Fun and Games with Giga: Caricatures of the Edo Period
Christopher Stephens
The modern-day manga has its roots in the giga tradition of humorous and satirical pictures dating at least as far back as the Heian Period (794-1185). The genre is perhaps best exemplified by the Choju jinbutsu giga (Caricatures of Humans and Animals), a series of ink-on-paper scrolls from the 12th and 13th centuries peopled with rabbits, monkeys, and frogs engaging in human activities such as wrestling, bathing, and praying. The greatest flowering of giga occurred a few hundred years later when ukiyo-e artists imbued the form with a riot of color and imagination. more...
Hanshinkan Modernism: Two (and More) Sides of a Turbulent Era
Colin Smith
What is Hanshinkan Modernism, as in Koiso Ryohei and Yoshihara Jiro: Dividing Ridge of the Hanshinkan Modernism, the exhibition on view until May 27 at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art? Hanshinkan is the area extending from Osaka to Kobe, characterized by a long, narrow strip of land between the Rokko mountains and the sea. Both of the featured artists were from the area, and this retrospective highlights what they shared in common as modernists at heart as well as contemporaries and Hanshinkan compatriots, along with their more noticeable differences. more...
Music of the Spheres: Minoru Nomata at Sagacho Archives
Alan Gleason
Minoru Nomata is one of a significant roster of artists who made their debut at Sagacho Exhibit Space, a driving force in the creation of Tokyo's contemporary art scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Tokyo artists had long been at the mercy of established Ginza galleries that charged them for the privilege of showing their work, but Sagacho pioneered a new, collaborative artist-gallery relationship in spaces carved out of converted warehouses along the Sumida River. Though the building that housed Sagacho and several other kindred galleries was torn down long ago, its legacy lives on at Sagacho Archives, a venue currently displaying new works by Nomata. more...
