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.

Booklet for Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition at Fuji TV Gallery. Yayoi Kusama’s (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: Pop art and Minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at The Museum Of Modern Art, New York, 19 October–2 January 2, 1967. Including artists Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Tomio Miki, Atsuko Tanaka, Kumi Sugai, Nobuya Abe.

Koshiro Onchi was the most important figure in the ‘Sosaku Hanga’ movement from 1918 until his death, outstanding as a print artist, photographer, book designer and active as a poet, founder and editor of magazines, an author on the subject of prints, art and literature, a leader and organiser of societies and encourager of other artists.

Iwata Nakayama (1895-1949) is regarded as a one of the most important contributors to the Shinko Shashin movement. After graduating from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1918, he received a scholarship from the Japanese government and went to California before settling in New York. At the same time Nakayama was attracted to avant-garde movements and moved in bohemian circles where he met Shimizu Toshi. Shimizu encouraged him to move to Paris in 1926 where he met Man Ray, Fujita Tsuguji, and Enrico Prompolini. These encounters left a deep impression on him and when he returned to Japan in 1927 he energetically set about forming his own vision of ‘pure art photography’. In 1929 he settled in Ashiya (nr. Kobe) and in the following year founded the Ashiya Camera Club with Hanaya Kambei, Korai Seiji, and others. This club became the main driving force of New Photography in Japan. Together with Kimura and Nojima he founded Koga magazine in 1932 that was the most important forum for artistic photography at the time.

Produced on occasion of the exhibition From Nirvana to Catastrophe: Matsuzawa Yutaka and his ‘Commune in Imaginary Space’ at Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, 3 March–22 April, 2017.

Yutaka Matsuzawa (1922–2006) was considered the father of Japanese conceptual art. In his pursuit of ways to express the invisible invisibly, Matsuzawa developed a unique understanding of conceptual art that both elevated and transcended the typical notions of conceptual art in the western, euro-centric art worlds.

The exhibition focused on the period 1969–1973, the most active years of Matsuzawa’s activities, and reflected on the exhibition Nirvana (1970), which was a pioneering international exhibition on Conceptualism in Japan.