PUBLIC MARKS with tags art & location:japan

Cherry blossoms beckoning in a soft sepia glow… the emptiness of the space and the stillness of the air bestows the photo with comforting nostalgia.

Japanese-born Masami Teraoka combines the influences of traditional Japanese art forms and American Pop art, exploiting the cultural and temporal disparities between the traditional style and the contemporary issues and ideas which form his subject matter. After training with traditional Japanese masters, Teraoka moved to Los Angeles to study Western art in 1961. From the 1970s, he began painting watercolours, and later prints, which mimicked the appearance of ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints of the Edo Period

Mutsugoto is an interactive installation that invites couples to experience an intimate communication over a distance. Begin by laying on the bed and wearing the special ring.  As you relax and think about your partner, gently move your hand around your body. These movements are traced on your own body as well as your partner laying in the other bed. Twinkling spots give a hint of where your partner is drawing.  If you follow your partner’s movements and your strokes cross, the lines will react with each other and reflect your synchrony.

Japanology, set in a land where fortress-like skyscrapers jostle Edo-era relics, is a kaleidoscope of timespace shards, sometimes incongruent and at the same time in unique symphony with each other. All seven pieces in the series strive for a prismatic effect through application of wa - a uniquely Japanese approach to harmony.

Yiching Chen - Apothéose Nihon-ga, pigments minéraux, feuilles d'argent et d'aluminium, papier marouflé sur bois, 120 x 180 cm, 2010

Partners Meng Jin and Fang Er’s first collaborative photography project, Love Hotel explores the two artists’ ongoing interest in urban life, architecture, memory and found objects, and the inter-relationship between physical buildings, objects and their social context. The couple worked on-site within the framework of 3-hour ’rest’ periods in various ’short-stay’ hotels creating improvised, spontaneous sculpture works with the existing objects found in the rented love hotel rooms. Slightly amorphous structures, the rearranged inanimate objects hint at entangled anthropomorphic creations in this fantasy space devoid of actual human presence.

Of the many important cultural artifacts from Japanese antiquity such as folding screens and sliding door paintings, some are rarely shown to the public because they have been owned in other countries, or remain in Japan but need to be protected from deterioration, or because of national regulations.

Artist Steve Bialik represents legendary Star Wars characters as samurai from traditional Japanese art. Darth Vader and Jabba The Hutt are a lot less scary when they are illustrated as a bald dude in a mask and a giant bullfrog.

Tagasode (Whose sleeves?), first half of 17th century Pair of six-panel folding screens ink; color gold and silver on gilded paper

Whose Sleeves? (Tagasode), Momoyama period (1573–1615), late 16th century Japan Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on gilded paper

A 134-page, fully illustrated catalogue edited by Joe Earle and published by Yale University Press provides the historical, cultural, and ideological context for Serizawa's unique oeuvre in six essays written by leading Japanese and American scholars of 20th-century Japanese art and literature.

Volume 12 (1834) brought by A.E. Nordenskild - Royal Library in Stockholm

中原淳一 Junichi Nakahara (1913 - 1988), Kawaga Prefecture Junichi Nakahara was one of the top leaders in fashion illustration during the first half of the 1900's and his artwork of wide eyed women is often referred to as the forerunner of manga. Junichi illustrated not only women in kimono, with an obvious Taisho / Art Deco feel to them, he also did many illustrations of stylishly dressed women in yofuku (Western clothing). I personally find his colourful and dynamic kimono styling to be a major inspiration to my own kimono closet and style, and never grow tired of looking at his illustrations. I hope that by sharing postcard scans, they will be of inspiration to others also.

Chez les Sakai, la sculpture des panneaux de bois (ou gravure d'enseigne) est une histoire de famille ! Reconnus pour leur savoir-faire artisanal, ils signent ceux des grands tournois de Sumotoris, temples célèbres et autres enseignes de prestiges

Appealing to my weakness for dioramas and DIY paper projects, these kits also are a mini lesson on Tatebanko, the forgotten Edo-era Japanese art of creating perspectives from paper. They come in either a snowy scene representing a painting by the master Hiroshige or in a version of Hokusai's wave. Designed and printed in Japan by It's a Beautiful Day (the group leading the Tatebanko revival), the kits feature metallic accents and hidden surprises.

Si en Occident la pensée judéo-chrétienne place l'homme au centre du monde, et le dit choisi par Dieu afin de dominer et asservir à son profit la nature sauvage, il n'en est pas de même en Orient, où l'homme fait partie d'un tout au même titre que l'ensemble des éléments. Enfant de cette unicité, nourri de spiritualité, le jardin zen s'offre comme une peinture graphique, et s'inscrit dans un cadrage précis, à contempler depuis un point fixe. Le jardin zen se caractérise par un espace dépouillé et une quasi-absence de végétation qui conviennent à la rêverie méditative. À travers ses visites japonaises (de son propre jardin ou de ses créations), Erik Borja, spécialiste du jardin zen, et Paul Maurer, photographe, nous permettent de mieux comprendre la démarche, et nous donnent les clés du zen... non pour les copier, mais pour les adapter à notre monde. Les Leçons du jardin zen enseignent chacune des subtilités de cet art et répondent à vos questions : Comment saisir les lignes de force d'un site, du jardin sec au pas japonais ? comment composer avec le minéral ? Où implanter l'univers aquatique, symbole de pureté et source de vie (étangs, cascades ou plantes aquatiques ?) ? Et enfin, quels végétaux installer et comment les tailler ? Un voyage au pays de la contemplation. --Rose d'Albi

In this site you will find illustrations of my prints, issues of my quarterly newsletter, audio interviews, and practical information on the 'how to' of woodblock printmaking.