiles, a nod, perhaps, to Japanese craft traditions. But, the only hints of Okinawan history or culture in these works is in how they relate to World War II, to the current US military presence in Okinawa, and other aspects of 20th century history and contemporary concerns.

If it were up to me, I’d put together an exhibit of works that in some way reference or recall pre-modern or traditional Okinawa. Works that borrow and reference the past in a more colorful, playful, post-modernist kind of way, and that focus on a colorful, beautiful, Okinawa with strong connections to traditional identity (esp. music & dance), rather than on the dreary, grey, and decidedly modern(ist) Okinawa seen in these works. I’m looking for the (Neo-)Nihonga artists of Okinawa. The Clifton Karhus, Yamamoto Tarôs, and Yamaguchi Akiras of Okinawa. People whose works are centered on, inspired by, reflect or recall sanshin music, bigata robes, the glories of the Ryukyu Kingdom, continuing and reviving traditions for the modern age, just as the Nihonga artists of the early 20th century did for mainland Japanese painting, and just as Neo-Nihonga artists today do, re-injecting elements of traditional Japan into a Japanese identity which threatens to become too (post-)modern, too globalized. That is, if such artists even exist in Okinawa. Or would that be a disservice? Would that be misrepresenting Okinawan attitudes and aesthetics, to show only the pieces I like?

For as much as the Okinawan community in Hawaii identifies itself strongly with suffering and victimhood at the hands of the Japanese, they also express and celebrate their Okinawan identity through traditional garments, crafts, foods, language, history, traditional observances/celebrations, and most especially through music and dance. I would love to see Okinawan art connected to the Okinawan Renaissance of the 1970s through today; art connected not to Japan’s outdated but continuing struggle to be “modern”, nor to the same-old contemporary issues of suffering and victimhood, but rather to Okinawan identity as identified through a connection to history, tradition, and artistic and musical traditions. Do these exist? Does the Nippon Club exhibit reflect that they do not? Or does it reflect some agenda, or biased attitude on the part of Mr. Onaga? I think Onaga’s last comment in the above-linked article is quite revealing that it is, in fact, the latter. “I hope to show that there is a world-class art in Okinawa,” he says, code for “I want to show that Okinawa is as modern(ist) as anywhere else,” an attitude strongly espoused in Japan throughout the 20th century, perhaps most strongly in the 1960s-70s, while the rest of the world has, meanwhile, in the 1990s-2010s, moved on. Mr. Onaga is clearly caught still in the discourses of modernism, which rejects the traditional, and the culturally distinct, in favor of the cutting-edge, the avant-garde, the abstract and experimental; meanwhile, the rest of us have moved on to post-modernism, which embraces individual cultural identities, and borrows extensively from our traditions in order to craft a more colorful, more beautiful, and less sterilized sense of our own identity – in order to revive our diverse identities, rather than losing them to a sort of a-cultural pan-global modernity/modernism.

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Quick Links: Mainichi Shimbun

Just a couple of articles today from the Mainichi Shimbun.

*Kyoto temple hires 25-year-old painter to restore ancient art practice – I have posted before about contemporary Nihonga (neo-traditional) painters being hired to restore, or to create new works to replace, paintings at Buddhist temples. It certainly makes sense. Someone has to do it – the tradition has to continue, we can’t just stick with what we have and watch as it slowly gradually decays, not for all cases. And basically everyone who is a painter in traditional styles and/or traditional media is termed a “Nihonga” painter, so, that’s who it is.

There is something really interesting, and wonderful, about contemporary artists stepping in to a long-standing tradition; essentially, stepping across a historical threshold, from the present into the past. Or, to put it a better way – and more accurately – to think of these temples and their traditions being long threads that exist in the present, and engage with the present, but which extend back centuries into the past. I am sure that someone more well-versed than I in theoretical jargon language could articulate some really fascinating argument about the discursive implications of this connection between contemporary artists and a centuries-old tradition of the town painter commissioned by a temple, or of the painter who lives within the temple and practices Zen practice. Kennin-ji in Kyoto, and Kenchô-ji in Kamakura, roughly ten years ago, had gorgeous new ceiling paintings of dragons produced by artist Koizumi Junsaku. But Junsaku was born in 1924, making him a later generation of Nihonga artist as compared to those active in the 1880s-1920s, for sure, but still much more closely connected to the traditional past.

By contrast, 25-year-old Murabayashi Yuki, a recent graduate from a graduate program at Kyoto University of Arts &
Design, is about as young and contemporary as one can imagine. This article doesn’t say much about her work, or about her personality or character – for all we know she’s really involved in traditional culture, and not very involved at all in modern, contemporary, pop culture – but, still, the combination is very interesting. Murabayashi will be doing, essentially, something not too extremely different from what artists like Sesshû did in the 15th century, or what various town artists (machi-eshi) did in the 17th-19th centuries, living at the temple, engaging in Zen practice, and just generally immersing herself in the world of the temple, while she paints new screen paintings for them over the course of three years.

As the article says, she was at first nervous, intimidated by the weight of expectations of this long line of centuries of great temple painters before her (not to mention how her paintings will continue to be viewed, and to be present and associated with the temple for many many years into the future, becoming an integral part of the history of the institution). However, encouraged by the abbot that she does not need to adhere to the styles and expectations of the past, the article says she has regained confidence. I am curious to see what sort of works she ends up creating.

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Meanwhile, Ôshiro Tatsuhiro, the author of “The Cocktail Party,” which I posted about some time ago, now compares the disaster-struck areas in northern Japan to Okinawa, framing the two places within a conceptualization of sacrifice for the sake of the center. What defines the success or prosperity of “Japan”? Is Tokyo the barometer? People in Tôhoku, Fukushima, and Okinawa are sacrificing, every day, continuing to sacrifice, to gaman (endure) and to ganbaru (keep trying), for the sake of the country. Yet, are they not themselves part of the country? Who is benefiting by their sacrifice? How is the health or prosperity of Japan measured? By the health and prosperity of the metaphorical Center? Or by the health and prosperity of its worst-off areas? Or by some more holistic approach, taking into account everything?

Especially after seeing his play, “The Cocktail Party,” and hearing him speak about it, I cannot help but see Ôshiro as a bitter curmudgeonly old man, kvetching and complaining, and most likely quite literally shaking his cane in the air. I would love to see him standing outside a US military base in Okinawa shouting “you damn kids, get off my lawn!” That would pretty much encapsulate his attitudes entirely. Which is not to say that he’s entirely wrong in what he says.

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Quick Links Sept 2011

Through RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, email, we’re exposed to more about our world everyday than ever before. Not just the stuff the local paper feels worthy of printing, but news on a whole myriad of topics, curated by ourselves to match our interests. And, so, every now and then, I find myself with more tabs open, more things I want to share, than I really have time or energy to devote full posts to. So, it’s time for another Quick Links.

*Science Daily reports on a new way to date silk. Rather than using carbon dating techniques, which apparently require the destruction of more material than we are usually willing to spare from, for example, a priceless ancient Chinese ink painting, the new technique dates silks based on the deterioration rate of the amino acids, or proteins, which form the silk. Scientists used the technique on a number of already-dated objects ranging from a Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) Chinese textile to a 19th century Mexican War flag, to establish baselines for the rate of deterioration, against which newly tested objects can be compared.

*Japanese fashion/textile artist Izukura Akihiko will be enjoying a show at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and simultaneously at the Linekona Art Center downtown, in January-Feburary 2012. I’ll admit, I’d never heard of him before, was not at all familiar with his work. But, local Hawaii-based fashion critic Paula Rath has put together a beautiful blog post giving us a glimpse at what we can look forward to.

*The Asahi Shinbun reports that the 1570 Battle of Anegawa fought between a combined Oda-Tokugawa army and the allied Asai and Asakura clans, may have been much smaller in scope than previously believed. The battle features several giants of Japanese history – namely Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu – or, at least, their troops (I’m not clear on whether Ieyasu and Nobunaga were there in person; such fine details of Sengoku battles are not among my strong points), and has been, like most major battles, romanticized and fictionalized and retold numerous times over. Some sources give army size numbers in the 15-20,000 range. Whether this is realistic, I don’t know. But, at some point soon I hope to actually read the article, and see what it has to say.

*The Honolulu Academy of Arts has just announced on its Facebook page that from now on the museum will be allowing photography! This is a wonderful turn of events. Now I can go and record the images that I find most beautiful or interesting, and be able to come back to them again, to remind myself what I saw, remind myself which artists to look into… Take photos of gallery labels and save myself the time copying them down by hand in the gallery.

The museum does specify, however, that “No photographs or videotapes may be reproduced, distributed, or sold without written permission from the museum,” which seems a pretty standard disclaimer. Except that I remain unclear as to whether a blog such as this one – or uploading photos to Flickr – counts as “personal use” or “fair use” in some other way, e.g. “educational use”, or whether, on the contrary, it counts as “reproduction and distribution” and is thus not allowed. Having photos for my own study and such will be wonderful, and I look forward to being able to take some photos for that purpose. However, being able to freely share those photos in a context such as a blog, or on Flickr, without worrying whether it counts as fair use, that’s the next important step.

*UK newspaper The Independent reports on analysis of skeletons of people who committed suicide after the 1333 siege of Kamakura. Thanks to further discussion of this article on the Samurai-Archives forums, I am reminded and able to put it together that this is talking about the Hôjô clan “harakiri yagura” or “suicide cave” which I’ve actually seen, in Kamakura. Check out the article, and the discussion thread on the Samurai-Archives forums for more.

*The building housing Japan Society, built by Junzo Yoshimura in 1971, the first building in NYC to be designed by a Japanese architect, has just been officially named a “landmark” by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

I love that the article acknowledges that some might call it a “modernist box.” This is more or less the same terminology I use to criticize countless buildings I see, the style of which I just have no interest in whatsoever. But the appealing thing about the Japan Society building is that it’s not purely that; it’s not purely a modernist box, but it’s a modernist box with enough touches of hints of traditional Japanese architecture that it’s actually interesting and (somewhat) attractive, and not simply just another of more of the same. Personally, I would prefer to see more buildings that much more closely resemble truly traditional-style machiya, rather than just recalling it in an otherwise very modernist form. But, unattractive though it may be, at least on a conceptual level, the Japan Society building, as it is, represents the fusion of traditional and ultra-modern that is contemporary Japan.

*I’ve just come across an old blog post from a blog called Edwardian Promenade, discussing the modern history of women’s dress in Meiji Japan, more specifically, the adoption of yôfuku (Western garments – dresses, corsets, bustles, hats etc.) and the transformation of the furisode, kosode, and various other kinds of traditional Japanese garments into “the kimono”, a newly defined “national costume” for a newly defined Nation.

The post is wonderfully detailed, including lots of dates and such, and describing ways in which the kimono, or the way it is worn, changed in this period. I bet you didn’t even know the kimono changed at all – it’s so traditional, after all, right? Unchanged? Hardly. Like so many things held up as symbols of “traditional Japan” today, the kimono, like tea ceremony, underwent dramatic changes in the Meiji period. Evangeline, the author of the blog, goes into great detail about the way the kimono, and Western Victorian fashions, created different silhouettes, and their relationship to ideas of ideal beauty.

*Finally, there’s apparently an ongoing controversy about the relocation of a writing hut where Roald Dahl did a lot of his writing. The hut, in the garden of his home in Buckinghamshire, is in desperate need of repair, or it might not last another year. There is a plan, therefore, to move its contents – pens, pictures, balls of yarn, his La-Z-Boy, all kinds of things, to the Roald Dahl Museum. However, the museum claims that it will cost £500,000 to move, and more importantly, conserve, all of these objects. I think, if I’m not misunderstanding, the £500,000 also includes the costs of designing and building new museum displays to construct an exhibition around the objects.

Yet, there is apparently some public outrage over the idea that the museum, and Dahl’s family, should be asking for help raising the £500,000 when many allege that Dahl’s widow could (and should) just pay for it entirely herself, out of pocket, from the vast riches she earns off royalties and book sales and such.

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Well, that’s it for now (phew!). Sometimes those links just really add up. I look forward to your thoughts, comments, and feedback. Sayonara for now!

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Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter

If only this exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC) had opened a week or two earlier, I could have seen it in person. As I sit here at my desk at the East-West Center in Honolulu it seems crazy that just a week ago I was sitting at a desk in the Smithsonian.

“Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter” opens today at the National Portrait Gallery (not to be confused with the National Gallery of Art, which is not part of the Smithsonian), and runs through October 14. The exhibit features works by a small handful of Asian-American (or Asian residents in the US) contemporary artists, which touch upon questions of identity, especially as it pertains to being Asian or Asian-American in America.

Roger Shimomura is one artist I have discussed previously; during World War II, he and his family were interned in internment camps, purely for the “crime” of having been of the same ethnic descent as those who attacked our country on December 7, 1941, and with whom we were now at war. .. Like many who suffered that injustice, Shimomura continues to speak out, so to speak, through his art, about those events. I am not familiar with a broad range of his works, but a couple I mentioned in my post about Shimomura a few years ago stand out as particularly biting, and amusing, if I may use that word, in the jabs they make at the assumptions and attitudes behind the institution of that Japanese-American relocation. To take one example, a work titled “Shadow of the Enemy” depicts the shadow, against a shed, of a pigtailed girl playing jump-rope.

One of the works by Shimomura featured now in this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is a sort of spoof of the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. In it, Shimomura addresses a different, but strongly related, problem faced by Japanese-Americans (and Asian-Americans more broadly) in the United States. Namely, the idea of the Asian(-American) as the perpetual foreigner. I must admit that I too am guilty of perpetuating this discourse, that is, of having difficulty seeing people of Asian descent as being just as “American” as those of European descent. We see people with Asian features, and we, at the very least, think of them as Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, with the “-American” very much secondary in our subconscious (or conscious) assessment of who we think of them as. We may assume they don’t speak English, or even if we don’t quite make that assumption, we are surprised and a little thrown off when someone’s accent, speech patterns, body language, etc. are wholly American, no different from those of an American of non-Asian (read: white, European) ancestry.

Image from BBC News, (c) Roger Shimomura

So, in “Shimomura Crossing the Delaware,” the artist has the famous scene re-enacted in ukiyo-e style – bright colors, line drawing, a relatively flat description of space, not incorporating techniques of light & shadow, illusion of three-dimensionality, or linear perspective. The figures, in Colonial Revolutionary Army garb or the like in the original, are now kabuki characters copied from the style of Sharaku, with samurai top-knots and kimono. Washington himself is represented with a self-portrait of Shimomura, looking a bit like Colonel Sanders, but in any case, more to the point looking (presumably) rather like himself, dressed up as Washington. The piece, I suppose, presents an idea that Japanese(-Americans) are inherently so foreign that any situation they exist in is itself foreign as well. That Japanese(-Americans) do not exist in the same America that we do, that they don’t wear the same clothes, that they are somehow fundamentally different creatures. That they don’t even occupy the same world of linear perspective, light & shadow, and oil painting realism as “real” Americans, but instead perpetually belong to a world of a wholly different style and aesthetic – one of exaggerated features in line drawing with fields of bright color, etc.

However we wish to phrase precisely what it is the work does and how it does it – and I am sure that Mr. Shimomura, the NPG curators, and others, would each have a different way of expressing what is going on here – I think that the piece definitely does bring to the fore this issue of the perception of Asian-Americans as perpetual foreigners. I’d be curious and interested to see a piece done in the opposite manner, incorporating Japanese faces and figures into the Washington piece just as it originally was – in oils, with colonial-era costume and all the standard techniques of realism – addressing the issue from the opposite point of view. Rather than painting the stereotype, and in doing so challenging it, what if Shimomura (or someone else) were to challenge it by painting against the stereotype, and depicting freedom fighters in the Revolution as including people of East Asian descent, suggesting the idea that we all hold equal claim to the heritage of the identity of being Americans? After all, my skin may be Caucasian peachy white, but I am myself the grandson of immigrants of Jewish Polish/Russian ancestry, not the descendant of English colonists, and I have been raised to feel fully and truly American; so if I can claim the Revolution as my own, as part of my identity, why do we continue to think, on some level, consciously or unconsciously, that those of Asian descent cannot?
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The exhibition also includes works by Satomi Shirai and Shizu Saldamando, whom I had not previously heard of, along with a number of other artists who are new to me.

Photograph by Satomi Shirai. From satomishirai.com.

The works of Satomi Shirai, a zaibei (resident in the US) Japanese artist featured in the show, are mostly photographs of herself in presumably staged compositions, relating in one way or another to anxieties or feelings, or identity issues, she confronts after moving from Japan to New York City. Many depict a messy situation in her New York apartment, either piles of clothes in the bedroom, or piles of dishes and other things on the kitchen counters.

In several photographs, the subject (presumably Shirai herself, though I can’t be sure) is in a state of undress, or half-undressed, with her back to the camera, a pile of clothing nearby. Do the clothes represent trying on different identities, or dressing up to fit in? Her body language as she tries on a red dress seems to indicate uncertainty, as she looks downwards, either at herself in the dress, or at the pile of clothes beneath her. If the clothes represent taking on an American identity, or dressing up in American fashions, then perhaps she is uncertain about whether or not this suits her, whether she likes it, whether American identity “works” on her.

In many of the pieces, the subject’s face is not visible to the viewer – either the subject is facing away from the camera, as in this work, or their head is cropped out. This is not the case consistently for all of Shirai’s pieces, however, so I am not sure if anything can really be said about it as a conscious, meaningful, move.

All together, her pieces seem to simply document life in an apartment in Queens, and the effort to adapt to a new place, a new life. Some seem more staged and unreal, such as one in which fruit peels are scattered across the floor in what seems a perfectly staged, composed composition, and others are blatantly not scenes in New York, such as those in tatami-lined rooms. Were the beach photos taken in New York somewhere? (Coney Island, perhaps?)

I’m not sure what I have to say, what interpretations might be made of these works, but Shirai definitely seems to have a knack for making the everyday into an artistic composition. Scenes of her drilling to install shelves or just sitting around reading a book have a clarity and sharpness that you rarely see in truly amateur photography (e.g. my own point-and-shoot digital photography), and a sense of composition, with diagonals and foreground and background and such that one would expect to see in a perfectly planned out painting. I wish I could attend this exhibit and learn more about the artist, her process and techniques, and her ideas and intentions.

“Cat and Cam.” Shizu Saldamando. Oils and gold leaf on found screen.

Meanwhile, half-Japanese half-Mexican Shizu Saldamando produces highly detailed & realistic portraits of her friends and family, mainly in colored pencil or ballpoint pen. We see the fashions and lifestyle of a typical Hispanic neighborhood, seen in leather jackets, drinking liquor out of a plastic bag, tattoos, and souped-up cars. He makes use of glitter and holograms to reflect the aesthetics of the Quinceañera, something that I personally feel is way over the top in terms of makeup and dress and all the things surrounding it – not unlike Long Island Bar Mitzvahs.

But, anyway, what is of particular interest for me is the series of works in which she incorporates more Japanese themes. In “Cat and Carm,” part of her “Stay Gold” series, Saldamando portrays her friends in a highly realistic manner, in oil paints, against a gold leaf background – essentially exactly the background that would be used in a traditional Japanese folding screen painting. Another work from the series, “Carm’s Crew,” also uses gold leaf and oil paints, but incorporates as well the Rising Sun motif.

The works of these three artists alone do a great job of representing the diversity within the Japanese-American community, the diversity of experience for Japanese & Japanese-Americans in the US. Combined with the other artists in the exhibition, I’m sure it must be really something. If any of you get the chance to see it, report back and let me know what you thought of it.

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Bye Bye Kitty – Review Part 3

This is Part 3 of my review of the recent contemporary art exhibition “Bye Bye Kitty” held at Japan Society in New York, March-June 2011. See Part 1 and Part 2 here.

*TENMYOUYA HISASHI

Tenmyouya Hisashi is, along with Yamaguchi Akira, another big name in what might be termed “Neo-Nihonga.” Though he does not work in traditional media (sumi ink, mineral pigments on paper or silk), his subject matter and elements of his style are extremely evocative of conventions in traditional/historical Japanese art.

“Defeat at a Single Blow” (seen here), a triptych of tattooed yakuza/bosôzoku types on tiger, elephant, and crane mounts recalls the triptych schema & “mounts” iconography of Buddhist painting, which the bright colors, martial atmosphere, and gold background (in acrylics, not real gold) recall the kabukimono of the early 17th century, as seen in the Hikone Screen and numerous other paintings of that time. Traditionally, it is bodhisattvas and other Buddhist or Hindu-derived entities who sit on animal mounts – Monju, bodhisattva of wisdom, on his lion, and the bodhisattva Fugen on an elephant are two prominent examples. Yet here, Tenmyouya has moved from the peaceful and enlightened imagery of bodhisattvas to a more martial sensibility.

*IKEDA MANABU

Ikeda Manabu’s works, like Yamaguchi’s, are fascinating and stunning in their level of detail, “History of Rise and Fall” (seen here) especially so, with its many castle-like roofs and gables, a giant sakura tree twisting around the buildings (or is it the other way around?). Hundreds of tiny samurai, in white silhouette, human-shaped negative spaces against a fully textured background, run and race, climb, battle, and even bicycle over a complicated, twisted landscape that conflates and juxtaposes periods from throughout Japanese (military) history.

The work is done in acrylic paints, mainly, applied not by brush but by pen. The work is massive, easily more than a square meter, but the details are as fine, if not finer, than the average pencil drawing.

I would love posters of this piece, too, though it would be difficult to produce any kind of reproduction that could do it justice without being full-size. The details are just that incredible.

*3D Works

Moving on to the 3D works (and a few more 2D works), Nawa Kohei’s deer is impressive and amusing if only for its absurdity. What nonsense, a taxidermied deer covered in glass spheres. And the pixelization process that Nawa talks about, simulating pixelization by affixing these glass bubbles onto the body of the deer, makes no sense whatsoever. But I will say that the way the room reflects in the spheres, and the way the spheres act as magnifying lenses allowing you to see the deer’s hair in great detail, is really something, and again something you won’t experience in the reproductions.

Nawa was originally going to show an elk, but since they couldn’t logistically get the elk into the gallery, the Society commissioned him to make a smaller version, with a deer. Not that that meant there wasn’t any difficulty.

Machida Kumi is likely the painter in the show whose works least resemble, and least draw upon, [pre-modern & early modern] Japanese art history, yet she is the only artist in the show who works in traditional materials – sumi ink and mineral pigments.

Her works are somewhat cute, but somewhat unsettling. Her figures seem like child robots, with empty glances, strings or wires extending outwards and tiny hands sticking out of the head of one figure. One of the two pieces is titled “Rocking Horse,” though the reasons why remain a complete mystery.

Kojin Haruka is, I believe, the youngest artist in the show. In her piece, “reflectwo“, she arranges silk flowers, hanging from the ceiling, in such a manner that they resemble their own reflection on a non-existent water surface.

Yoneda Tomoko presents us with very plain-looking photos of a place with deep connotative associations and a dark history. The National Military Defense Security Command, or Kimusa, in Seoul, was once a center for torture and interrogation. In Yoneda’s photos, it looks empty, simple and plain, all but totally devoid of any meaning, any aura of any particular use, let alone such a serious and dark use. Today, it is being transformed into an art space.

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The catalog for “Bye Bye Kitty” received a strong recommendation from my friend Kathryn over at her “Contemporary Japanese Literature” blog, and I wholeheartedly intended to buy a copy. This is one of the first, and one of the most major, exhibits so far as I know to introduce American audiences to contemporary Japanese art beyond Murakami, particularly of the sort that I love so much, the sort of work done by Aida Makoto, Yamaguchi Akira, and Tenmyouya Hisashi, which draws upon Japanese historical artistic themes and styles, and is colorful and playful, without being really all that connected to the anime/manga/kawaii phenomenon. There is more to Japanese art than Murakami, than anime/manga/kawaii; there is more to Japanese art than the impenetrably abstract, dark, and obscure work of Gutai, Mono-ha, Yoko Ono, and Butoh. And now New York audiences are more aware of that. I had every intention of buying the catalog for this groundbreaking exhibit.

Especially for the essays. I don’t know David Elliott – guest curator, and first director of the Mori Museum – very well, don’t know his writing, and would like to get to know his writing, his ideas. But, for me, a catalog is really about taking home the pieces, the artworks, so that you can look at them again. Essays and artist bios are wonderful, and indeed some catalogs, such as the St Louis Museum’s Nihonga catalog are indeed fantastic resources on their own, easily one of the best books on Nihonga in English, despite being “just” a catalog. But that’s an exception…

For a softcover book that’s really not so thick (125 pages), $30 seems a bit much. I might gladly pay $25, but, even then, the catalog as it exists lacks the one key thing I would want most from it – full, complete copies of Yamaguchi’s “Narita Airport” and Ikeda’s “The History of Rise and Fall,” in large fold-outs, or even better fully separate fold-out posters, in which one can appreciate, over and over again at home, the full degree of detail of these works. For works such as these, just as much as with 3D pieces I would argue, an 8.5″ x 11″ reproduction is no substitute for the real piece – it might as well be a thumbnail for all it fails to reproduce for the viewer.

Perhaps Japan Society, Mori Museum, or someone else can present these pieces online, as some institutions have done, for example, for handscroll paintings, and as the Freer-Sackler intends to do at some point in the next year or two for a massive collection of woodblock printed books (more on that later), using a Flash-like interface to allow visitors to experience the whole piece, and to zoom in on any and every part that they want, rather than relying solely on the few choice details the curators chose to put into a print catalog. The technology certainly exists – I’ve seen it in interactives in galleries and museums (there’s a great one for handscrolls in the Sackler), and in private image manipulation software such as ViewNX, and, yes, on websites as well. I adore print catalogs, and definitely do feel there is something tangibly lacking from online-only materials (not to mention the fact that online materials, as of right now, inevitably feel less official, less authoritative than printed publications), but there are also things that one can do in online applications that we simply cannot do in print. If anyone knows where we can experience these two works in their full glory, online, I would be eager to hear about it.

And that is it for my haphazard, thrown-together, review of the “Bye Bye Kitty” exhibition at Japan Society.

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Bye Bye Kitty Review – Part 2

As I walked through the exhibit, I took notes about each piece, and on my thoughts on the exhibit as a whole, as I so often now do. Using those notes as a basis to write blog posts, they tend to get quite long, and so I feel the need to divide them up into multiple parts. So, here is the second part of my thoughts on the exhibition “Bye Bye Kitty” recently held at Japan Society in New York.

*AIDA MAKOTO

The second room of the exhibit begins with one more piece by Aida Makoto. “Beautiful Flag” is surely among the most blatantly political pieces in the show, and there is so much that it might evoke or allude to, so much it might speak to, that conversely I find I have very little to say. I am sure that much has already been said.

The piece is a diptych, depicting Japanese and (South) Korean schoolgirls carrying large flags of their respective countries, standing large atop a pile of rubble, the overall aesthetic and style somewhat rough and dark, as if the painting itself has been attacked with the ashes of the flames of war. It’s a very blatantly nationalistic piece, but for which country? My first impression was that it is a piece which seeks to acknowledge, recognize, and convey that Korean nationalism is just as valid (or just as invalid) as Japanese nationalism, placing the two countries on an even footing. Though, at the same time, the Korean girl seems to me more determined, standing in a stronger stance, while the Japanese girl seems somehow, well, less so. What do these figures represent? What did Aida intend?

It certainly did not occur to me on my own, but the major Japanese art magazine Brutus compares the composition of this piece to a very famous one by 17th century artist Sôtatsu, depicting Raijin & Fûjin (Gods of Thunder and Wind). What do you think? A valid comparison? Something Aida intended? Or coincidence?

What do these images say to you? What do you see in them?

*KASHIKI TOMOKO

The exhibition continues with Kashiki Tomoko, the one 2-D artist (i.e. painter) in the show with whom I was least familiar. Her pieces have a light, pastel, “girly”, child-like and innocent sort of style or aesthetic to them, a quality that reminds me of the work of Takano Aya.

Kashiki’s girls seem on first glance to be the extremely slight, willowy girls of other anime-influenced contemporary artists, especially Takano, with maybe just the slightest hint of a harkening back to the very slim and very young-looking girls of ukiyo-e print artist Suzuki Harunobu. Yet, on closer inspection, they seem, actually, quite grotesque.

The figure in “In a Box” is curled up in an unnatural way, and seems to be melting into the floor, while the feet of the girl in “Roof Garden” are too long for her legs, stretching out way in front of her like capital letter ‘L’s. She seems to be missing her nose, ner neck is too long, and her shoulders seem doughy and malformed. Granted, similar criticisms (or observations, to put it more neutrally) could be made of the figures of, for example, Utamaro, who is celebrated for his pictures of beautiful women (bijinga). Yet, even so, there is a grotesqueness here that I don’t sense in the works of Harunobu or Kiyonaga. I wonder what the artist’s intention is… Could we perhaps say something about girls’ critical perceptions of themselves and their own bodily flaws? Or something about an effort to inject a sense of malaise, or just plain old emotional complexity and reality, as a critical response to works which present a beautiful, innocent, totally positive and problem-free portrayal of the world of the cute young Japanese girl?

*YAMAGUCHI AKIRA

In “The Nine Aspects,” Yamaguchi Akira parodies a theme or mode often seen in historical handscroll paintings and woodblock printed books: that of the stages of decay of a body after death. Normally, it is a beautiful woman’s body that is portrayed in this way, as you can see in this historical painting, and in, for example, this more contemporary work by Matsui Fuyuko which references the subject. Yamaguchi, however, substitutes for the woman the half-horse / half-motorcycle which often appears in other of his works. Moving from right to left in the composition, we see the horse/cycle bucking and lively, then weak and sickly, then with people gathered around it as though it has just died, and finally, decaying and rusting, its parts taken away for scrap.

Sadly, I was not able to find an image of this work to share with you here. So you’ll have to use your imaginations.

The work is on canvas, but as in so many of Yamaguchi’s works, there are numerous elements which reflect an extensive knowledge and great expertise in the themes, modes, and styles of the traditional, from the way the clouds are depicted to the golden background, to the choice of title (九相図, kusôzu; the same title as the traditional “nine stages” paintings), to the placement of signature, date, and seal in the upper right corner. His use of the traditional pictorial narrative technique of iji dôzu, in which successive chronological scenes featuring the same characters are shown in different parts of what otherwise looks to be a single continuous space, is another major touch of the traditional used in this work.

In a further nod to the traditional, Yamaguchi Akira is the only artist in this show, and so far as I know, one of only a few prominent/major Japanese artists active today, who insists that his name be represented in Japanese name order. Why Japan Society would choose to give all the other artists’ names in Western order is beyond me, but I think this an interesting and important point. Yamaguchi may have international appeal – and I do hope that this show helps more people learn about him and about the many other artists in Japan doing exciting work; it’s not all just Murakami – but he is very much a Japanese artist, and I think that respecting the name order he uses in Japan, rather than Westernizing or “internationalizing” it, rather than bastardizing it, is important.

Of course, that said, for someone who references the traditional so very much in his work, I am surprised to realize that Yamaguchi works in pens and oils and watercolors, and not in traditional mineral pigments and sumi ink. The same goes for Tenmyouya Hisashi and several other artists in this show. I suppose we can still call their work “Neo-Nihonga” even though the traditional definition of “Nihonga” emphasizes the use of traditional media (Yamamoto Tarô, not featured in this show, actually himself uses the term “Nipponga” to refer to his work), as, regardless of media, artists such as Tenmyouya and Yamaguchi are indeed *the* top, leading artists so far as I know doing work like this which draws heavily upon the traditional to do something decidedly modern and contemporary. Looking at their work, the style in which it is done, and the truly extensive use of traditional compositional elements, etc., the question of which media they’re using seems almost irrelevant.

Image from the cover of a monograph catalog of Yamaguchi Akira’s work, featuring a detail from his “Post-Modern Silly Battle,” also on display in the “Bye Bye Kitty” exhibition.

In any case, these pieces were amazing to see in person, and the degree of detail, especially in Yamaguchi’s Narita Airport murals, is just wonderful. I have not been to Narita (Tokyo’s main int’l airport) in some time, but if I have the story right, large wall-sized murals by Yamaguchi now grace the walls of one of the terminals, and two pieces on display at Japan Society as part of this show were the originals, in pen and watercolor, from which the larger reproductions were made. As in many of Yamaguchi’s other pieces – depicting Osaka, or the Mitsukoshi Department Store, or Tokyo Tower – these two are birds-eye view landscape paintings in the rakuchû rakugai zu mode, which mix reality and historical fantasy in their depiction of the airport. It is a landscape scene from a fantasy version of Japan, in which elements from many different periods of history are thrown together into one scene. Heian era courtiers in tall eboshi and billowing robes brush elbows with t-shirt-clad foreign tourists, while other passengers enjoy a bathhouse or a game of pool onboard the planes; beautiful hipped gabled tiled roofs in the style of Japanese castles grace the control tower and terminal buildings, and the title of both pieces, “Narita Airport” (成田空港) is enclosed in an elaborate cartouche in the upper right corner of each of the two pieces.

I would very much love to own a poster of these Narita Airport paintings. The details are just incredible, as each and every person or other element within the picture adds to the complexity and diversity of the overall scene. I could sit in front of this piece for hours and never feel I had seen, and digested, all of it. I imagine that they might (if I’m lucky) sell such posters at Narita Airport, or at the Mori Museum in Roppongi, where I saw Yamaguchi’s work for the first time. But, alas, not at Japan Society.

In my next post, I shall discuss the works of Tenmyouya Hisashi and Manabu Ikeda, before moving on to the 3D (read: sculpture) parts of the exhibition. Cheers for now!

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Bye Bye Kitty – Review Part 1

Even as I took my first steps into the Japan Society Gallery in New York this weekend, I was stopped in my tracks as works by Aida Makoto and Yanagi Miwa came into view. I had been looking forward to seeing the exhibition “Bye Bye Kitty” for a long time, and am glad to have caught it before it closed (which it did on Sunday June 12; sorry I couldn’t get my review up earlier in the spring, to recommend the exhibit and such).

The core premise, theme, or message of the exhibit is the idea that Japanese contemporary art has gone beyond cuteness. That it is time to say goodbye to Hello Kitty. I don’t know what curator David Elliott (former director of the Mori Museum in Roppongi) was thinking, but frankly this seems rather off-base. Cuteness is everywhere in Japan; it still is. Even despite the gloom brought by the triple-disaster of March 11. Perhaps he means to say that we in the West, especially in the art world, need to move past cuteness and start appreciating and recognizing other aspects of contemporary art and culture. Now, that’s a possibility. It’s still a dumb name for an exhibition.

If I have one complaint about the exhibit, it’s that I really wish they’d left the artists’ names in traditional Japanese order. I can’t help but feel like puting them in Western order creates a feeling of inauthenticity and ignorance, a feeling of Americanization in a bad way, as bad as saying ‘gee-sha’ – as if the American/Western organizers not understanding even the basics of Japanese culture, though I know they do.

But, those things aside, the exhibit really was incredible. I had seen many of these pieces in reproductions – on computer screens, in PowerPoint projections on a wall, or in books, but to see them in real life, in person, was really a whole different experience.

*AIDA MAKOTO

“Ash Grey Mountains” by Aida Makoto was smaller, I feel, than I imagined it or remembered it. It seemed cut off. And yet, no less breathtaking and awesome in its excruciating detail. Step back, and it looks more or less like just what the title says – ash grey mountains, covering the length of the wall, and reaching a good ways up toward the ceiling. But these mountains aren’t made of stone; they’re made of salarymen, that is, businessmen, piled up.

Aida added to the original piece after its installation at Japan Society, painstakingly drawing in further and further details; that is, more and more salarymen in grey suits. And while the overall effect is certainly one of grey, there is actually a fair bit of color. Look closer, and every man is different, with different color neckties, and all kinds of other office objects (e.g. desks) thrown in there as well.

I cannot remember where I read it, but I remember reading recently an interview with Aida in which he said that he imagines the men falling from the sky and just gathering into these mounds. One after another after another. And he keeps adding more. It’s an ongoing piece, almost a performance piece in a way, though he doesn’t tend to have an audience while he paints. An obvious commentary on Japanese society, and office culture in particular.

His other piece in the show is titled “Harakiri School Girls” in English, and 切腹女子高生 (せっぷくぢょしかうせい, seppuku joshi kôsei) though what the artist intends by this use of the old, deprecated kana spellings I really don’t know. For whatever reason, I kept looking at each piece in this show and thinking about whether or not it could be appropriately or fully experienced in reproduction – whether the experience of engaging with the works in the exhibit was different from having seen pictures of them before, and whether the experience of having them in the catalog would be worthwhile in (re-)capturing the experience of seeing them in person. For the overwhelming majority of the works I felt that, indeed, one saw and experienced so much in the actual works, not only in size, but also in texture, and in the ability to examine details, that seeing them in person was really worth it, and that the catalog couldn’t effectively relate that same experience.

In any case, “Harakiri School Girls” is definitely one of the works that most definitely cannot be adequately represented in reproduction, though I think the reproduction does give a good indication of how and why. It is printed on a kind of holographic paper, like those cheesy superhero collectible cards we bought so many of back in the early ’90s, and borrows stylistically, or compositionally, from seals and stickers of that type. The depth of it is interesting and unexpected, with the images on a clear acrylic pane, and the holograms a half-inch or so beneath.

*YANAGI MIWA

Yanagi’s pieces in the exhibition are from her “‘My Grandmothers” series, in which she uses costume, makeup, and the like, as well as post-production photo editing, to make young subjects look like the grandmothers they imagine themselves to be decades from now. One depicts a very self-assured-looking woman, who could be a successful businesswoman or lawyer – there’s something in her pose that suggests this – getting her hair done. Another is a happy, contented woman in winter hat and scarf lying down in grass and autumn leaves, gazing up at the sky. Another is a geisha, and another playing erhu at a Chinese restaurant. What does this say about young Japanese women today, their dreams, ambitions, and attitudes? As was pointed out to me, none of these women are surrounded by families, and all seem quite individually independent, following a life they choose.

It never ceases to amaze me how impressive, and how different, photos can be when they’re displayed large. They lack the texture of paintings, and unlike is the case with photos of paintings or prints, photo prints are essentially by definition identical to the originals. These *are* the original works. There is, in theory, nothing here that a reproduction, that is, a smaller version of the same photograph, should be unable to reproduce. And yet, it does fail to capture the same effect, if only for scale (i.e. size), and lighting conditions in the gallery. Perhaps it is the glossy surface of the prints (are they behind plexi? hard to tell), but the colors in these photos, and indeed in everything in the gallery, seem so incredibly vivid…

And that’s just the first room!

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Quick Links: Meanwhile…

The situation in Japan of course has not, and will not, go away overnight. It is still very much on my mind, especially after hearing directly (on skype video chat, rather than simply in text form via Facebook, Twitter, or email) from a friend who, though quite safe in Tokyo and quite far from the real center of the devastation, was even there in Tokyo terrified, and shaken, if you’ll pardon the pun, to the core.

I have been putting off posting about anything else for a few days, watching other bloggers put up post after post of serious, concerned, disaster-centric posts. People in Japan sharing their own photos and their own stories; people sharing images and information from the news, and lists of websites for finding and getting in touch with people, and for making donations to the relief efforts.

Here‘s just one of the many many stories being posted online right now. An op-ed piece published in the NY Times – a New Yorker reminisces about her time in Tôhoku, and how much has changed in the last few days, and writes about her relatives in Tôhoku, experiencing this tragedy firsthand. A beautiful, short, piece, entitled “Memories, Washed Away.”

Gary Leupp, history professor at Tufts University and Edo period culture/society specialist, meanwhile, shares his thoughts on the disaster, touching upon the history of the city of Sendai, its poetic beauty, and historical artifacts and sites damaged and lost, and those which have hopefully survived.

It is far too easy to simply move on and get on with our normal lives here in Hawaii… I just learned that my rabbi back home in NY asked after me, and made some kind of announcement to the whole congregation about my being okay. Given how completely out of danger I was, and how relatively normal the last few days have been, I cannot help but feel bad that anyone should be worried about me at a time like this.

But, what can I say? Of course, I cannot, I will not, “move on” completely. I will continue to think about what’s going on in Japan, to pay attention to the news, to be concerned; to keep in touch with friends over there, and to do what I can to be supportive for Japanese friends here. But in the meantime, some scattered news bits from other parts of the world:

*Neil Gaiman – the author of Neverwhere, American Gods, and the comicbook series Sandman, and easily one of my favorite writers – has been working for quite some time on a non-fiction book about The Journey to the West, the classic Chinese story from which The Monkey King is particularly famous. And now, it has been announced that Gaiman is working with others on a film of The Journey to the West. It has been done before, numerous times, in both Chinese and Japanese films and TV dramas, and I don’t want to say that I definitively predict that this one will blow those all away, I trust Gaiman with this kind of project. He’s exceptionally insightful and creative in understanding the internal logic of fantasy worlds, and amazingly skilled in bringing such worlds to life; he’s profoundly respectful of other cultures and their histories, while at the same time not as invested in the project as an expression of nationalism as a Chinese or Japanese creator might be. In short, I’m very much looking forward to it.

*UNESCO has decided not to recommend the reconstruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and the Afghan government has decided to go along with that recommendation. Now, admittedly, there are some pretty good reasons for them not to be reconstructed – chiefly, the argument that the millions of dollars it would cost might be better spent on alleviating poverty or any number of other humanitarian or development sort of purposes, and the argument that reconstructions would be fake. There isn’t enough material from the originals to reconstruct them properly from the original materials, and so, really, reconstructed versions would be fakes.

Still, my knee-jerk response is to say that of course they should be reconstructed. Their destruction was a heinous act of religious intolerance, and was the destruction of astonishing sites of cultural and historical value on a global scale. Monuments that, the argument goes, belong to all humanity, not just to the Afghan gov’t to do with it as it pleases.

But, then again, if indeed logistically it is not feasible to reconstruct them, if that is indeed the case, then that has to be the result, obviously.

*The Australian reports on continuing damage and threats to major tourist sites from hoards of tourists. This is, of course, nothing new, but it continues to go on, continues to be a problem, and sites continue to struggle to find solutions. As with artworks, so with sites, and so too I am sure with other cases which don’t immediately come to mind – a balance must be struck between access and conservation. Allowing people in to historical sites such as Angkor Wat, Borobudur, and the Great Wall seems only natural; denying access to these sites because they are so important, and beautiful, and impressive, essentially defeats the purpose of conserving them, just as keeping the Mona Lisa locked away in a dark storage vault to keep it safe from light and other conservation threats completely defeats the purpose. If we’re protecting something – whether it be artwork, or a site – we are presumably protecting it for people, but, the people (or display – exposure to light, air, moisture, etc.) are themselves the threat.

Never mind the graffitti, the people climbing where they shouldn’t, those stealing bits of rock. Even those who are fully obeying the rules are causing damage, as the moisture in the air they breathe out – multiplied by multitudes of people times days, weeks, months, years – encourages the growth of mold in centuries-old cave paintings in Dunhuang. As the erosion caused by footsteps, just regular ordinary footsteps, again, multiplied by thousands or even millions of people, day after day, year after year, wears down the floors of the Great Wall, of, frankly any and every building that sees visitors. You touch the walls, and you think it’s nothing. But multiply that by however many people, touching it however many times – that’s why those bronze statues at your alma mater, you know the ones, the ones that people rub for luck on exams, are so shiny and polished only in those places. Even just the lightest touch of robes brushing up against the wall as people walk by, happening time and again, wore off the wall paintings, only below a certain height, a certain point on the wall, in a famous and majorly old and important Buddhist temple in Japan (I’m blanking on which one at the moment..), and that was a site where tourists have never been let in – the damage was done by courtiers hundreds of years ago, and other religious devotees, visiting the temple and worshipping by walking around the perimeter.

Is there a definitive answer? Perhaps. I don’t know. Perhaps not. Perhaps we just need to strike a balance, keep a close eye on the sites, or make difficult decisions. Some sites are closed off; others are replaced, essentially, by reconstructions built next door and opened to the tourists. It’s a problem that is not going away any time soon; and, hopefully, if everyone does their jobs, the sites themselves won’t be going anywhere either.

*Donny George, former director of the Iraqi National Museum, has died. He collapsed in Toronto airport, and was declared deceased shortly afterwards at the hospital; he had been in Toronto to give a lecture on Mesopotamian artifacts and efforts to combat the black market illegal trade in such objects.

Dr. George had been instrumental in recovering thousands of objects looted from the Baghdad museum in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, and was a real force for good in the museum world. His loss will surely be felt deeply.

*The Japanese contemporary art show “Bye Bye Kitty” which I have been eagerly awaiting for quite some time opens later this week at Japan Society in New York. A brief article today accompanies a slide show of installation shots and of staff working to figure out how to get Nawa Kohei’s life-size deer sculpture in the doors.

I quite like Gallery Director Joe Earle’s comments on having the show despite recent/current events. The article states: “Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami will surely hang over the exhibit that opens March 18, but Joe Earle, vice president and director of the Japan Society, noted that much of the work itself had already contemplated such destruction. After all, he said, every Japanese child, from a very young age, is trained to prepare for such disasters.”

And while I don’t like to attribute too much to Murakami Takeshi, or to talk about him too much, he often speaks/writes about his own theory of the profound importance and fundamental role that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki played – and continue to play – in shaping the collective psyche of postwar Japan. Going along with Earle’s comments, I would say that the creators of these contemporary current artworks are fully embedded in the cultural and societal issues which face Japan, including not only a culture of overworking salarymen, and extraordinary pressure placed upon high schoolers, as seen quite directly in two works from the show, but also in a society that is constantly aware of the dangers of natural disasters, and takes preparations very seriously.

*One more link for now. The New York Times has a rather interesting article today about the collection of the White House and its curator, a position started 50 years ago by Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy.

One could probably write volumes about private collections, and could take all different sides of the issue, talking about how cool it is to think of all the wonderful things that a place like the White House must have, but then also the negative side of how many similar private collections throughout the country and the world must have so many awesome artworks and other objects hidden away from public view or access.

I’m not sure I have anything really to say about it all at the moment, without getting into a pages-long stream-of-thought ramble on the subject… I shall simply say that I think it a very interesting and intriguing job to have; fun and interesting to realize that there definitely are curatorial-type jobs outside of the major museums, and just nice, and fun, to get a brief glimpse into it through this article.

That’s all for now, I suppose. Stay safe, everyone. My thoughts and prayers to those throughout Japan continuing to struggle with this crisis, and to their friends and families overseas.

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Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool

Much thanks to my good friend Kathryn, who reminded me about the exhibit Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool, which is up until Jan 2 at Asia Society (70th & Park, NYC), and who encouraged me to go.

I don’t know if this is his first solo or retrospective show, but with over 100 works from a span of more than 20 years of his career, it’s about the best showing of his oeuvre I would ever expect to see.

I have to start by admitting that I have never really cared for Yoshitomo Nara so much. He seems a bit too ubiquitous – I saw reproductions of his work at a street market in Greenwich (or was it Hereford?), England, once – and while some of his works are definitely cute, for whatever reason they just never really struck me as particularly complex, deep, or interesting.

Yet, it was *wonderful* to see his works in person; the exhibit design and installation, the space they were displayed in, combined with the experience of seeing the actual works in person, made it really a whole different experience. Once again, I regret that I was unable to take photos to share this wonderful space with you, but a brief video on the exhibition website provides something of a taste of the mood and feel of the exhibition.

The New York Times slideshow and review can help reveal more for those who are unable to make it here to New York for the exhibit.

Walking into the first room, you are confronted with white walls and bare wooden floors that look intentionally slapdash and ramshackle, like a warehouse space, or an old schoolhouse that hasn’t seen renovation in some time. Large works that would span more or less half a wall are seen only through wooden portholes in the white plaster walls. Some works, such as “I Want the Motorcycle” (above right) clearly no more than sketches in pen and colored pencil on the back of a printed page, are framed in the simplest of wooden frames, while still others – works in acrylic paints on paper such as “Midnight Vampire” (right) – are framed in elaborate frames like you see in the European paintings galleries of major museums.

White curtains separate this section from the next, soft instrumental rock music beckoning you to part the curtains and see what’s beyond.

A colorful room surrounded by white curtains, lit by light bulbs in a variety of hues covered in lampshades of the same white sheets, is filled with multi-colored circular platforms, and a small house, all together a site-specific installation created for this exhibit by the creative team “YNG”, which includes Nara. He has done things like this house before; I do not remember the when or where of that (those) previous exhibition(s), but I have seen it in art history lecture slide shows. The house, roughly, oh, I don’t know, five feet square by twelve feet tall?, is topped by a golden elephant, and filled with sketches, looking like a child’s playhouse, his own private drawing room, that is to say, room for drawing.

I was really taken in by this, and by the design and atmosphere of the whole exhibit. The space itself made just as much of an impact as the works, if not more so; had the works simply been displayed on plain white walls, as is so common in contemporary art galleries these days, it would have been a far different experience, and quite possibly a lesser one.

….

I always thought of Nara Yoshitomo as purely (or primarily) a 2D sort of guy – sketches, drawings, paintings – but apparently he has been dabbling in Shigaraki ware lately. The combination of this centuries-old mode of Japanese ceramics, steeped in tradition, with the imagery and compositions perfectly typical of Nara – e.g. a cartoonish little girl shouting obscenities – is a wonderful juxtaposition, and his large (two feet in diameter?) circular dishes are really beautiful works of ceramic in and of themselves, for their simplicity and smooth, clean, sleek look. His pots, on the other hand, didn’t really do it for me.

“Dogs from your Childhood”. Fiberglass, paint. 2000.

The exhibit spans two floors, and four galleries. Moving upstairs, a small gallery contained three large fiberglass statues in the form of cartoon dogs in Nara’s distinctive style, pure white, with red noses and green collars, facing inwards as though speaking with one another. The gallery label said that in Nara’s work, dogs and other animals represent children, specifically in their submissiveness, and in a sad way, reflecting the powerlessness of children and animals. A poem, written in pen on simple lined notebook paper, accompanies the piece. It is amazing how such a simple plain thing – little different from a sketch on a napkin – can be kept, preserved, conserved, framed and displayed in this manner as a priceless artwork, a priceless cultural product of a world-renowned artist.

It reads:

From the expanding watchtower
of my frontal lobe,
My thoughts race beyond the dream
mountains to the wide open wilderness
where a wafer moon gently melts.

In the midst of the milk white fog
a dog spins around and around.

Boarding a plane on the pier of my heart,
A transfusion line flies off,
Sightseeing its way towards that dog.

If the gathered past becomes the present,
Then perhaps the fragment of the imploding
now that is the dog, is me, is you, as well.

Yoshitomo Nara – Jan ’99

…

There Is No Place Like Home, 1984. Acrylic and crayon on paper. H. 21 1/4 x W. 28 9/16 in. (54 x 72.5 cm). Aomori Museum of Art

In the larger gallery on the third floor, arranged in plain white walls like a standard gallery, a disjunction from the environment of the first room, we are first presented with some of Nara’s earlier works, which do not yet resemble the distinctive, unique style he will later develop. They speak to me of a desire, or perhaps a felt need, a pressure, to be “artsy” for lack of a better word, to incorporate a great amount of thought and meaning, complex ideas and theoretical symbolism. His work “There is No Place Like Home” (1984; above; also, third one down on this page) is painterly, meaning the brushstrokes can be seen, can be felt, and it seems somewhat unfinished. Profound words in English emerge from a woman’s mouth, while other things happen all around her. It is busy, complicated, and dense with meaning – meaning that is completely unclear to me, the viewer.

I have rarely if ever attended a critique of the artworks of my friends in the MFA studio art program, and I do not know for sure what sort of advice or guidance they are given, but these early works of Nara’s strike me as the kind of thing one might be pressured to do in art school.

Remember Me, 2005. Acrylic on paper. H. 55 x W. 55 1/2 in. (139.7 x 141 cm). Private collection, New York.

It is ironic, therefore, I think, in a way, that he should be so successful and so popular with the far simpler, cleaner, cuter, more cartoonish works that he is indeed so popular for. In the exhibition, these early works are followed by large canvases which I have seen before as slides, but which are so much more impressive and breath-taking in person. There is something about the simple cleanliness of his solid pastel color backgrounds, and the pure size of the things, not super large, but a good four and half feet square, that I don’t quite have a word for, but which makes me just really enjoy and appreciate them. He incorporates actual sparkles as well, for the night sky in “Remember Me” (2005; above; also, second from the bottom on this page), and what is most intriguing and striking for me, the incredible use of color in his figures’ eyes. Up close, you can see that it’s just a little bit of pink and a little green, a dash of orange and a dollop of blue, but step back and I swear it’s like you can see the whole universe in her eyes.

The same goes for his works entitled “Gone with the Cloud” (2004) and “The Little Star Dweller” (2006) – these are the portraits for which he is most famous. The figure in a work titled “MJ” (2009) has his (her?) long, flowing, messy-looking hair covering one eye; s/he seems pensive, sad, emo, as though disturbed or upset or depressed. The labels say it is perhaps a portrait of Michael Jackson. This is certainly a possibility, but I sort of sense not.

Untitled (Nobody’s Fool), 1998. Watercolor on paper. H. 13 3/4 x W. 10 1/8 in. (34.9 x 25.7 cm).

The titular piece of the exhibition, “Nobody’s Fool” (1998), is easily among my favorites. It is quite clearly painted over an ukiyo-e bijinga print by Utamaro, whose signature is still quite visible on the right side, right under the hair pins. The black oiled coif and golden hairpins of Utamaro’s courtesan are likewise perfectly visible in the top half of the composition, though Nara has painted over the bottom half, appropriating the hairdo, and the format or genre of bijinga (images of beautiful women) to portray his angry young girl, who displays a scroll reading “(You’re) Nobody’s Fool.”

The exhibit goes on to describe an aesthetic dubbed “kowa kawaii,” or “creepy cute,” a term which I had never heard before, but which describes the feeling of many of Nara’s works quite well. Putting aside the deep-colored portraits, focusing on pieces like this one in which cute young girls wield knives, smoke cigarettes, and shout obscenities, there is a definite sense of the clash between innocence, and a very tough, self-assured, rebellious streak which is aggressive and thus off-putting. These are not girls you “gaze” at, like so many in the history of art, but rather those who gaze back accusatively, like Manet’s “Olympia,” refusing to be passive as the viewer, the voyeur, admires them.

Some of Nara’s pieces, such as “No Hopeless” (second from the bottom on this page), feature real bandages taped onto the canvas. The exhibit text speaks of this as a sign of violence, tying it into the knives and cigarettes, and thematically that is all well and good, though it does fail to acknowledge the fact, well-acknowledged in scholarship, that Nara does this when the eye underneath does not come out the way he likes. He is, in fact, an artist who very frequently paints over or throws out works he doesn’t like, as I would imagine many artists are…

The final section of the exhibit, entitled “Doors and “Untitled (formerly Home)”, an obvious reference to the band The Doors, Nara being a big fan of American classic rock, returns us to the feeling of that installation, liminal space environment of the first room, and to the theme or motif of the house, from the second room.

Doors, each in a different color, lead to small rooms in matching colors, each of which holds one or two artworks. The floors are bare, slapdash wood, and many of the works are on corrugated cardboard. The works are not left to attempt to speak for themselves, but are enveloped in an aesthetic environment which contributes to their reception and appreciation. Photos and video of girls who look eerily like Nara’s stylized depictions occupy other rooms.

It was sad to leave that space. Far from merely a display of 2D artworks in a sterile, elite, gallery environment, this was, as Kathryn said it would be, an experience. A departure from the real world, and the just-above-freezing temperatures of the New York City streets, and an entry into the world of Yoshitomo Nara. This, to my mind, is what more art exhibits need to be like. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s so important for properly experiencing the atmosphere, the aesthetic, the time and place and mindset of the art.

I eagerly look forward to seeing such a transformation of an exhibition space in Honolulu – though I am not holding my breath.

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Upcoming: Clifton Karhu Talks in Boston

I believe I have posted about Clifton Karhu before. Originally from Minnesota, Karhu moved to Japan later in life, taking up residence in Kyoto and in Kanazawa, and became an accomplished printer, producing prints with a distinctive contemporary style, but of traditional subjects, and, an especial rarity these days, carved in the traditional manner.

Karhu passed away a few years ago, but Norman Tolman continues to sell his prints, to hold shows of his works, and to donate prints as well to prominent museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

When I first was introduced to Mr. Karhu’s work by Mr. Tolman, at his gallery just outside Shiba Daimon, I was stunned not only by the images themselves, but by the whole story and personality behind them. It is inspiring to think that a foreigner could become so involved – and well respected, so far as I know – in traditional arts, or, that is, contemporary arts closed related to traditional arts, and could be so successful at living in Japan. I of course wish the same for myself; how wonderful it would be to live in a place like Kyoto or Kanazawa, and to be accepted as a respected member of the local community and the arts community.

Since Mr. Karhu’s death, of course, his works have risen in price as the supply shrinks. They are truly compelling works, speaking volumes about the importance of traditional arts and culture, traditional environments and atmosphere created (maintained) through the maintenance and appreciation of traditional architecture, etc.

I regret that I cannot be there myself, but Mr. Tolman will be giving a talk at Showa Boston Institute, 420 Pond Street, in Boston, on December 7th, from 5-8pm. [Do you suppose he picked Pearl Harbor Day by coincidence?] The talk will focus mainly on the work of Toko Shinoda, and sadly it does not appear that Showa Boston is at all easily accessible via the T, but I am told that the Museum of Fine Arts will be displaying many of Karhu’s prints at some point around this time as well.

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