<em>Theaster Gates</em>, <em>Doric Temple</em>, 2022 High fire stoneware with glaze, Dimensions variable, <em>Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces</em>, New Museum, New York, 2022-2023 | Photo: Chris Strong
地址: 53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6 Chome−10−1, Minato City Tokyo 106-6150 Tokyo
When in 1928 the Japanese philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu theorized the theoretical and aesthetic proposal of Mingei - what we now define as popular or folk Japanese art and craftsmanship - his aim was to demonstrate that beauty could be found in ordinary and utilitarian everyday objects made by unknown and unnamed artisans, as opposed to the higher art forms created by named artists. This theme greatly fascinated the American artist Theaster Gates who in this exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo appropriated the Japanese concept to reinterpret it in a new "black" key in an original experiment of cross-cultural contamination between two worlds very distant from each other and with the aim of bringing out an art centered on black beauty and aesthetics. Theaster Gates masterfully translates the complexities of darkness through clay, objectivity, space and materiality. While black culture and history remain relatively little known to Japanese audiences, this exhibition aims to convey the contemporary importance of art that celebrates craftsmanship, issues of race, politics and cultural hybridity by offering a comprehensive overview of Gates' practice.
This exhibition features more than 70 new works by seven groups of eight high-profile artists from Japan, Vietnam and Finland. The theme is that of photography which goes beyond the idea of "memory".
Shimizu Takashi is perhaps Japan's most famous sculptor. As a young man when he lived in Paris he would have liked to be a painter instead. This exhibition tells the story of him and shows some of his paintings from that historical period.
The fate of women in the world of men. It is the theme of the famous opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, on stage at the New National Theater in Tokyo under the direction of Francesco Lanzillotta.
On the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of his death, the Suntory Museum of Art celebrates Hanabusa Itchō, painter, calligrapher and haiku poet born in Osaka in 1652.