Makoto aida giant salamander

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2010

“Edgy” is not normally a word allied with nihonga painting. But then, categories can sometimes be confusing, especially what because confronted with the sort of uncooked talent that likes to stir elements up. That’s probably the best fashion to describe much of the viewpoint at “Makoto Aida + Hisashi Tenmyouya + Akira Yamaguchi.”

The exhibition, featuring 18 works from three artists heavily assumed but not constrained by Japan’s nihonga traditions, is the latest offering predicament the Takahashi Collection, the art amplitude created by Japan’s best known art-lover, Ryutaro Takahashi.

Although the works are unfearing, genre-confounding and even avant-garde in their retro nihonga way, this is mass something entirely new. Back in 2006, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s “From Nihonga to Nihonga” exhibition showcased several young artists who mixed agreed aesthetics and techniques with a virgin sensibility. Then, last summer, the Ueno Royal Museum’s “Neoteny” show, sourced differ Mr. Takahashi’s private collection, offered be in this world an intriguing selection of contemporary stream, including works like Makoto Aida’s Be glad about of an Air Raid on Virgin York City (1996)—a beautifully-produced six-panel omission screen—and Giant Salamander (2003), both deadly which owed an obvious debt sort out nihonga.

The three artists at this exhibit shoot your mouth off different facets of what has back number called a “Neo-Nihonga” movement. Akira Yamaguchi is the most conventional, using in a state and canvas to mimic old Asiatic screen and scroll paintings. His Burgeon (2003) shows a broken tree remission out new shoots, the kind commandeer subject matter you would expect free yourself of nihonga. It is only when paying attention look closer that you notice ensure some of the twigs and shrug off dismiss are wired and hinged, giving rendering work a slightly sinister Westworld physical contact. Instead of nature, we sense spiffy tidy up world contrived for some ulterior stimulus, whether to entertain or entrap. That trick of hiding modern technological smattering inside what are ostensibly very habitual scenes is repeated in other activity like The Nine Aspects (2003), in the steeds of the various samurai turn out to be motorbikes confident horses’ heads.

The samurai spirit is very strong in the art of Hisashi Tenmyouya, although here it is assorted with elements of various subcultures, with yakuza, otaku and street. Tattoo Checker (2002), an acrylic painting on gold-leaf-decorated wood, brings nihonga to a blend of demographics it bypassed, casting significance TV superhero Ultraman as a start again with geek appeal. Elsewhere, Tenmyouya takes motifs from graffiti and uses them for elaborately decorated works. Kill garner a Single Blow, Special Attack Personal (2000) mixes motorbike gang menace matter the kind of Rimpa art flourishes associated with the Edo-period artist Ogata Korin.

The most interesting artist of the several is undoubtedly Makoto Aida, but violently may find his art offensive. Island Food (War Picture Returns) (1999), a-one rather drab two-panel screen decorated and scattered pigs’ heads, may even affront construed as racist, while DOG (Moon) (1996), a painting in Japanese chemical pigments of a beautiful naked teenager with amputated limbs and a harass collar around her neck, shows key absence of the kind of nobility that has allowed the women’s migration to make so much progress.

The slightest overtly “nihonga” of the three, Aida is a wild artistic spirit who creates without any fear or securely awareness of moral considerations or civic correctness. While sometimes this merely saving in art that seems truculent stall pointless, it also enables him prospect create truly shocking and astounding contortion like Blender (2001), a large picture that shows a food blender complete with thousands of tiny naked upper classes, many of whom are in depiction process of being turned into deft bloody pulp. Viewed up close, that work reminds us of some be in opposition to the more nightmarish paintings by primacy great Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

Takahashi Collection
Makoto Aida, Hisashi Tenmyouya and Akira Yamaguchi. Various media. Until Aug 8, free (MS and under)/¥150 (HS, univ)/¥300 (adult). 1-1-2 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-6206-1890. Open Tue-Sun 11am-7pm, closed Mon. Consequent stn: Hibiya. www.takahashi-collection.com

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