Various artistic trends originating in Europe after World War 1, such as Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus in Germany and Surrealism in France, left a strong impression on Japanese art and photography in the Taisho and the early Showa periods. In photography in particular, the Western influence brought a new movement called Shinko Shashin (New Photography) in the early Showa period. This exhibition was an attempt at reexamining the visual expression in the period from the perspective of the photographic work of artists from fields other than photography, focusing on the work of Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei-Q.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 19 April–19 June, 1979; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California, June 24–August 5, 1979; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, July 20–August 6, 1979, The Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukui, April 1980.

Including artists; Mako Idemitsu, Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Hakudo Kobayashi, Akira Kurosaki, Toshio Matsumoto, Kyoko Michishita, Tsuneo Nakai, Ko Nakajima, Fujiko Nakaya, Hitoshi Nomura, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Keigo Yamamoto

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

A pictorial record of the exhibition Japanese Photography 1930s, at Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, 1988, which collects photographs from the emerging photography of the era. Approximately 340 illustrations of the work of photographers such as Kiyoshi Koishi, Shoji Ueda, Ei-Q, Koshiro Onchi, Nakaji Yasui, Iwata Nakayama, Shinzō Fukuhara, Kineo Kuwabara, Terushichi Hirai amongst others.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Working in proximity to US military compounds and naval bases in Japan during and following World War II, Tatsuo Ikeda composed a visual vocabulary that escaped order and realism. Primarily drawing and painting on paper, Ikeda creates surreal scenes where mutated bodies morph with nearly unrecognisable architecture set on backgrounds of swirling line drawings or empty gradients. Ikeda lived for almost a century and shaped his art career around the tumults that he experienced as a result of US and Japanese political affairs.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Atsuko Tanaka: 1960 点と線の渦巻き at The Contemporary Art Gallery, Seibu Department Store, Tokyo, 19 April–15 May, 1985.

Atsuko Tanaka was a Japanese avant-garde artist best known for her Neo-Dada Electric Dress (1956), a garment made from hundreds of lightbulbs painted in primary colors. This iconic work, which she wore to exhibitions, functions as a conflation of Japanese traditional clothing with modern urbanization, bringing an unexpected and challenging interpretation to both. “I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work,” Tanaka once said. A member of the Gutai movement, much of her work used domestic objects like lightbulbs, textiles, doorknobs, and doorbells. With these objects, the artist was able to create work about the body without a body present. She maintained a broad practice that included performance “happenings,” sculpture, and installation, while her later work focusing on two-dimensional painting, with colorful organic abstract shapes connecting circles and lines.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Programme produced on the occasion of Playbill Act IV: Mieko Shiomi at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam March 9, 2023.

Mieko Shiomi is most-known for her substantial contribution to the Fluxus movement, where her investigations into the nature and limits of sound, music and auditory experience began as a student in Tokyo in the late 1950s, during which time she co-founded the seminal postwar Japanese experimental music collective Group Ongaku.

Central to Shiomi’s body of work is the creation of Fluxus editions—printed matter often taking the form of instruction cards and action invitations—and events, for which she gained most recognition in 1960s and 70s after relocating temporarily to New York in 1964 on the invitation of George Maciunas. During this time she began scoring ‘action poems,’ most notably Spatial Poem (1965), whereby she removed musical notation from the score entirely, instead favouring verbal instructions that were to be interpreted by the performer.

Designed by Maud Vervenne.