what's on at MOMAT

The most interesting thing about the Jackson Pollock Centennial Retrospective, happening at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo now through May 6th, is that it includes works from New York's Museum of Modern Art as well as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Stop nuclear proliferation, let art bring us together! Give drips a chance.

In his review in Metropolis, C.B. Liddell writes that the show's centerpiece, “Mural On Indian Red Ground" (below), on loan from Iran, "is something of a cultural hostage," having been purchased by the Shah when the country was Westernizing itself - a push that halted with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Nowadays, the painting - recently valued at $250 million and considered JP's most valuable work - is generally kept out of sight, stored underground with other "decadent" Western works. I bought the poster.

Mural on Indian Red Ground, Jackson Pollack, 1950

If you do go, don't forget to explore the rest of the museum. Particularly "Tokyoites," black and white street photography from 1966 shot by Takanashi Yutaka; screen paintings of old Edo, and Momat's own vintage museum posters, advertisements for 50 years' worth of exhibitions.

image from "Tokyoites" collection at Momat

Momat is located next to the moat and walls of the Imperial Palace, so you can combine a museum visit with some springtime cherry blossom viewing and stroll through the fabulous Kitanomaru park, featuring gleaming white gatehouses and enormous dry-stacked stone walls (as in no mortar, amazing to behold, much like a wooden temple roof that fits together without nails). Take the Hanzomon line to Kudanshita, exit 2, walk up the hill and enter on the left; you'll pass the Budokan (where you may start singing "Surrender" on sight) and a pretty decent children's science museum. More directly, take the Hanzomon line to Kudanshita and transfer to the Tozai line for Takebashi, exit 1B. 

Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
3-1 Kitamaru koen, Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03 5777 860
Museum is closed on Mondays.

'Spectacular ukiyo-e imagination!'

Last chance (!!) to see the Kuniyoshi exhibit at the Mori Arts Center Gallery, on the 52nd floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. Show ends Feb. 12th.



Utagawa Kuniyoshi, (1797-1861) was one of the last great ukiyo-e masters. He's know for some delightfully strange woodblock prints, featuring cats in yukata, toads, samurai wrestling with fish, and my personal favorite (see poster above) entitled, "At first glance he looks very fierce, but he is really a nice person," first printed in 1845.

Click here for a sneak peek.

Toulouse-Lautrec in Marunouchi!

Today was Culture Day in Japan, so Terry and I got our cult-cha on big time at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, currently showing drawings and lithographs by late 19th-century Parisien painter Toulouse-Lautrec. There are write ups about it in both Tokyo Art Beat and the Japan Times, if you want details. I'll just say I highly recommend it. The exhibition runs through Dec. 25. The museum is located near the JR Tokyo station, address 2-6-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0005. (We took the Hibiya metro line from Ebisu to the Hibiya station, exit B7).


A copy of one of T-L's most famous portraits, that of cabaret singer Aristide Bruant, happens to grace a building facade on 18th Street in Adams Morgan, in Washington DC. The Toulouse-Lautrec bar that occupied that building is no longer there -- the space has apparently been vacant for some time -- but the mural remains. Even though my friends and I, I won't say how many years ago, favored Millie & Al's across the street (cheapest pitcher of beer in town, but how did we eat that awful pizza??), Toulouse-Lautrec will always make me think of college.

Smile, it's art!

Sculptures by Ugo Rondinone, outside the Yokohama museum of art, now through Nov. 6:



Altogether, there are 12 heads currently keeping watch outside the museum, part of the Yokohama Triennale 2011 exhibition, "Our Magic Hour: How Much of the World Can We Know?" I went to see this show the other day with three other moms from the British School ("A Spaniard, an American, a Brit and a Norwegian board a train...") and we all thought it was worthwhile, if a bit puzzling in parts (that's ahht, for me at least).

We took the Tokyu-Toyoko line from Shibuya to Minatomirai, a few stops past Yokohama (where you can switch from an express to a local train if you're not already on one) and the museum is a short walk from there. The 12 works that make up Rondinone's "Moonrise" series, according to Art Agenda, were modeled in brown clay, then cast in aluminum and lacquered to match the color of the original material. Their surfaces are finger-stroked, mottled, soft to the touch. We couldn't help but push gently into the surface grooves with our fingertips before noticing the sign saying keep off - oops.

The rest of the show was a bit hit or miss for me. My favorite video work was a short film by Romanian artist Mircea Cantor called "Tracking Happiness," featuring seven women dressed in white, walking barefoot in sand, each silently sweeping away the footprints left by the person in front of them. It's shot from various angles and there's a certain pattern to their movements. We were all a bit mesmerized by it. Apparently it's a commentary on "the creation and revision of history, and the state of information in the computer age." (Audio tours available in English or Japanese.)

We hopped on a free shuttle bus to get to the second venue, BankART Studio NYK, a.k.a. NYK waterfront warehouse, near the Bashamichi metro station (where we later caught our train back to Shibuya -- it's about a half hour's journey).

In one room inside the warehouse you could relax on one of a half dozen upholstered sofas and watch a bit of "The Clock" by Christian Marclay, a 24 hr.-long film comprised of thousands of video clips (it won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Biennale). Each segment makes some reference, specifically or obliquely, to time - a snatch of dialogue here ("You're late," "It's five to two") a wordless action sequence there (a stressed-out cowboy gets up to go to a window and pull back the curtains). Next there's an Italian family sitting around a table talking and eating dinner, a grandfather clock tick-ticking nearby. And on and on it goes, a continuous string of non-sequiturs culled from a variety of movies and television programs, old and new, obscure and mainstream, dramatic, comedic, in English and other languages. It's a video clock, telling time minute by minute, only the museum can only show the 11 am to 6pm portion (the hours it opens to the public). Glenn Close, in a scene from the 1994 American movie The Paper, looks at her wristwatch and complains about the way her skin "bunches." Spider-Man's boss warns him that if he doesn't deliver those pizzas in 9 minutes, he's out of a job -- cut to a wall clock showing 1:51 pm, and it's 1:51 pm in real life! You get the idea. What an enormous undertaking this must have been, to find all that footage and put it in order, with the timing just right...

Tickets to the Triennale cost 1,600 yen per adult and cover admission to both venues. You need at least 90 minutes at each place if you like to take your time at these sorts of things. You can grab a bite to eat in the cafe at the Yokohama Museum of Art's own cafe (I had the egg salad and tomato sandwich) or take advantage of the many restaurants in the Landmark Tower or nearby Queen's Towers. For 1,000 yen you can ride the superfast elevator up to Landmark's 69th floor "Sky Garden" observatory. Here's the view overlooking the Minato Mirai Shinko district and Cosmo World amusement park, with its giant ferris wheel:

Yokohama Triennale 2011 runs through Sunday, Nov. 6. For information including some useful maps, click here. For more information about that whole area, see Japan-Guide.com