adrian's blog

Ryu Itadani and I share a fascination for the City; for the buildings and skyline of Tokyo, old and new. This also explains a lot of the deceptively simple attraction of his colourful urban art: it captures a certain vision of the city. We have just been eating some cheap yakitori over a couple of beers in an underground dining bar in Shibuya full of unhealthy looking, tired but happy salary men. “I see the lines, then I see the colours,” he says, as we step outside , pointing to an unremarkable glass, steel and plastic Shibuya building, which turns out to be a completely surreal construction when you look at it closely. This is a quote he often uses to summarise his art. It’s why architects and designers appreciate his work so much. Some of his biggest successes have been commissions for urban development firms. He did a magical large scale “cartoon” version of Omotesando Hills, that decorated and improved Tadao Ando’s controversial building in 2007, and has done similar work for Sanrio and J-Wave that play with the icons of an idealised Asian skyline.


Shinjuku Park Tower2008 (acrylic and ink on canvas)

He is worried I won’t find this great, albeit grimy, underground place again, but I say I will. I collect places like this too. I met Itadani first in fact after turning up at the artist’s show in the basement of Omotesando Hills during that 2007 commercial breakthrough. He had just started being represented by the Marunouchi Gallery, who have developed a steady fine art profile for the artist. Itadani’s does large scale works that are drawn, then scanned and coloured online. Although difficult to sell to purists, over time his work has found its place in the growing global practice of technologically enhanced crossover design/art. If it’s not buildings, it’s landscapes, or sometimes flowers and vegetation. More recently, he has been experimenting with painting objects in acrylic on little canvas squares – favourite things from a global lifestyle, like Walkers’ Cheese and Onion crisps, Hellman’s mayonaise, or Hoegaarden witbier – a collection of warmly appreciated, random modern acts of consumption from his time abroad.


Things that I like that I hope you like too 2007 (ink jet print)

Itadani’s career is emblematic of the dynamics of Japan’s new generation of returnee artists. He grew up partly in Canada, in a family connected by work to IBM, then moved to start studying art in England, after studying economics at university in Tokyo. His destination was the famous St. Martin’s College in London. “I was impressed how they took you seriously. They’d look seriously at your portfolio, not like at a Japanese art college”. At St.Martin’s Itadani had the freedom to experiment with all kinds of media and methods, only to return to the technique of drawing and colouring he was doing before he went there. In a sense he also became an artist in London, honing skills and a craftman’s professionalism, while a lot of the students around him would rely only on ideas and concepts. “They’d arrive for supervision with just a crumpled piece of paper and an idea. They’d then talk about the work so impressively. But I was embarrassed to do it that way”.

Despite staying 4 years in London, he felt it was important to return to Japan, to connect again culturally with the place. A partial outsider, he also has a certain particular vision of the place, that helps his work combine global and Japanese influences. He cites the key turning point in his technique as when he started working with an Apple Mac – about the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1998, 1999, when Macs became cheaper and easier to use. In a way, the resultant style he has developed combines the pop charm of so much Japanese graphic work, with a certain traditional elegance – that fits the Marunouchi Gallery well. His dealer, Yukihiro Hoshi – who has a background more in modern art, such as Giacometti – has been hugely supportive. He wants the gallery to grow with the artists, and has concentrated for a long time on only a small number of young, highly talented artists from diverse backgrounds. Itadani has travelled with him to major European shows, and gets support for his studio and design operations. It’s a typical Japanese trust based relationship that has seen his prices rise steadily, with prints selling for above Y200,000 each. They are now currently planning the show for the upcoming Tokyo Art Fair in early April.

While it is difficult to make a full living out of art sales only, Itadani has a steady line of commercial design-related commissions that also give his work distinctive visibility. It is all a one-man operation, but similar in some ways to successful groups like Groovisions and Enlightenment, who also cross the art/design line. As well as the work for major corporations, he has done book covers, illustrations for magazines, even special branding designs for snack foods. A series of works were also commissioned for buses in Miyazaki City in Kyushu. He has an uncomplicated attitude about doing this commercial work. It pays for the rest, he says, and it’s all part of the practice. The only drawback is that, in Japan, unlike in countries where everything is a lot cleaner and contract based, it can sometimes be difficult getting paid. The professionalism shows. When I visit his small studio in a one person apartment in Yoyogi Uehara, it is incredibly tidy and organised – a designer’s space, with numerous projects on the go.



Perhaps my favourite work of all is his wonderful rendering of Arakawa’s To-Den tram (top above). The romance of the shitamachi coming alive in vivid multicolour. Itadani, like me, also just loves being in the City. When we’ve met to catch up, and hear about new developments in his part of the Tokyo art and design scene, it is always in some great hidden izakaya or dining spot. How else can someone like me ever get to know about the joys of Hoppy Beer, or how and when to order Shochu, or how good and cheap Tokyo food can get? I might draw the line at another favourite, though – Yoshinoya – for which the late night working Itadani admits to having “an addiction”. Usually we meet late in the evening, it’s my final stop of the day. For Itadani, he hasn’t been up many hours and there’s a long night of intense work ahead. He unlocks and unfolds his portable bike, and heads off back to the studio.

More info:
http://www.ryuitadani.com



ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

From March, I am very happy to be able to publish here in ART-iT some of my past blogs in new translated versions. I will select and re-present some of the most interesting topics from the last year in bi-lingual versions. This month, I will also start publishing extracts with translations of the “shinsho” style book I am writing about Japanese contemporary art and society since the 1990s. Watch this space!

3月より、私の選りすぐりの過去のブログ記事をここART-iTで日本語で紹介することになりました。去年のブログから、私が厳選し面白いと思うトピックスを日・英、両言語で発表します。また、今月は「1990年代からの日本の現代美術と社会」について私が書いている「新書」スタイルの本からも抜粋した箇所を日本語で発表していきますので、乞うご期待！

To get this started, I am here re-publishing in Japanese a blog about one of my favourite days from 2009: the interview I made in LA with the artist Yutaka Sone and his wife, the art-writer, Min Nishihara, about the golden years of Japanese contemporary pop art in the early 1990s (originally published on 2009-12-22). Please enjoy!

今回始めるにあたって第一回目は、2009年の私のよき日々について書いたブログです。アーティスト、曽根裕とアートライターの妻、西原みんのロサンゼルスでのインタビューをベースにした、「1990年代初期の日本の現代ポップアートの黄金期」（初出2009年12月22日）についてです。どうぞお楽しみください。


Yutaka Sone & Min Nishihara: LA Story

曽根裕と西原みん：ロサンゼルス物語

People who don’t live in LA don’t get it usually. If you arrive with ideas of the city based on New York, or Paris, or Tokyo, or even San Francisco, it is easy to be confused and disappointed. There’s no centre, there’s no single LA, and there’s no tidy tourist package trip to take it all in. One Japanese artist in fact who has captured it – the glory of LA – in white marble set in lush greenery – is Yutaka Sone (see image above, of 10/405, and below installed at MOCA LA, of 10/110 – the numbers, of course, are the freeway intersections). He lives and works in LA, with his wife Min Nishihara, a writer, who is a bit of a legend from the golden years of Tokyo pop art in the early 1990s. It’s a sunny day and I’m on way to their cute little 1920s bungalow in South Pasadena to interview her.

ロスに住んでいない者にはわからないだろう。ニューヨーク、パリ、東京、あるいはサンフランシスコといった都市を期待してロスにやってくると、驚いてがっかりするかもしれないことを。街の中心部や、ここがロスといえる場所、またパッケージ旅行として、名所全てをうまく組み込むことが出来ないのだ。日本人アーティストの曽根裕は、青々とした緑の中に設置された白大理石のセットでロスの栄光ともいえるそれをうまく表現している（画像参照。上は10/405で、下はMOCA LAに展示された10/100。番号はもちろん高速道路の号線名）。曽根は、妻の西原みん（彼女は文筆家で90年代初期に東京ポップアート全盛期のちょっとした伝説だった）と共にロサンゼルスに住み、活動の拠点としている。それはある晴れた日のこと、私は西原をインタビューするために、South Pasadenaにある彼らの小さくて可愛い1920年代のバンガローに向かっていた。


My old house in LA, no longer there
昔住んでいたLAの家。今はもうない。

As I pull up in my rented car, I’m thinking: I used to live in a street like this. Friendly little houses, desert trees, a little scruffy and socially mixed up. LA at its suburban/urban best. Min Nishihara is waiting at the door, smiling, and she shows me in. The house is all creative chaos: there are their two teenage boys playing furiously on a video game, a little dog, at least three cats; toy collectibles, books, bits and pieces everywhere; old wooden floors and little painted rooms. Nishihara is in her mid 40s, but still dresses a bit like a Harajuku teenager. I love her gothic skull handbag! I’m taken out back to the garage, which is Sone’s studio. He’s at work on another big floral sculpture that will be produced in marble in China soon. He tells me a story about how a local authority first wanted it, then didn’t want it. There’s one of his monster street plants just round the corner in Pasadena.

レンタカーを停めながら、物思いにふけっていた。ここは私が昔住んでいた通りと似ている。親しみのある小さな家、まばらに生い茂った木、そして少し寂びれた感じで貧富の差や人種が入り混じって住んでいる通り。都会で田舎、ロスの一番の魅力だ。戸口で笑みを浮かべながら待っていた西原みんは、私を中に招き入れてくれた。家の中は創造性あふれるカオスだった。テレビゲームに夢中になっている10代の２人の息子達、小さな犬と少なくとも3匹の猫、コレクターズ向けのおもちゃ、書籍、そこらじゅうに散らばるこまごまとした物、古い木製の床、そして塗装された小さな部屋が目に飛び込んできた。40代半ばの西原は、原宿にいるティーンエイジャーのような格好をしていた。彼女のゴシックな頭蓋骨のハンドバックがかっこよかった！私は曽根のスタジオになっている外のガレージに案内してもらった。曽根は間もなく中国で制作される、大理石を使った大きな花の彫刻に取りかかっていた。彼は、ロスの自治体が最初にそれを欲しがっていたのだが、後から拒否された話をしてくれた。Pasadena通りの角に彼の巨大な植物の作品の１つがある。

Sone is a whirlwind of likeable, fidgety energy. A big grin and long black hair in a pony tail, he looks today like a native American, but you can still imagine him cross-dressing in Chanel; a huge personality. We immediately start trading Tokyo art world anecdotes. But I’m here to talk with Nishihara, so we head out to a local coffee shop. I want to hear about the late 1980s and early 1990s in Tokyo, student days and Omori nights. So many people – and especially Paul Schimmel who put me in touch – have identified Nishihara as a key – perhaps the key – intellectual figure in the coming together of the golden period of Japanese contemporary art. This was the early 1990s, and it is still playing out – nearly twenty years later – on the walls of prestigious western art institutions, such as the Tate Modern, or in the showrooms of Sothebys.

曽根裕は、好感がもてる人柄でエネルギーに満ち溢れている。大きな笑顔にポニーテールにした長い黒髪、今日はインディアンのようにも見えるけどシャネルで女装した姿も容易に想像できる、とにかくおもしろい個性の持ち主なのだ。私達はすぐに東京のアート界の裏話をし始めた。だが、今日は、西原と話すためにここにきたのだった。ということで、私は西原と近所の喫茶店に行く事にした。私は80年代後期から90年代初期にかけての東京での学生時代や大森の夜の話を聞きたかったのだ。今回、私に西原を紹介してくれたポール・シーメルを筆頭に多くの人が、西原は日本の現代美術の黄金期の到来を共にした知識人であり、キーパーソンの一人であると認識している。もしかすると西原こそが唯一のキーパーソンかもしれない。90年代初期に訪れたこの黄金期は、約20年経った現在もテート・モダンの壁や、サザビーズのショールームといった、有名な西洋の美術施設に残っている。

Noi Sawaragi and Midori Matsui – who came onto the scene later – tend to monopolise the art historical word regarding what happened this period. But Min Nishihara, a writer close to all the neo-pop gang, was perhaps as responsible as anyone for the cocktail of big ideas about pop, Japan, nationalism, sexuality, and Tokyo, that were eventually packaged as Superflat and Little Boy, touring the world for Westerners hoping to get a taste of “neo-Tokyo”. Now she is bringing up a family, writing still, but not about art, living a quiet life in LA. A long way from Tokyo.

後に登場する椹木野衣や松井みどりも、この期間に起こった事柄に関するアートの歴史的な話に終始する傾向がある。しかし、全てのネオポップアーティスト達の近くにいた文筆家の西原みんも、おそらくポップ、日本、国家主義、セクシュアリティー、そして東京といった大きな思想が混在するカクテルが生まれた背後にいただろう。そしてそれは、後に「スーパーフラット」や「リトルボーイ」といったパッケージになり、「ネオ東京」に期待する西欧人向けの世界ツアーが行われたのだ。現在西原は、アートに関してではないが文筆業を続け、東京から遠く離れたロスで静かに暮らしながら、家庭を守っている。

They were the class of 1986 at Geidai. Takashi Murakami, Min Nishihara, Tomio Koyama, Yuko Hasegawa, Masato Nakamura, among others. Ambitious students all, looking for a concept, a set of ideas, a strategy for Japanese art, although feeling “void”. “When we met, we spent six months together, driving everywhere, going to openings, talking about plans, strategies, everything”. Art then in Japan, as elsewhere, was mostly P.C., political in a boring way. They were “political, sure” but “we didn’t really have anything to protest at” – except the residual resentment of American domination. They loved Jeff Koons, the empty but impeccable production values of postmodern art. Other Japanese artists such as Morimura, Miyajima, making their breakthrough internationally at the time, somehow didn’t have a concept in comparison – a typical “Japanese” problem in art. They were inspired by some artists, though, a little ahead of them. Taro Chiezo had already shown the way to make New York contacts and sell Japanese pop art. Noburu Tsubaki and Kodai Nakahara were developing great ideas. There was competition from Osaka: Kenji Yanobe. Murakami, still on a political path, had not yet had the cold water bath of New York as a struggling artist, where Nishihara visited him in 1994, He was still working out his new pop vision. Before New York, he rejected the idea of using “otaku” ideas to brand his products.

1986年、彼らは東京芸大の学生だった。村上隆、西原みん、小山登美夫、長谷川祐子、中村政人などを含む人達だ。野心的な学生達は皆、概念、思想、日本の芸術のための戦略などを探し求めたが「空虚」を感じていた。
「私達が集まった時、6ヶ月間を共にして、あちこちをドライブしたり、オープニングに行ったり、プランや戦略など、とにかく色んな事を話し合っていました。」
日本のその当時のアートは、他の国と同じように、たいていがP.C.　（政治的に正しい表現）であり、それはつまらない感じの「政治的」だった。彼らは「政治的」ではあったのだが、残留するアメリカ支配に対する不満以外に
「抗議する対象がなかったのです。」
彼らは、ポストモダンアートの空虚だが完璧な生産体系を創り出した、ジェフ・クーンズを敬愛した。その他の森村泰昌や宮島達男といった、当時国際舞台に踊り出た日本の芸術家達は、どういうわけか比較できるようなコンセプトをもっていなかった。これは、アートの典型的な「日本の」問題だった。彼らは、彼らより少し前のアーティスト達に影響されていたのである。太郎千恵蔵は、既にニューヨークでのコンタクト先を確保し、日本のポップアートを販売する方法を見出していた。椿昇と中原浩大は、素晴らしい構想を練っていた。ヤノベケンジという大阪からの競争相手もいた。村上隆は、社会批判性の高いアートに従事し、彼のニューポップ構想を作り上げていた。この時は、未だ低迷時代のアーティストとしてニューヨークでの苦境を味わっていなかった（西原は1994年に彼を訪ねている）。ニューヨークに行く前の村上は、「おたく」を彼の作品と結びつけるというアイデアを拒否していたのだ。

Nishihara spent all her time writing. It was the golden age of Japanese magazines. She wrote manifestos for art, reviews, feature articles, projects for artworks. With Yuko Hasegawa and Tatsuo Miyajima, she wrote for the important Atelier magazine. Unlike the boys – who were from Tokyo, but suburban – she came from the shitamachi: Sumida-ku. Her family was steeped in the old urban culture of Tokyo, but she had grown up through the endless transformations of the new city too. She travelled all over, writing about art. She went to the breakthrough Venice Biennale of 1988, witnessed the moment that the world awoke to Japanese contemporary art. She saw Documenta 8. For 3-4 years the gang were preparing their first shows. Tsuyoshi Ozawa and Makoto Aida appeared on the scene, a little younger, but live wires too, full of their own ideas. With Nakamura, Ozawa planned the Gimburart interventions that hailed back to the Hi-Red Center avant garde group of the 1960s. At Gimburart, Nishihara herself was a participating artist, writing poetry on the Ginza streets, running off with them when the police showed to break it up. Murakami was less interested in the Japanese contemporary/avant guard tradition. He was looking for something else. But they all went to Korea in 1992, and Nakamura married a Korean woman who was a close friend of Nishihara’s.

西原は暇があれば書き続けていた。当時の日本は、雑誌の黄金期であった。彼女は、アートのマニフェスト、批評、特集記事、そしてアート作品のためのプロジェクトなどを書いていた。長谷川祐子や宮島達男と一緒に、雑誌『アトリエ』に寄稿もした。東京の郊外出身の男性群と違い、彼女は下町である墨田区出身である。彼女の家族は、東京の古い下町文化に染まっていたのだが、彼女は限りなく変化を続ける新しい都市で育った。西原は、あちこちを旅し、アートについて書いた。1988年、彼女は画期的だったヴェネチア・ビエンナーレを訪れ、世界が日本の現代美術に眼を向けた瞬間に立ち合った。また、ドクメンタ８も見にいった。３，４年間にわたって、彼らグループは最初のショーの準備をしていた。この頃に小沢剛と会田誠が、現れた。少し若い彼らは、独自のアイデアにあふれていた。中村と小沢は、60年代の前衛芸術グループである、ハイレッド・センターを彷彿させるかのようなザ・ギンブラートを計画したりした。ザ・ギンブラートでは、西原自身が参加アーティストで、銀座の路上に詩を書き、巡察に来た警察から逃げ回ったりした。村上は、日本の50、60年代や前衛芸術の伝統にはあまり興味を示さなかった。彼は、何か別のものを求めていたのだ。1992年、彼らは皆韓国へ行き、中村は西原の友人の韓国人女性と結婚した。

Murakami and Nishihara travelled a lot together. They went to Documenta 9 in 1992 and rated everything with a scorecard. They wanted to make their own art magazine, which was to be called Art Sex, at Murakami’s insistence. This was later to morph in to the famous, if short lived, Radium Egg magazine that was to come out of the Roentgen Institute with the new artists on its pages, and the ideas of Sawaragi, Hasegawa – and Nishihara – to the fore. They were always looking for spaces to show, always optimistic, but still feeling the “void” of being young and Japanese in the sudden post-bubble moment of the early 1990s. Locked out of the conventional cash-for-space galleries of Ginza, there was the performances at the P-House in Ebisu, one of those infamous “underworld” style locations that are such a feature of Japanese art galleries. Sawaragi, was also around all the time, as well as Tsutomu Ikeuchi, the son of a Ginza art dealer. They helped persuade Ikeuchi to open the Roentgen space in Omori.

村上隆と西原みんは、よく一緒に旅をした。1992年、彼らはドクメンタ９を訪れ、スコアカードを使って全てに評価をつけていた。彼らは、自分達の美術雑誌を作ろうとしており、村上はそのタイトルを『アートセックス』にするように主張していた。これが後に、かの有名な『RADIUM EGG』となった。短期的ではあったが、レントゲン藝術研究所から出た新鋭アーティストの特集や、椹木、長谷川、そして西原のアイデアを前面にだした雑誌である。いつも楽観的だった彼らは、常に展覧会のスペースを探し、90年代初期の突然のポストバブルの時期に、若い日本人であることに対して「空虚」も感じていたのだ。従来の銀座の貸し画廊から締め出された、悪名高い恵比寿のP-House（「暗黒街」スタイルの場所の象徴的な画廊の１つ）でパフォーマンスが行われたりした。椹木野衣や銀座の古美術商の息子である池内務は、いつも身近にいたのだ。彼らは大森にレントゲンスペースをオープンするように池内を説得した。

Even more important perhaps was the fact they were the first generation to talk directly to international art figures. Before this role had been monopolised by “middle men” such as Fumio Nanjo. Tomio Koyama was ambitious and active at getting out and meeting directly other international gallerists. She recalls talking with Jay Jopling – Mr.White Cube and Damian Hirst’s other half – at the 1992 NICAF art fair, that had been organised by the other maverick art dealer on the scene Masami Shiraishi. No, she didn’t think that the young Japanese artists knew already about the “Freeze” scene among Goldsmiths students in the late 1980s. But there was an uncanny family resemblance with the YBAs, and Jopling immediately recognised the parallel.

おそらく、更に重要なのは、彼らが国際的な美術界の人物達と直接話をした最初の世代であったという事実だ。以前なら、南條史生といった「仲介人」が、この役を独り占めしていたのだ。小山登美夫は、直接他の国際的なギャラリスト達と交流するのに野心的かつ行動的だった。西原みんは、ジェイ・ジョプリング（White Cubeのオーナーであり、ダミアン・ハーストの相棒）と話した時のことを語ってくれた。それは、1992年に別の一匹狼的アートディーラーである白石正美が総合プロデュースしたNICAF のアートフェアであった。西原は、80年代後半に若い日本人アーティストが、ゴールドスミスの大学生達と同じように「Freeze」のシーンについて知っているとは思わなかった。しかし、そこにはYBA達との不気味なほどの類似点がみられ、ジョプリングはすぐに共通点を認識した。

It’s all a long time ago. But you can feel the excitement of this old story. She split from Murakami, and after surviving New York in 1994, he went on to fulfil his wildest ambitions, with D.O.B and all that. Yuko Hasegawa became the most important museum curator in Japan. Tomio Koyama the most important gallerist. Masato Nakamura one of the most influential art educationalists. All are huge names in the post-bubble art history of Japan, and still today. “For awhile the group was a tight fit. But we all went our separate ways”. Min Nishihara left it behind.

それは全て遠い昔のことだった。でも、この昔話に興奮を覚えるだろう。西原と別れた村上は、その後1994年のニューヨークでの苦境を乗り越え、彼の野心をDOB君やその他で全うした。長谷川祐子は、日本で最も重要な美術館のキュレーターとなり、小山登美夫は、最も重要なギャラリストとなった。そして中村政人は、最も影響力のある美術教育者の一人となった。彼らは皆、日本のポストバブル期の美術史の中に名を馳せ、今現在でも活躍している。
「しばらくの間は、私達のグループは結束力が強かったんです。でも皆別々の道を進んだんです。」
そして、西原みんはそれを後にしてきた。

Sone and Nishihara moved to LA in 1999. Their boys had been born in Japan, and Sone was head hunted by Paul Schimmel to work in the famous UCLA art department. They settled down, and Sone in particular had a moment at the turn of century when his huge, immaculate yet playful sculptures were everywhere.

1999年、曽根裕と西原みんは日本で生まれた息子達と共にロスに引っ越してきた。曽根はポール・シーメルに、有名なUCLAの美術部門で働くようヘッドハントされたのだ。彼らはロスに落ち着き、特に曽根は彼の巨大で無垢な、だが遊び心のある彫刻が、世紀末にあちこちで見られるくらい成功したのである。

Why is she not more involved now? “I have been disappointed with so many younger artists”, she says. Murakami and her generation showed that you could make the art world for yourselves, even when everything else was blocking them. “We had our own way. We showed you could create a system, make money from art, from curating, or writing”. It was a also golden age for a good reason: it was a thoroughly social phenomenon. They were a group of brilliant individuals, who gelled as a group, and created a new pop phenomenon. Sociologists know a lot more about “creativity” in this sense that art curators writing in catalogues sometimes do. It doesn’t happen alone, and it doesn’t happen because of “genius”.

何故、彼女は現在のアート界にもっと関与していないのだろうか。
「私は、何人もの若手アーティスト達に失望させられたんです。」
彼女は言った。村上と彼女の世代は、どれほど困難であっても自分自身のアートの世界を作り出せることを証明した。
「私達は、自分達のやり方があったんです。私達はシステムを作り、アート、キュレーター、執筆業でお金を稼ぐことが出来ると指し示しました。」
それは、正当な理由での黄金期だったのだ。そして、完全なる社会現象だった。彼らは、個々が素晴らしい才能を持った結束力のあるグループであり、新たなポップ現象を創り出したのだ。社会学者は「創造性」については、時にキュレーターがカタログに書くもの以上によく知っている。それは、それだけで起こるのではなく、また「天才」がいるから起こるのではない。

I’ve just read a classic of the naïve curatorial genre, by Alison Gingeras – about Murakami at the current Pop Life show at Tate Modern in London. It is a hagiography of his one man global genius. She quotes Roland Barthes writings on Japan profusely, forgetting that he also wrote books about “the death of the author”. There is no social history here, no art world background; no sense of the social environment that Murakami grew up in as an artist, the social networks and interactions out of which he came. The argument is further compromised by its lack of any critical distance. Gingeras, in fact, as director of the Pinault collection, is in charge of managing the same high priced acquisitions that she is writing about as a curator – including the possibly foolish $15 million that Pinault splashed in 2008 on My Lonesome Cowboy. Yet Min Nishihara’s story reminds us that “it took a village” – an art school, in fact, a whole group of artists, writers, friends, hangers on – to make one “Superflat”.

私は、丁度アリソン・ジンジェラス著の典型的なナイーブでキュレータースタイルの本を読んだばかりだ。それはロンドンのテートモダンで行われた村上隆の「ポップ・ライフ」ショーについて書かれていて、彼の国際的な天才聖人伝記的なものだった。彼女は、日本について書く時、ロラン・バルトをやたらと引用していたが、バルトが『作者の死』という本を書いたことは、頭から抜けていたようだ。彼女の本には、社会的な歴史や、アート界の背景がなく、また、村上がアーティストとして成長してきた社会環境や彼自身の社会ネットワークとその相互関与も記述されていない。彼女の論点は、客観的視点の欠如によってかなり妥協されている。ジンジェラスは実際、ピノー・コレクションのディレクターとして高価格な購入品の管理を担当しており、またキュレーターとして、それらについて書いているのだ。2008年にピノーが1500万ドルも散財し、ばかげた買い物となり得る「マイ・ロンサム・カウボーイ」もその中に含まれている。しかし、西原みんの話は、私達に「子育ては村中みんなでするもの」の格言を思い出させてくれる。それはつまり1つの「スーパーフラット」を作り出すのに、美術学校やアーティストグループ、文筆家、友人、アート愛好者などが必要、と言ったところだろうか。

Sone joins us in the kitchen when we get back. I’m still drinking my take out coffee. He laughs about the Tokyo art world, his struggles with the always tough Yuko Hasegawa. He has shows coming up in three places at the end of 2010: at MOT, Opera City (curated at Sone’s insistence by ART-iT blogger Mizuki Endo), and the new Hermes space. It’s a bit much having three shows at once, he says, but it will be big news. But he advises me not to focus too much on talking to curators about what is happening in Japan. “It’s on the streets – that’s much more interesting.”. They talk about one of their sons, who is apparently already producing commercial manga.

私達が戻ってきた時に曽根裕も台所にやってきた。私はまだテイクアウトしたコーヒーを飲んでいた。曽根は、東京のアート界や、常に辛口の長谷川祐子との苦闘を笑って話した。彼は、2010年の終わりに３箇所で個展を行う事が決まっていた。東京都現代美術館、東京オペラシティアートギャラリー（曽根のリクエストでART-iTのブロガーである遠藤水城がキュレーターを務める）そして新しい銀座エルメス。３つの個展を同時に開催するのはちょっと多すぎるのだが、大きな話題になるだろう、と彼は言った。彼はまた、私に日本で起こっている事柄について、キュレーターと話すことを重要視しすぎないように、と忠告してくれた。
「路上観察が一番おもしろいよ。」
彼らは、息子の1人がどうやら漫画を出版しているらしいと話していたりするのだ。

It’s time to go. ”But you are right to talk to her”, says Sone, still laughing, with big eyes. “Back then, she really made the artists, discovered them. She made it all happen”. It’s a great story.

もう行かなくては。
「でも、彼女と話して正解だったよ。」
と曽根は笑いながら大きな目をして言った。
「あの当時、彼女は本当にアーティストを作りだし、見出していたんだ。彼女が全てを可能にしたんだよ。」
それは素晴らしい話だった。



ADRIAN　FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

Spare a thought for the young hopefuls – about 1,900 of them this year – who this Thursday will be taking up their artist tools and hoping to draw their way into the second round of the selection process to Geidai, Tokyo’s top art school. While Tokyo University of the Arts remains the golden path to career success in the Japanese art world, it offers tuition fees far lower than the other top schools like Tama or Musashino. This means that many of the most socially disadvantaged and poor students can have a go at breaking into the elite art education system. Most of them have been studying like crazy at cram schools for months before the event; some have been known to try seven or eight times before they get in. I’ve never been clear what role family connections, networks, social know-how, and other insider links might play in helping some of the candidates get through, but it is sure that even so there is always hope for the complete outsider to finally get that moment of recognition – and get a place.

The alternative route to education, fame and fortune in the Japanese art world is, if you believe the great man himself, Takashi Murakami’s Geisai talent contest, which is holding its 14th instalment in March, now back at the Big Sight after a temporary “cash poor” relocation to a Saitama warehouse last time (see my blog of 2009/10/24). Participants who have paid and registered for this Spring’s event will be disappointed to learn that the star juror Jeff Koons has dropped out due to a busy schedule. He has been replaced by a famous sociologist-philosopher, Shinji Miyadai—which means I must still have a chance of an invite some time! Other jurors include design consultant, Hiroki Nakamura, otaku professor, Kaichiro Morikawa, Groovisions’ Hiroshi Ito, and Sen So-oku, a classical arts specialist, who (it says here) is 15th Generation Descendent of the Mushako Jisenke Line. Internationally, though, it is a noticeable less high powered line up this time, missing the names (such as Hervé Chandés, Philippe Segalot, Paul Schimmel) that gave the event a tantalising aura of offering artists an international breakthrough in the past.

The price list as always makes interesting reading. A bargain 27,000 Yen buys you a space with no walls that is 180 cm wide and 120 cm deep. Less than two tatami, but enough to sit on. If you are the kind of artist with things to hang on a wall, the smallest booth with walls costs 120,000 for the day. Prizes for larger spaces rise up to 720,000 Yen for the eight hour show. If you want to show a ten meter Silver Buddha or Balloon Dog then I guess you need a lot of cash. Some things are not included. A desk cost 5,000 yen, a chair 1,500, and electric power supply for the day Y10,000. If you want your mum or dad to give you a hand setting up, it costs another Y2,200. This kind of money would buy you a Ginza Gallery for the week in the old days. Still, Louis Vuitton is also helping out as sponsor.

Murakami was himself a graduate of Geidai, famously an artist from a modest social background, who was constantly strapped for cash and always over spending on his projects. By all accounts he was part of a generous student culture at Geidai that sustained and supported each other through the hard times and on small budgets. Some of this art and the ideas that drove it became world famous (see my interview with Min Nishihara and Yutaka Sone from 2009/12/22). But I often wonder whether Murakami, if he were a student today, would have been happy handing over – to a very rich superstar artist-entrepreneur – all their hard earned savings from part time conbini and nomiya jobs, just for the chance to show at a one day art exhibition with several thousand other amateur hopefuls.

As always in the art world, the social mathematics of success and failure are daunting. We can only wish the best of luck to everyone getting ready for Geisai, and all those who are taking Geidai examinations this week.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

I have a running discussion with Mizuma artist Satoru Aoyama about how to best represent “Young Japanese Art”, a topic we will no doubt pick up again when his work is deservedly featured in the upcoming Roppongi Crossing 3. Trained in London, at Goldsmiths College, in the immediate aftermath of its glory years as the source school of the “Young British Art” phenomenon, Aoyama is very conscious that he doesn’t see his art as especially “Japanese”, but always rather in dialogue with global trends and art history. “When I talk with Jim Lambie, I don’t talk to him as a Japanese artist talking to a Scottish artist, but as two artists operating internationally,” he says. Aoyama’s memory of London precisely is a place where everyone felt at home in a kind of post-national environment, something he sometimes misses in Tokyo.

I sympathise with this viewpoint intellectually, and it is of course important that any Japanese artist is not entrapped in the logic of representing nation and national culture first and foremost as their distinguishing mark. But, strategically, there is still a point to gatherings of “Young” or “Outstanding” “Japanese” Art (or art from Japan), such as 2008’s The Echo show in Yokohama, where Aoyama was a central figure. Moreover, the view from Japan – its peculiar place and time economically and socially in relation to global trends – makes a lot of its present day art and artists particularly interesting in a distinctive way. Aoyama, like many of his generation – the H.I.S. generation of cheap and easy international travel – went away. But he then chose, in his thirties, to return to Japan and Tokyo, to pursue his career there, rather than anywhere else. The social networks, trajectories and ambitions of his peer group – including artists such as Kohei Nawa and Kengo Kito – thus have a similar dynamic—which perhaps justifies the reference to a Young Japanese Art.



We will see a lot of this generation’s art at RX3. Aoyama will present further works from his “Glitter Pieces” series that have received warm previous attention in ART-iT, after shows at Mizuma Gallery. He will be working again with the curator Kenji Kubota, who has shown his work to striking effect in both Tokyo (at Akasaka Art Flower in 2008) and abroad (in Bangkok, at the recent Twist and Shout show). As at The Echo, Aoyama has adopted a dark room installation technique that adds drama to works that are sometimes understated in their quiet craft and small scale presentation. Again, the labour aspect is something well appreciated by Japanese collectors, but Aoyama is anything but loud in his approach. The often amazing embroideries accent meticulous detail and quality, and yet are never less than desirable objects in their own right.



What is really fascinating about his work is the combination of technique and conceptualism, an almost seamless combination of form and thought, that derives from the fact that labour itself is constantly foregrounded as a theme in the work. Aoyama works with a vintage Singer sewing machine, that recreates forgotten or discarded photographic images, posing them as a commentary on evolving picitorial representation itself. Labouring manually, and with an inefficient intensity that has long been eclipsed by other modes of faster production technology, Aoyama offers a slow art – like the joys of slow food. He also underlines the need for a sustainable production process, that reinvents possibilities for art and representation discarded by the forward, wasteful rush of technology. It is a brilliant concept, that translates equally well into the Richter like meditations on photographic images, as well as his older experiments with embroidered abstract works, that trick the eye first as paintings.

Aoyama’s world is certainly not “flat”, as Japanese art is supposed to be. As one of contemporary Japanese art’s most articulate thinkers, he has also stressed in various writings how his work breaks with the myth of genius and authorship—a commonplace point in art theory, and yet a revolutionary ethos among artists themselves, who still live and die by according to their egos, their value, and their strive for a place in a pantheon of great, timeless, breakthrough figures. The art world is, after all, constructed out of lists of top 10 sales, top 20 picks, top 100 artists – all of which are constantly changing. No-one wants to feel that their production might be in vain. But such demystifying talk can make figures in the art world uncomfortable. Fortunately, Aoyama mixes in just as much dry wit and observation in his writings—as any one familiar with his everyday diary pieces in his ART-iT blog will know and enjoy (by chance there is one two blogs below this one).



With admirable consistency, ten years into a solo career that is slowly but surely building, Aoyama continues to find new modes for exploring his core ideas and methods. He has recently completed a residency at Fuchu Art Museum, that consisted of working “live” behind a pane of glass for visitors to see the act of creation in situ. “It was an interesting experience,” he says. “But it was a pretty stressful experience as well. You know, people were always watching me making the work, but reading coffee, drinking books. It felt like being an animal in the cage,” he adds ruefully. But it was a productive time, that helped him “concentrate” his efforts towards the upcoming shows, as well as leading to an interesting reflection on the function of the museum itself. The Fuchu Museum has featured a series of interesting artists-at-work in the last couple of years, including Kyotaro Hakamata and Midori Mitamura. A key player in making this happen has been the young and ambitious curator Hajime Nariai, who works at the museum.

So what’s next? Aoyama has another solo show coming up in Tokyo at alpha M. curated by Mizuki Takahashi, and the Roppongi show will give him a big boost in terms of visability. In the past, curators and writers have been quicker to take an interest in his work than the collectors, but this is now changing. I, for one, am fascinated how a set of ideas first formulated hesistantly among mainly women students at textiles classes in the art classrooms of South London, now finds such an appropriate home within the new wave of art and artists that will be visible at the Mori Art Museum from late March. No surprise perhaps. Aoyama is one young Japanese artist who has been working with RX3’s central trans-genre question – “Can There Be Art?” – right from the start.



ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen in Denmark has acquired one of Yayoi Kusama’s spectacular mirror room installations, Gleaming Lights of the Souls (2008). It is installed in what looks like a permanent location in an underground gallery—a major recognition of the growing importance of this iconic Japanese artist.

It is also one of her most effective installation works. A dark room with mise en abîme mirrors to infinity, and hanging baubles of colour and light, the room actually plays on a delayed effect as you get used to the set up. First feeling small and claustrophobic, like a cubicle, you slowly adjust to the fact that it is in fact quite a large box in which the lights are physically hanging as well as being reflected. It is a work that has much in common with experimental visual artists like James Turrell—in fact, the closest experience I could think of was his darkroom village house collaboration with Tadao Ando on Naoshima.

The pleasure of seeing more Kusama in Europe was heightened by the objectionable weakness of the other shows going on at Louisiana when I visited last weekend. Kusama’s piece was in fact a sparkling bookend to a very dull and academic historical survey of colour in art in the twentieth century. Louisiana’s curators had clumsily mixed up a boring Swiss collection on loan with its own famous pop art holdings. Only another recent addition – a fabulous David Hockney painting of the Grand Canyon – and a overwhelming room size video by Pipilotti Rist, was worth the trawl through the always elegant galleries. In the other part of the Museum, large Danish crowds gawped at hobo tourist snaps by a famous Danish photographer of black African American "poor people" shooting up heroin or sleeping on the streets—in much the same way 19th century European audiences might have once looked at exotic exhibitions of African tribes.

Lousiana is a beautiful location with stunning (Japanese influenced) architecture, but it has become a conservative and dull institution trading on an inflated global reputation—like a lot of European museums, I feel, when I think about them in comparison to some places I’ve seen in Japan, for all the criticism that might be made. Still, somebody there has some good taste enough to spend some of their large endowment on Yayoi Kusama.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

More debate surely is needed about Noi Sawaragi's interesting overview in ART-iT here of the 2000s in Japanese art. While most of the essay displayed his usual sharp edge, it was alarming to see the uncritical and exaggerated assessment of Murakami's Geisai organisation. As I have argued in several past blogs, we need to take a careful look at the significance and consequences of Murakami's attempt to "revolutionise" the art education and art market system in Japan – an effect that has been much more damaging and exploitative than Sawaragi suggests.

http://www.art-it.asia/u/rhqiun/y0k4HsKjgC39ZAJ6SaGw/

Geisai was copied from the larger Design Festa model, transforming that show’s “punk rock” anything goes attitude with a reality TV style talent contest which offers a promise of success to thousands of young hopeful artists. It charges these often penniless artists rates per day that are not far off kaisha gara rates in Ginza, often in excess of 100,000Yen. Even then they have to pay for extra electricity or spare chairs as they set up their booths. If they are lucky they might get a two second walk-by viewing from a foreign curator judge in town Tokyo on an all expenses paid holiday. Geisai seduces these young artists with the idea that, with Murakami sensei, they don’t need art education to get a break. It is a very damaging, romantic illusion.

Sawaragi writes that Geisai “despite being derided from the start as ‘little more than a street bazaar’, ultimately must be credited with unearthing more unknown talent than any officially sanctioned biennale, triennale, art prize or such like, and offering these up-and-coming talents real opportunities”. Even viewed generously this is a blatant exaggeration. Those very few artists who it did help discover – for example Erina Matsui, or Yasuyuki Nishio, both now (not coincidentally) with Yamamoto Gendai – were artists who had already been through a strong art school training. It is very likely they would have succeeded with or without Geisai. Matsui wisely declined to join the Kaikai Kiki factory in favour of further formal art training and an independent career. And Murakami himself is a consummate product of Tokyo University of the Arts and the outstanding cohort of students he shared ideas and training with in the late 1990s.

http://www.art-it.asia/u/rhqiun/HAledbG6CkXOfTyohMaB/

Geisai is an amateur art show, nothing more or less - a view shared by a one time judge at the event, Los Angeles MOCA’s Paul Schimmel. It is a great personal vehicle for Murakami, however, and it certainly provides him with a media platform in Tokyo after having cut so many of his relations with the Tokyo art world that made him. Sawaragi should not be perpetuating the myth but exploring how and why Geisai has been used very consciously as a part of Murakami’s art practice. And spare a thought for the many losers at Geisai. After emptying their pockets of their savings, Geisai takes their combined enthusiasm and hopes and uses it promotionally to further glorify Murakami’s image internationally. At the recent Pop Life show in London Geisai itself was being presented and theorised in a video installation as another one of Murakami’s ironic “works of art”, in line with his other post-Warholian “factory” products. Another triumph for the Wizard of Oz.

Sawaragi's article is here:
http://www.art-it.asia/u/admin_columns/KGFt0SIjbf6VJcrDXkZM/

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

While its great to see ART-iT publishing its best of lists and review essays about 2009, it’s a good idea too to get an outside view of the Japanese art scene, so that all its undoubted noise and colour can be put into some kind of global/relative perspective. No-one better to do this than Ashley Rawlings, a long time resident on the Tokyo scene, now features editor at the Art Asia Pacific magazine, based in New York City. Ashley was the editor of the indispensable, and rather beautiful, Art Space Tokyo book, which came out in 2008, published by Craig Mod’s Chin Music Press. This book set itself the task of uncovering some of the lesser known players and locations in the Tokyo art scene, while also documenting the familiar roster of curators, gallerists, and writers that make up its small but dynamic world.

http://www.artspacetokyo.com/

Each year, AAP publishes an almanac which contains a round of the most significant art events and exhibitions that took place in each country the previous year. Ashley does a comprehensive job this year, and it is an essential round up for anyone wanting to know about what is going on in Japan.

I was pleased to see that I’d seen most of the more important things he mentions. Here is a link to my top five shows of the year (just scroll down).

http://www.art-it.asia/u/admin_columns/RpLCtBsAvOlNu3a0G51f/

What is missing from this listing are the shows I wish I’d seen, but couldn’t because I live on the wrong side of the planet most of the time. These would include: Teppei Kaneuji at Yokohama, Daisuke Ohba's solo shows around Tokyo in the Spring (at SCAI and Magical), Tatsu Nishi's ever wacky art installation explorations at ArataniUrano in May, and the big Ryoji Ikeda show at MOT during the summer. Ashley gives a strong mention to Nishi’s brilliant and crazed conversion of the Ginza gallery, as well as Ikeda’s big show and Kaneuji’s solo break out at Yokohama. Ohba is the only one missed here: one of the young discoveries of the year.

I met Ashley for a coffee and chat near his office in the hip, but still grim, West Chelsea neighbourhood of New York City in November. Being away from Tokyo had given him some new perspective on the Tokyo scene: it looked a lot smaller, and a lot less important than so much of the international art crowding the scene in New York. He felt basically it had been a quiet year, with nothing really very exciting happening. I always feel that Japan’s greatest strength is the fact it is out of step a little with the rest of the global art world, that walks to a sometimes monotonous beat drummed out by the same old international superstar curators, fads and fashions. But that means Japan is easily ignored, marginal to the major flows. He cites the example of Kohei Nawa who, whenever he is mentioned in the New York context, is written off as too “aesthetic”. New York writers are always looking for a didactic, political edge. Another low spot for Japan was the almost universally negative reactions to Miwa Yanagi’s big show at Venice, something I’ve written about in a previous blog.

http://www.art-it.asia/u/rhqiun/Vfji90F5ay3CNK8DhvQS/

Ashley obviously misses Tokyo, but is excited by the speed and power of New York, even comparing it to going back “home” to London (he is English, like me). A number of his former colleagues from the Tokyo Art Beat magazine and the 101 Tokyo Art Fair network, have also moved to New York, to set up a New York version of the popular website there. TAB is another example of how resident gaijin have helped give an outside edge to the Tokyo art world, which would be so dangerously insular without it.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

I have been helping Miwako Tezuka, curator at the Asia Society museum in New York City, with background work for the major exhibition of Nara’s work she is planning there this autumn. As I’ve written before, there is plenty of reason to think 2010 will be a good year for Nara.

The subject has been Yoshitomo Nara’s music tastes, which he writes about regularly in his blog and in books such as his autobiographical diaries, The Little Star Dweller. Tezuka’s show will place Nara’s work in the context of worldwide popular music culture – and the street culture connected to it – taking him out of the tired neo-japoniste frame he tends to attract via his association with Superflat and otaku art. I may be critical sometimes of too much otaku art, but when it comes to rock music I am for sure a bona fide music otaku, with the same affliction as Nara. A collection of hundreds of old LPs and piles of CDs that are the soundtrack to everything I do.

So Tezuka has been asking me what I think about Nara’s LP collection, and how highlights can be selected. We all know he draws and paints with loud music on. But where does he fit in to a music fan’s view of the world? The one word label “punk”, which Nara loves to use, turns out to be much more of an attitude thing than a narrow definition. Nara, who recently turned 50, stretches back with his vinyl tastes unsurprisingly to the late 1960s when he turned 20. There is a strong showing in his lists for post-Woodstock alt country and long haired rebel rock (Neil Young, or The Band, for example). Then in the mid-70s to late 70s, there is the obligatory turn to glam and then punk (via Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, Bowie, New York Dolls, Ramones, to Sex Pistols and The Clash). So far, so good. From then on, he becomes a regular college radio alternative/indie fan, and his record collection starts looking a lot like mine. There is very little Japanese music to be found in the list. Maybe no-one had heard of Cornelius in Germany. And while his earlier preferences are dominated by American and Canadian greats, later ones show a great deal more interest in English bands. I was particularly delighted to see a strong showing for XTC, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, and more recently PJ Harvey, Pulp and Radiohead. Its where he gets a lot of titles for his work. Tezuka wants to trace the trajectory further. With Nara coming home to Japan, embracing collective art group methods, and engaging in the ambitious shows in his home region that have toured the world as A to Z, Nara’s punk attitude has turned to a kind of rice eating, communal, rebel-folk sensitivity. He wants to be an artist of the people.

The question is: what does the connection of art and pop music all mean? Tezuka sees it very much as part of his populist appeal, with the key thing being the emotion it conveys to viewers – a universal, global appeal, and something which distances it from the detached irony of Superflat and its very Japan-specific references. But at the same time it is impossible to detach Nara from his otaku generation roots. This is an obsessive, regressive art that refuses to grow up or leave the music behind, and makes a sweet and beautiful virtue out of it. Isn’t that why we all have these record collections? Our music in little packages can take us back wherever we want to go by just putting on a track?

And why do we all love Nara’s pictures so much? Don’t Fight It Feel It. Look at this one. An angry girl on a rock ‘n’ roll loudspeaker. They all remind us of someone, I suppose.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

One of the unexpected side effects of my research on the Japanese contemporary art world has been that I have developed an interest in Japanese contemporary architecture, as an almost inevitable spillover. Not only are many of Japan’s best museums housed in masterpieces by Japanese designers. They are also, undoubtedly more successful and more influential internationally than Japanese artists. This has been underlined recently with the nomination of Kazuyo Sejima – one half of the inspirational architecture duo SANAA – to be the director of this year’s Venice Biennale for Architecture. This is an extraordinary achievement both for a Japanese architect and a woman, but it underlines how massively influential Japanese architects in the world top rankings – from Kishio Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, to Jun Aoki, Ryue Nishizawa and Atelier Bow Wow. I’m no expert, but one of the people who I rely on for insights is Julian Worrall, a lecturer at Waseda University. He has just published this new guide book with Kodansha (above), called 21st Century Tokyo: A Guide to Contemporary Architecture, co-authored with Erez Golani Solomon and Joshua Lieberman, which is an excellent introduction to the subject.

The interesting thing is how architecture is in fact blending into and taking over parts of the fine arts. Much installation work nowadays has an architectural inspiration to it. Avant guard urban thinkers like Atelier Bow Wow essentially make art books as a way of communicating about the city. Some major artists, in the line of Olafur Eliasson, approach their works like architects – or like Junya Ishigami (a favourite of Yuko Hasegawa at MoT) are architects now working as fine artists. And I remember the impressive show, Skin & Bones at Tokyo NACT in 2007, that made connections between contemporary fashion designers and avant guard architects, displayed as an art show. No wonder that gallerists such as Tomio Koyama and Atsuko Koyanagi have also taken an interest recently in the subject. Last summer, TKG put on a show of contemporary architects’ artefacts and designs, as a way of stimulating thought for the need to be creating a proper archive and museum for these achievements.

Worrall is Australian, and worked for the legendary Rem Koolhaas when he was younger. It was an exciting time, but he is convinced that many of the clues to the urban future can be found around him in his home city of Tokyo. Since moving here, he has dedicated himself to explaining the marvels of Japanese urbanism via academic work. He has also launched a research centre at Waseda called LLLABO, “a platform for research, teaching and practice, engaging in contemporary themes in architecture and urbanism inspired by its location in central Tokyo”. His main argument concerns the visionary aspects of “post-Bubble” architecture in Japan and Tokyo, which continues to put this city especially at the forefront of imagining the metropolis of the future. Above all, it’s an architecture that is trying to conceive of more sustainable, modest, and harmonious forms of urban intervention, more in tune with the age and cities we now have to live in. The book is an essential guide for everyone who wants to see this city through fresh eyes.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com

Like so many before them, video artists Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi are walking the long “weg” to Germany for funds to make a living. In their case, the path has taken the shape of an infinity sign, trodden out step by step out on the grass in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The couple, dressed as day trip hikers, are jogging round and round and round as the grass goes yellow. The exhausting work is filmed in a hilarious speeded up silent film that at once mocks the pompousness of Richard Long style “land art”, as well as treading a new line towards an art of the absurd. Keep walking, keep smiling, even as life gets tough for young artists today.

Here is the video on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KdQ4aV4eB4

The work, Infinity (2006), is a typical piece of dry irony from this cheerful art unit, who have developed an impressive body of short and witty video works that can be viewed on their excellent and fun interactive website.

http://www.yamashita-kobayashi.com/

The young lions filmed ripping apart canvasses (Lion & Canvas, images below) I first saw at Yamashita’s PhD graduation show at GEIDAI in 2008. It suggests a whole line of animal art putting artist materials to better use. Other works include: licking a giant candy ball for six months until it disappears; erasing all the negative words from newspapers; and “rescuing” mineral water by pouring it back into nature. Yamashita had also filed a dissertation on humour in art. It was the outstanding portfolio of the graduation show that year.



Two aspects of their work interest me in particular. One is the dynamic of an “Art Unit” – in this case, also a couple – a practice of doing art that is becoming increasingly significant in Japan. Above all, to practice art as a unit stresses a seriousness of purpose combined and a rejection of the artist’s ego. The unit idea hints at anonymity in even the most compact of small groups. Secondly, they are artists clearly in the line of “gentle intervention”, a modest but distinctive trend in Japanese video art identified by Midori Matsui with artists such as Shimabuku, Saki Satom, and Taro Izumi. The absurdist irony and the maturity of their themes distances them from the humourless teenage angst art that Matsui often favours, but there is a sly political edge to their work that might fit within a “Micropop” frame.



I met the couple at a small house party with Hitomi Hasegawa, a highly active curator who runs the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art in Yokohama. It was a delightful evening over home cooked food and drink viewing videos with a group of high spirited friends. In the mainstream global art world, we are more used to video art that plays continually with provocation and baroque excess – the kind of violence, pornography, or shock tactics associated with American enfants terribles like Paul McCarthy or Matthew Barney. So it is refreshing to find uses of video that stress, in such a subtle, understated work, the virtues of humour, observation, and polite wit.

Yamashita and Kobayashi are presenting new works in Leipzig, Germany, as part of their current residency.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com