National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Japan
Growing up in China, art was strictly binary: there’s traditional Chinese art and its related canons, which is the good, the revived, the hereditary. Then, there’s foreign art, and by foreign, it refers to the Western canon. From the whole genre of oil painting to specific movements like Modernism, this part of art was not taught in school and felt alien to me since I was a child.
Looking back now, familiarized with art outside the narrowly defined world I was in, I find myself attracted to East-Asian artists working with Western cannons portraying East Asia. The selected paintings in this tour make me stare, not at a specific motif or a brushstroke, but at the strange tension I feel when I see familiar subjects in a different reality with shapes and colors.
The museum we visit today is the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Japan. (Enter through the link here, it gives you the desired starting spot) Ahead of you are artworks from the period 1900–1940, a period with great movements within the Western Art world and Japanese society.
Walk Straight into Room 2. Turn left, and stop at the painting on your left. (A woman in traditional Japanese attire and carrying an umbrella.) Open the notice that pop-up at the left corner of the screen. Read about the painting and focus on the painting: Summer, Hiromitsu Nakazawa 1907. Then, without moving away from the spot, turn your camera to the right on the other painting close to you. (An old woman walking in the sunset.) Open the pop-up notice and look at the painting. Take advantage of the focus choice on the paintings, focus on details that attract you, and step back to look at the painting again. Taken the two together, consider these questions: how do these paintings make you feel? Can you think of one other painting that these paintings remind you of? What is it, and why? The things that drew most of my attention are the color and texture of the paintings.
Then, turn around or right, depending on the painting you last focused on, and walk straight to the next room (Room 3). Walk straight and stop at the painting depicting a girl in traditional Japanese attire in a rose field: Roses and a Girl, Kaita Murayama 1917. Open the notice and get to know the painting. Then consider this, compared to the last two paintings we see, what is different? Does this remind you of another work? If so, what is it? My favorite thing about the painting is its colors and the texture of her face. They haunt me with a weird sense of fear and interest. I just can’t stop staring at it.
Turn right and walk down the hall with six statues placed on the side. Stop here with the statues, why were the statues placed here? What’s their aesthetic? What do the space and the works make you feel?
Continue down the hall and enter Room 5; turn left and walk down the end of the room to the red abstract painting: Leaning Woman, Tetsugorō Yorozu 1917. Open the pop-up notice. Look at the painting. What stands out? How do you feel about it?
Given the paintings you have seen and the artists you have thought about in this exhibition, consider these questions: Keep in mind the historic contexts for these paintings (wake of the 20th century, western colonization of Japan, Japan’s later rise to fascism). How do they compare? Compare it with the movements in Western art at the time, do these paintings tell a story? What constitutes that story? (Actual History? Museum placement?)
That’s the end of the designated tour. I strongly encourage you to walk around more for the wonderful works they have. Enjoy!
Link to museum (one embedded in story): https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/the-national-museum-of-modern-art-tokyo/wQGsiQWyGm5yyg?sv_lng=139.7547630741805&sv_lat=35.69060142347733&sv_h=245.7028612864333&sv_p=-12.447563825341234&sv_pid=rikY3N8wLuX6ZfZzpnMTHA&sv_z=0.8461383855931868
