Propaganda flourishes in wartime, and the Asian Propaganda exhibition at the British Museum has plenty of examples from Japan’s twentieth century wars – with China (1894-5), Russia (1904-5), Korea (1905), China again (Asia-Pacific War 1931-1945), when Japan occupied Manchuria, and America and its allies (World War II 1941-1945). A sad start to the twentieth century, but a rich source of propaganda art. Continue reading
This has been a busy week for shows in London so a lot of the events in Jewellery Week, in which designers from across the UK showcase their work, passed me by. But I did manage to catch the final flagship event, Treasure, in the Embankment Gallery at Somerset House, showing until 16th June. Continue reading
photo: Alexander Plyuschev
Meltdown on the South Bank runs from 14th to 23rd June, and this year it’s being curated by Japan’s most famous living artist (quite a leap from ‘the world’s most famous unknown artist’ as John Lennon called her), Yoko Ono. She’s eighty years old, doesn’t look a day over fifty, and is still full of energy and subversive ideas. Expect controversy at Meltdown with a couple of her most famous performance art works on the bill. Continue reading
The sun shone on us yesterday at the official opening of the new Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park as people climbed over, scrambled under and generally took possession of Sou Fujimoto’s amazing floating structural grid. There was a summer party atmosphere, especially among those lucky folk who had got tickets for Fujimoto’s sell-out talk. Naturally, I was one of them. Continue reading
The RA Summer Exhibition is here again! As reliable a sign of summer as Wimbledon, Royal Ascot and Glasto, it’s been held every year since 1769 and is open to ‘all artists of distinguished merit’ – in other words, anybody at all, so long as their work is good enough. This year over a thousand works in all styles and media made the grade and they’re all (or nearly all) for sale. Here’s my personal pick of the best – along with a quick introduction to the five Japanese artists in the show. Continue reading
This weekend is Open Garden Squares Weekend when you get a chance to visit over two hundred community gardens and private squares throughout London, some of which you can only get access to on this one weekend a year. There’ll be food and events and information wherever you go and maybe even some sunshine too. If you’ve got your plan for the day ready that’s fine, but if not, how about going to Bloomsbury, where there are thirteen gardens and garden squares taking part – including the Japanese Zen Garden at SOAS. Continue reading
The BFI have a season of films from the Nikkatsu Film Studio’s glory days in the fifties and sixties, starting on 1st June, and I just know you won’t be able to make up your mind which ones to go and see without my advice. So here it is in two words: Yujiro Ishihara. Don’t know who he is? He’s the Japanese Elvis Presley, the man whose untimely death broke a million hearts. Continue reading
Time moves at the same speed wherever you are, doesn’t it? Well, not if Einstein’s theory of relativity is right. And maybe not if you measure it differently. There’s a fascinating free exhibition at the Science Museum about the many ways in which we’ve measured time over the years, starting with hourglasses and sundials and moving on through the very first clocks to the digital world of the present day. And guess what? One of the things it explains is how in Japan they used to measure time in a totally different way. Continue reading
© Tenri Central Library
The Brunei Gallery at SOAS, where 100 years of Japanese Books, an exhibition of rare Japanese books, documents and manuscripts is on show, is easy to get to – just a few minutes walk from the rear entrance of the British Museum in fact. So why haven’t I been there for so many years? I’ll tell you. Continue reading
For someone who has been through three years of strict training in the art of shojin cuisine at a Zen Buddhist temple in Otsu, near Kyoto, Toshio Tanahashi is surprisingly warm and twinkly. And a bit of a showman too, if the lecture and demonstration on shojin cuisine I went to, organised by the Japan Society, is anything to go by. Continue reading
