International Art News

Japanese, Esoteric Buddhist Bodhisattva, c. 1131–74, color and ink on paper, the Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art. - Hester + Hardaway Photographers

From June 10, 2012 to September 23, 2012 – Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Collectors Kimiko and John Powers began buying Japanese artwork in the 1960s. Over the next four decades they amassed 300 objects, building one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Japanese art outside of Japan. The MFAH presents 85 selections from their holdings in Unrivalled Splendor: The Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art. The last exceptional collection of Japanese art in private hands, the Powers Collection is renowned for its extraordinary scale and quality, and the exhibition provides a rare chance to see these remarkable examples in the Houston region.

Shokado Shojo and Hori Kyan, Crested Mynah on Oak Branch, 1637, ink on paper, the Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art. - Hester + Hardaway Photographers

Unrivaled Splendor showcases some of the earliest known examples of Buddhist art in Japan; narrative scroll paintings; beautiful examples of calligraphy; screens embellished with gold and silver; sketches; sculptures; and objects of lacquer, pearl, and silver. The wide array, from courtly to popular works of art, reveals overlapping themes in Japanese art.

These diverse and important objects tell the fascinating story of Japan’s artistic development and its enduring cultural heritage. Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated catalogue, published by the MFAH and distributed by Yale University Press.

Museum of Fine Arts

Daido Moriyama, Shinjuku #11, 2000, gelatin silver print, 13 1/4 x 9 in., courtesy of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. © Daido Moriyama

April 7, 2012–July 31, 2012 – Los Angeles County Museum of Art – LACMA - Japanese Pavilion
Photographer Daido Moriyama (Japan, b. 1938) first came to prominence in the mid-1960s with his gritty depictions of Japanese urban life.  His highly innovative and intensely personal photographic approach often incorporates high contrast, graininess, and tilted vantages to convey the fragmentary nature of modern realities. Fracture: Daido Moriyama presents a range of the artist’s renowned black-and-white photographs, exemplifying the radical aesthetic of are, bure, boke (grainy, blurry, out-of-focus), as well as the debut of recent color work taken in Tokyo. A selection of his photo books—Moriyama has published more than forty to date—highlights the artist’s highly influential experimentation with reproduction media and the transformative possibilities of the printed page.  In total, Moriyama’s achievements convey the artist’s boldly intuitive exploration of urban mystery, memory, and photographic invention.

Beauty Parlor, Tokyo - Daido Moriyama c. 1975 - Gelatin silver print - 7 x 10 5/8 in. - Ralph M. Parsons Fund - © Daido Moriyama

Born in Ikeda, Osaka, Daido Moriyama first trained in graphic design before taking up photography with Takeji Iwaniya, a professional photographer of architecture and crafts. Moving to Tokyo in 1961, he assisted photographer Eikoh Hosoe for three years and became familiar with the trenchant social critiques produced by photographer Shomei Tomatsu. He also drew inspiration from William Klein’s confrontational photographs of New York, Andy Warhol’s silkscreened multiples of newspaper images, and the writings of Jack Kerouac and Yukio Mishima.

Museum Hours

Moulds and vases at the sides of a railway, Jingdezhen. Photography by Roger Law

From 4 November 2011 to 25 March 2012 – Victoria and Albert Museum
Porcelain City: Jingdezhen is a display of contemporary works in porcelain by four artists from the UK, Japan and China: Roger Law, Felicity Aylieff, Ah Xian and Takeshi Yasuda. All their works have been made in collaboration with the network of small porcelain factories which make up the vibrant porcelain city of Jingdezhen in China: a site of huge historical significance in the production of porcelain. Its importance is illustrated through the important collections of Chinese porcelain held by the Museum.

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