Postwar Japanese Art

In the years following World War II, Japan struggled to rebuild and come to terms with the devastation left behind in the wake of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Confronted with unprecedented circumstances, a new generation of young Japanese artists searched for effective ways to express themselves through new artistic strategies and media, giving rise to avant-garde movements that would have profound impacts on the postwar Japanese and international art scenes.

In 1954, Jiro Yoshihara started the seminal avant-garde Gutai group, which included Shozo Shimamoto, Norio Imai, Akira Kanayama, Takesada Matsutani, Sadamasa Motonaga, Shuji Mukai, Saburo Murakami, Kazuo Shiraga, Yasuo Sumi, Atsuko Tanaka and Tsuruko Yamazaki. The group's 1956 manifesto expresses the need to find beauty in damage or decay, while vehemently protesting against traditional Japanese society and its arts. Their largely performance-based work was denounced by Japanese critics, who dismissed the Gutai artists as "spectacle makers." But the group received support from European and American critics, including Michel Tapié, who curated the first Gutai show in the U.S. in 1958, and influenced such international avant-garde movements as Abstract Expressionism, Arte Povera, Art Informel and Fluxus.

Renewed interest in postwar Japanese art is evident in recent and forthcoming exhibitions: "Shinohara Pops! The Avant-Garde Road, Tokyo/New York" held at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, State University of New York, New Paltz (see Worldwide 34838), and "Tokyo, 1955-1970," held at the Museum of Modern Art (see Worldwide 34935), which also published a reader titled From Postwar to Postmodern, Art in Japan, 1945-1989 (Worldwide 77095) as part of its Primary Sources series, presenting more than 120 newly translated primary source documents and original essays providing a broader cultural context of postwar Japan.

Triennial/Biennial

Asia Pacific Triennial

 

From December 8, 2012, to April 14, 2013, Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art will host the 7th edition of the Asia Pacific Triennial. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, this triennale will feature works by more than 75 established and emerging artists and artist groups from the Pacific Region, highlighting art from West Asia, work by young Indonesian and Vietnamese artists, new

work from a group of seven Australian artists, and contemporary art from Papua New Guinea.  

The catalogue (Worldwide 34919; see also the fact sheet here) has just been released by the Queensland Art Gallery, and Worldwide is about to place a bulk order; the estimated list price is $75.00. Customers interested in acquiring this title through Worldwide Books are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible so that we can be sure to order a sufficient quantity to accommodate all firm orders; approval-plan customers who wish to confirm that the title is scheduled to be included in an upcoming shipment, or who wish to add it to their plan, should contact David Fogel. 

 

 

Manifesta

 

Titled "The Deep of the Modern," the recently concluded 9th edition of Manifesta, the European biennial of contemporary art, took place this summer at the former Waterschei coal mine in Genk, Belgium (see Worldwide 34874). The wide-ranging event consisted of three components: a display of works by 39 artists responding to the worldwide "economic restructuring" of the early 21st century; an art historical exhibition featuring works from 1800 to the present day, illustrating how coal affected artistic production in the industrial era; and a multidisciplinary collaboration between institutions and individuals whose mission is to preserve the heritage of coal mining.

Biennale of Sydney

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the world, curators Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster organized the 18th Biennale of Sydney (see Worldwide 34740). Rather than imposing a specific theme on the participating artists, the curators adopted a concept based on "inclusionary practices of generative thinking," allowing artists to freely draw inspiration from each other, the location, and the visitors to the exhibition -- ultimately creating a gesamtkunstwerk that reveals an organically grown theme.

Current Exhibitions

Sculpture

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing "Bernini: Sculpting in Clay" (Worldwide 34812), which features clay models created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini as sketches for his larger marble and bronze sculptures. The exhibition will later be on view at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

More than 60 of Rodin's marble statues, many of them from private collections, are on view at the Musée Rodin in Paris. Like many of his contemporaries, Auguste Rodin created the models for his work, then outsourced the rough carving before applying the finishing touches himself. The exhibition catalogue (Worldwide 34832) examines this collaborative process, and Rodin's genius for transforming cold, hard marble into a masterfully warm evocation of human flesh.

Othoniel (Worldwide 34704) is the first monograph in English devoted to contemporary French sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel. It documents in full color a mid-career retrospective titled "My Way," featuring 24 previously unexhibited works that trace the evolution of the artist's oeuvre, which is characterized by the use of such unconventional materials as sulphur, wax and phosphorus. After an extensive tour that took the exhibition from Paris to Seoul, Tokyo and Macao, it is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum until early December.

Women Artists

After an initial presentation at the Whitechapel Gallery, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen now hosts a major survey of the work of British artist Gillian Wearing, from her early iconic photographs of people holding up signs inscribed with personal confessions, to her most recent video, "Bully." The exhibition will travel to the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in the spring of 2013 and is extensively documented in the accompanying catalogue (Worldwide 34825).

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents a major retrospective devoted to acclaimed African American artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems. Through her photographs, installations and videos, all featured in the exhibition catalogue (Worldwide 34886), the show surveys Weems's thirty-year career as an artist and social activist, addressing issues of race, gender and class. This exhibition will tour nationally in 2013 and 2014, traveling to Portland, Cleveland, Stanford and New York.

The work of Terry Evans, a photographer widely known for her sensitive portrayal of the Midwest prairie and its inhabitants, is the subject of an exhibition organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that featured images drawn mostly from the Museum's own collection. The accompanying catalogue (Worldwide 34878) documents various thematic series that the artist has produced since the 1970s, including photographs of natural and industrial landscapes from Texas to Canada, many taken from the air, as well as of portraits of local residents, and images of botanical and natural-history specimens.

• Transcending Nature: Paintings by Eric Aho (Worldwide 76991): In a recent exhibition, the Currier Museum of Art presented Eric Aho's increasingly abstract landscape paintings of the past ten years.
• Beauty beyond Nature: The Glass Art of Paul Stankard (Worldwide 34835): With consummate skill, Stankard captures the delicate detail of flowers and insects in his intricately wrought glass sculptures, which were presented in an exhibition at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.
• Doug Beube: Breaking the Codex (Worldwide 152375): While the printed book is being  challenged by its electronic counterpart, self-proclaimed "biblioclast" Beube redefines the book as object in his sculptures and mixed media works, reshaping each book into a reflection of its contents.
• North by New York: New Nordic Art (Worldwide 76988): A survey of contemporary Scandinavian art by emerging and mid-career Nordic artists working in a wide range of media, held at the Scandinavia House in New York.
• Frans Wildenhain, 1950-1975: Creative and Commercial American Ceramics at Mid-Century (Worldwide 34806): Published by the Rochester Institute of Technology to accompany an exhibition of the same name, this catalogue highlights Frans Wildenhain's role in studio ceramics, university education in crafts, and merchandising.
• Decade: Contemporary Collecting 2002-2012 (Worldwide 34883): Highlighting the continuing growth of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, this massive exhibition catalogue presents a thematic selection of acquisitions made by the Gallery over the past decade, including works by Matthew Barney, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, Sol LeWitt and dozens of other important contemporary artists.