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Explanation

The National Art Center, TOKYO

  Broadly speaking, the art world in Japan consists of two groups—the art world, where values are shared within the framework of art established in modern times; and the world of contemporary art, where artists are in touch with international art trends. The former is based on artistic groups such as Nitten (The Japan Fine Arts Exhibition: its predecessor, the Ministry of Education Exhibition, or Bunten, was established in 1907); Nika Association (established in 1914); The Nihon Bijitsuin (The Japan Art Institute: established in 1898); and member artists. These artists unveil new works at exhibitions held regularly at venues such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the National Art Center, Tokyo. Genres generally include Western-style painting, Japanese painting, sculpture, artistic handicrafts, and calligraphy. Even amateur artists can exhibit their work if they are selected for inclusion in these public exhibitions. Each of these groups has its own history and background, and some of them were founded in order to launch an artistic movement. However, as time has passed and one generation of artists has yielded to another, each organization's original purpose and character has tended to fade. Today, most consist of a pyramid-shaped structure with highly prized amateur memberships at the base and professional artists at the peak.
  By contrast, the latter group is dominated by contemporary artists who work on their own, without belonging to any artistic group. The list of genres in which these artists are active is not limited to painting and sculpture, but rather is long and varied, including photography, video, illustration, digital media, and performance art. Characteristic of their approach is a tendency to move beyond the framework of conventional genres. In contemporary art, the emphasis is on whether the creator can incorporate a distinctive perspective or new values. For this reason, there is no shortage of work employing novel expressive styles or stimulating content, and sometimes the work of these artists is said to be difficult to understand. These trends can be seen as a new current in Japanese art, absorbed as Japanese artists unveiled their work overseas and participated in international exhibitions after the end of World War II.
  There has been rapid progress in art museums over the last 20 to 30 years, during which time nearly every prefecture and major city in Japan has built a public art museum. Many of these facilities excel architecturally, and examples such as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Aomori Museum of Art; and Yokosuka Museum of Art which have become topics of conversation thanks to their innovative designs. On the other hand, there has been a tendency to neglect the content in favor of the container, so to speak. In particular, all art museums have faced operational difficulties stemming from the recession that began with the collapse of Japan's real estate bubble in the early 1990s. As the 21st century began, national art museums underwent a change in their legal status as they became independent administrative entities, and a designated manager system was introduced for public museums. The climate of the times increasingly suggests that the operation of museums will require knowledge and effort on a par with private enterprise.

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Takashi Murakami's "global otaku strategy"

Artist Takashi Murakami has gained popularity by incorporating Japan's internationally popular otaku subculture into art. His work using otaku motifs such as anime and figurines, which previously have been considered to constitute a subculture, has been well received overseas, and a retrospective exhibition was launched in Europe and the United States in 2007. His work continues to command premium prices, and a life-size figure of a youth set a record in 2008 by selling at auction for some 1.6 billion yen. Murakami has also collaborated with Louis Vuitton and staged "Little Boy", an exhibition introducing otaku subculture in New York. His continuing status as a social phenomenon is reflected by his inclusion in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" list in 2008.

Funding bubble and art fairs

Art Fair Tokyo, a contemporary art fair first held in 2005, posted some 200 million yen in sales its first year. By the time the second Art Fair Tokyo was held two years later, that amount had ballooned to around 1 billion yen. This growth is not a sign of a sudden upswing in the Japanese economy—rather, some of the abundant money flowing around in the world's economy at the time had fueled a global art bubble whose effects had reached Japan. Reacting to the newfound source of money, organizers began holding Art Fair Tokyo annually instead of every other year. Over the last few years, the bubble has led to a series of contemporary art fairs, including the Tokyo Contemporary Art Fair, Art Osaka, Art@Agnes, and Ultra (Emerging Directors' Art Fair). How the global financial crisis and stock market selloff of 2008 will affect the bubble of the last few years remains to be seen.

Art in town

There are numerous experiments currently underway in exhibiting works of art in everyday spaces such as abandoned school buildings, shopping districts, and private homes instead of art museums and galleries. These initiatives are designed not simply to beautify the urban landscape, but to revitalize cities by exposing residents to unexpected encounters with art, and to increase their awareness of art by involving them in its creation and exhibition. Related events held during the fall of 2008 included the Kogane-cho Bazaar, an effort connected with the Yokohama Triennale to reuse locations such as elevated sections of private railroad right-of-way as art spaces; Kanazawa Art Platform, which saw homes and shrines in Kanazawa City dotted with works of art; the Toride Art Project, which transformed vacant units in a Toride City housing complex into works of art; and Tamagawa Art Line, which exhibited works of art at private railroad stations in Tokyo. Similarly, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, an event that has been held once every three years since 2000, features the Empty House Project, which exhibits works of art in depopulated agricultural villages, and transforms deserted houses and abandoned school buildings themselves into works of art.

The evolution of the media arts

  Recent years have seen the development of new, future-oriented potential in the media arts, as science, technology, and digital media combine with a range of other fields and culture. In particular, attention has been focused on the field of new media art, which features computer graphics and interactive art.
  The striking level of activity in this field, which combines Japanese art and technology, extends overseas. Half of the presentations given in the area featuring works of art that utilize state-of-the-art technologies at the SIGGRAPH conference in the United States, considered to be the world's largest computer graphics festival, were given by research institutes operated by Japanese universities. Furthermore, Japanese artists have won a conspicuous number of awards at Ars Electronica in Australia, the world's largest media and art festival. In 2008, Norimichi Hirakawa's "a plaything for the great observers at rest", a work that allowed the viewer to manipulate models of the earth and sun, won an award of distinction in the interactive art category.
  The Agency for Cultural Affairs uses the collective term "media arts" to refer to manga, animation, and video games—fields with a strong entertainment element that Japan is adept at producing. The Agency is actively working to introduce the media arts to new and larger audiences through events such as its Japan Media Arts Festival.

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Industry Structure / Business Practices

Structure of the Art Industry
Japanese artists can be broadly divided into two groups. Artists in the first group belong to established artistic groups and pursue their careers primarily through public exhibitions such as The Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten), the successor to the Ministry of Education Exhibition (Bunten); the Nikaten Exhibition held by the Nika Association; and The Japan Art Institute's Inten event. Artists in the second group work and present their creations independently (this group is involved primarily in contemporary art).

Art museums and galleries serve as the venues where Japanese artists typically present their work. Art museums usually have a permanent exhibition where their own collection is on display along with one or more simultaneous special exhibitions. There are also a number of facilities such as the National Art Center, Tokyo, and Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum that do not maintain collections of their own but rather hold self-produced special exhibitions or lease space for juried and special exhibitions. Some galleries plan exhibitions to sell artists' works, while others lease space to artists. The practice of leasing space at galleries, a uniquely Japanese system, has the advantage of guaranteeing the ability to freely stage the presentation of a work of art to any artist who can pay the rent, and such facilities have given up-and-coming artists an important venue for introducing their work. However, the number of galleries leasing space for special contemporary art exhibits has grown as contemporary art has gained critical acclaim in recent years, and the role of these facilities is undergoing a transformation.

There are several types of special exhibitions held in Japan: (1) exhibitions held by individual art museums, (2) joint exhibitions held by multiple art museums, and (3) exhibitions sponsored by corporations. The third type of exhibition, which frequently involves sponsorship by mass media companies such as newspapers and TV stations, is a uniquely Japanese system. Such partnerships exist against an historical background where mass media companies not only provided financial assistance after World War II, a time when art museums' numbers and budgets were dwindling, but also drew on their connections to overseas artists and institutions and their advertising capability inside Japan to sponsor exhibitions. Among these are traveling exhibitions that make use of museum networks with national memberships such as the Japan Association of Art Museums, an organization spearheaded by the Yomiuri Shimbun consisting of 124 public art museums throughout Japan as of 2008, to coordinate budgets and schedules for individual facilities' events.

(Source: "Basic Production Knowledge: Art Edition" No. (1) to (3) as published in the July, September, and November 1998 issues of News Letter to Arts Crew; published by Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities, instructor: art journalist Makoto Murata)

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