Nouvelle Garde

Félicitations to French art collector/writer Sophie Cavaliero on the publication last month of her sumptuous selection of the best of Japanese contemporary art: Nouvelle Garde (New Generation): De l'Art Contemporain Japonais. This large format, full colour 300 page book is published by Le Lézard Noir, whose owner, the publisher Stéphane Duval, has been a great supporter of contemporary Japanese visual culture in France over the years, including translated publication in French of Makoto Aida's Mutant Hanako and manga by Akino Kondoh.

Cavaliero's selection picks out her favourite 50 artists from a database she has compiled of 350 artists over the last five years or so. The book's strength is the extraordinary visual panorama it gives of the artists -- by far the best collected overview of current Japanese artists, mostly based in Japan, in one volume. Cavaliero was inspired initially by the books of self-styled art cheerleader, Yumi Yamaguchi -- who provides the preface here -- and Cavaliero writes in a similar, enthusiastic way with great passion for the subject. The French texts throughout are also translated into English. Another key moment was when Cavaliero met and befriended the Kanazawa salt installation artist, Motoi Yamamoto. The book is rounded off with an essay by Mizuma artist Manabu Ikeda (Mizuma artists are heavily featured), and a very interesting post-Tsunami essay by curator Kenji Kubota, who points out the internationally rather overlooked importance of post-Cute/Cool Japan artists more concerned with engaging harsh and troubling current realities -- for example Chim↑Pom and Ichiro Endo.

Cavaliero's choices tend towards the figurative and visually attractive: the familiar allure of neo-japonisme and neo-nihonga. The book is arranged by themes with classical japoniste echoes, so that it doesn't really give much sense of the true post-1990 history of Japanese contemporary art, starting with "neo-pop" among young Toyko artists, which was defined much more by its relations with and reactions against the dominant currents of Japanese avant garde art (Gutai, Anti-Art, Mono-Ha, 80s Design, Heta Uma, Kansai artists), as well as international trends (pop art, neo-expressionism, simulationalism, street art, performance, post-human art). The "new generation" is in fact at least three generations, one of which is certainly not "post-"Murakami: there is a kind of flattening in juxtaposing, say, veteran conceptual pioneers like Makoto Aida and Kenji Yanobe with the easy-to-sell pop illustrations of Junko Mizuno or Murakami's Kai Kai Kiki girls; that is, without a real chronological context or evaluation. That is, perhaps, the foreign collector's prerogative and impulse: it is about works that have captured the writer's heart and mind, more than an attempt to fully survey the field from the inside. Japanese art needs cheerleaders like Cavaliero to attract the global art world's attention.

Of course, the selections are partial. Some obviously important names, likely to be mentioned in future historical reviews, are missing: Motohiko Odani, Tatzu Nishi, Masato Nakamura, Ujino, Tomoko Yoneda, Miwa Yanagi. Apart from Tatsumi Orimoto -- originally a fluxus artist from the 60s and 70s -- relational and social art isn't mentioned until Kubota's endnote (so no Tsuyoshi Ozawa or Yutaka Sone, and a missing sense of the key influence of the Showa 40 nen kai on younger artists such as Chim↑Pom or Endo). Video is also one area where other observers, less tied to the galleries and art market, would have perhaps chosen differently: consider the curatorial success of mid-career artists like Takehito Koganezawa, Shimabuku, Taro Izumi, Hiraki Sawa, Meiro Koizumi or Koki Tanaka. No Tabaimo, either surprisingly -- perhaps for contractual reasons, since there is apparently no Koyanagi artists featured. There is also the question of whether artist/architects, such as Junya Ishigami or Atelier Bow Wow, should be part of the picture.... Still, a selection of even 50 is an impossible task, all of which goes to say, there is a lot of very good Japanese contemporary art out there, both in this book, and not.

I attended a busy vernissage for the book at Laetitia Delorme's lovely L MD Gallery in the Marais, Paris. One of the artists featured in the book -- Mai Miyake -- was there. She is known for her subtle, installation based, reworkings of classical themes, using paper cuts and mixed fabrics. She is currently showing as part of a group show "Sparkling Days" at the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery, as part of the Triennale events in the city (until 19th Oct).

So Nouvelle Garde is a chocolate box of J-art from a visitor's point of view, but it is a tasty one -- and a perfect place to start looking. On the whole, Cavaliero's selections are good, and it is simply phenomenal how she has managed to secure permission for so many images. I'm particularly delighted that she features many of the artists I've enthused about in these pages: Kumi Machida, Erina Matsui, Tatsumi Orimoto, Yuken Teruya, Chiharu Shiota, Aiko Miyanaga, Motoi Yamamoto and Kohei Nawa are all given generous space. Congratulations, too, to the publisher on a beautifully produced volume.

More information here:
http://www.lezardnoir.org/LZN/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=18:nouvelle-garde-de-lart-contemporain-japonais&Itemid=15

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com