Garden of Painting - Japanese Art of 00s - National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Un Coin du Salon en 1880

 by Edouard Datan (1848 - 1897)

Firstly, this museum puts on stunning exhibitions, real benchmarks in what is considered good European and Japanese western painting, gosh some of the imagery one has seen on exhibit here, along with the quality and quantity has been breathtaking. So when museums do that, then the expectations are high, for having the likes of Van Gogh Cézanne and Rubens etc..., on show to name a few, really sets a precedent.

This current exhibition is ordinary by comparison, not so much because the art by the Japanese artists within the Kansai region is bad, it’s not, in the many years in reviewing local galleries here they can hold their head comfortably, and exhibit anywhere world-wide but this show tends to be an average spectacle of its representation.

One of the reasons for this ordinary exhibition may well be one of the curator's criteria for selection of artists as stated here;

A certain amount of attention would be paid to the ratio of men and women. This was due to the fact that as a male curator I was worried that I might unconsciously choose too many men. Ultimately I settled on an equal number: fourteen men and fourteen women.

The curator need not have worried about gender equality, had  he picked really good aesthetic paintings that could have happened to represent twenty women and eight men, no one may well have cared because the art would have revealed that the instinct of the curator was at its best. Equity may well have been an issue for the curator but this is a major art gallery, one believes the people want the best art on show from that region and this show  is a very good idea, for it lets the Kansai audience see the quality and quantity of artists available to them, in fact the exhibition could have easily included another twenty five artists from the area.

The  aesthetic choices due to this equity issue tends to let the exhibition down because some of women/men  chosen are not as good as the other artists. For example, some of the painted and drawn qualities that  appear within the artworks by Osawa Sakae, Ikeda Mitsuhiro, Kato Mika, Kurita Sakiko, Hoki Nobuya, Kobayashi Takanbou and Nara Yoshitmoto are really sophisticated, revealing that these artists have a very good sensibility in art others on exhibit do not resonate that savvy in image making.

As stated before this is a good gallery and when such aesthetic benchmarks are set then they need to be maintained and not interfered with by some kind of idea of fairness or in the interest of public safety. For one doesn’t want to feel safe but in awe and shock of recent contemporary Japanese painting, the boundaries need to be stretched to the limit, not contracted in some way or another by the mission creep of equity. Good painted aesthetics doesn’t operate on equity,that's a construction of some kind of idea from societal memory and perfect equity tends not exist.



But nonetheless if you’re in Osaka this is an interesting show well worth a visit.

Hiroyo KOTANI Solo Show - Gallery Yamaki Fine Art - Kobe - Japan

Drawing by Hiroyo KOTANI

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

T.S. Eliot

 In entering Gallery Yamaki there is a suit of small drawings on the far wall, hanging like precious jewels, it’s like a visual wonder world one has entered. It reminded one of a conversation had whilst at art school with an old Catholic nun, who said 'often she and her friend would walk in their convent garden and pick up a pea to look at the beautiful sensations that could be found within it, they would be quite amazed how God could construct so much beauty into a small  pea'.

And in seeing Hiroyo Kotani suit of drawings then examining them one by one, the visual poetry that resonates from each of them saturates ones memory, as every small trace or mark is seen and reviewed along with ongoing sets of sensations.

In a world were speed is almost always seen as some kind of improvement in time management, this show is a pleasure to slow down and gaze at these small drawings, it’s a challenge really for the audience, for can they now really appreciate art, can they slow down and look a visual poetry, for these drawings are good and they certainly need that kind of slow forensic observation to be fully appreciated.

Artwork by Hiroyo KOTANI

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

Thomas Moore

As one left the gallery, the speed of Japan jolted the senses back into its frenetic pace; the poetry of Kotani’s drawings were still with me in  memory, the drawn nuances on paper with their small shifts of hue/tone, along with whimsical and more deterministic marks on paper appeared to collect into a visual symphony it was a nice remembrance to have had on the way home in these crowded trains.

So if your near Yamaki Gallery of Fine Art in Motomachi, Kobe, take time out and see this interesting show.

Why are art surveys of local artists important?

Map to Bunbury Regional Art Gallery from Google Maps

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.

Herbert Read
British Art Critic

Local artists add a lot to the communities especially in what they contribute in the form of ideas and how these tend to a have a ripple effect that can be innovated on within the community. For example, as a young artist it was a happy experience to walk through some of the surveys in painting by likes of Robert Juniper, George Haynes, Doug Chambers and Mac Betts held at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in the nineteen eighties plus very informative, particularly since Western Australia is so remote.

Three of the artists that had mid career surveys at AGWA being Haynes, Betts and Chambers were from well known London art schools and they bought interesting ideas, along with some stunning surface qualities in painting to be learned from and applied to ones praxis. Some of the good paintings still resonate in ones memory for example Betts Goldfield images were really sensational image making and more to the point he was one of the first white western painters to make serious painterly statements about the remote goldfields terrain in Western Australia.

Then there were Hayne's large paintings of the Darling Range, these were probably his most poetic images in painting, they were memorising to see. Also these surveys of Western Australian artists held at AGWA (there was always a crowd) presented a central place for artistic dialogue, one would see many of their art school friends in there and it was a great time.

Which leads into the crux of this blog, soon there is to be another survey titled; ‘Over There’ a Survey 2010 the twenty first anniversary exhibition at Bunbury Regional Art Galleries. The work of sixty seven artists from all over the South West is on show from February 14th to April 11th. Having  recently heard about 'Over There'  which bought back these many fine memories of my times at AGWA, one hopes  this survey will have the same effect on many young and older artists in the south west, thus presenting some kind of aesthetic bench marks for them to aspire too, whilst create a presence in the community for those unseen artists who toil away in their studios in the south west of Western Australia. Herbert Reads makes the case for such surveys and their presence within the societal memory  in his most eloquent statement at the beginning of this article.

Over there a Survery 2010 may well became a high point for critical discussion about the  the calibre of artists on show now within that terrain, there are many good ones such as Doug Chambers, Mary Knot and some very fine Aboriginal artists, one wishes the artists and the Bunbury Regional Gallery every success for this fine contribution to the community.