Artist Leon Reid IV has a way with images. When he’s not remixing the urban environment, he’s playing with the context of art institutions that commission his work, which he always injects with a political or social message. His latest print series, Recent History, is a little of both.
Japan
Posted inArt
Some NY Events You Should Know About
Here are some events you may want to check out this weekend or in the coming week, including a video art festival on Staten Is, unfinished films at Gladstone, Carolee Schneemann bookreading, dance series, Japanese art.
Posted inNews
Iconic US Graphic Novel Publisher Calls it Quits
US-focused graphic novel publisher Tokyopop, founded in 1997, has announced that it will be closing the doors on its American operation on May 31. Tokyopop was the first to publish Japanese manga (comics, or graphic novels) in their original, un-flipped state and did much to popularize what has been called the “manga revolution.”
Posted inNews
Japanese Tsunami Damages National Treasures
Beyond a rising death toll of over 10,800, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan has also damaged a current total of 353 Japanese cultural landmarks, including temples, historic sites and iconic landscapes called “places of scenic beauty.” The Matsushima area, north of Sendai, is among the worst hit in terms of cultural damage. Sites damaged include Matsushima’s Zuigan-ji Temple, a Buddhist temple complex founded in 828 whose walls were cracked in the earthquake, as well as 3 other National Treasures.
Posted inNews
Japanese Modernist Landmark Preserved in Manhattan
At only 40 years old, Japan Society’s low-slung modernist headquarters at 333 East 47th Street has just been named New York’s youngest landmark building by the state’s Landmark Preservation Commission. The structure, designed by Junzo Yoshimura and George G. Shimamoto and first completed in 1971, translates traditional Japanese architectural forms into a modernist idiom, bowing to neither but combining the two languages in an innovative and complex way. I spoke with Japan Society vice president Joe Earle about the landmark designation and his experience of the building itself.
Posted inNews
Is Japanese Radiation Bad For Art? [UPDATE]
According to the Japanese Chunichi Shimbun newspaper, an exhibition called The Birth of French Impressionism set to open at the Prefectural Art Museum in Hiroshima City on April 5 has been canceled due to the cancellation of art loans from France. The loans seem to have been canceled because of fear of radiation damage to the artworks due to the Japanese earthquake and its aftereffects on the area’s nuclear power plants. No one wants to see an irradiated Cezanne! Yet a glance at a map of Japan shows that the French could be worrying a little too much. [Hat tip to Annie Bissett]
Posted inNews
Murakami Asks People to Tweet Art in Support of Japan
On Sunday, Murakami issued a statement in the wake of the devastating Sendai earthquake in Japan asking people to show their support of Japan by tweeting original art with the hashtag, #newday_GEISAI.
Posted inArt
Portable Life Drawing, Now Available on Your iPhone
Count on Japanese software developers to bring us something so delightfully weird yet totally useful. Pose Maniacs is a website that serves as your very own personal figure drawing model, set to whatever pose you like for however long it takes. The site is even downloadable as an iPhone app.
Posted inPerformance
Men Made of Marble
Every now and then, if lucky, you’ll encounter a mode of performance or an artwork that simultaneously requires and supplies a kind of attention that you didn’t even know existed. Sitting in an otherworldly, attentive, stupor, I had that experience watching marble white humans covered in a thin layer of dust on a stage that seemed to be both as empty as nothing at all and, at the same time, as full as a night sky.
As Sankai Juku begins their recent piece, TOBARI, everything melts into darkness and a lone human form materializes — bald, half-naked, monochrome; the dust looks like it’s marble or bone, maybe a thin layer of atomic ash, and it covers the body, which, for a while, is motionless; a quiet, lunar presence in a dark room.
