iNational Museum of Modern Art, TokyoKitanomaru Park, Chiyoda
Amis de Paris: Japanese Artists in Paris
MOMAT Collection Focus show on Japanese artists who lived in Paris from the pre-war era through the postwar period, including Fujita Tsuguharu and Okamoto Taro.
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Saeki Yuzo painted Gas Lamp and Advertisements on his second stay in Paris, the year before he died in a hospital outside the city, aged 30. It's a street corner of posters pasted over each other, the lettering in quick, thin strokes lifting off a drab wall.
You'll find it among about 40 works in Gallery 4 by Japanese artists who went to Paris before and after the war. More than 200 lived there in the 1920s. Fujita's Five Nudes and Okamoto Taro's Contrepoint are here, with loans of Takano Misao and Okanoue Riu, both popular in Paris then, and new acquisitions of women artists. The title is borrowed from a 1930 club for people back from Paris, proof that "when I lived in Paris" already needed its own magazine.
It's one room, not a blockbuster. Entry is the ¥500 MOMAT Collection ticket (free under 18 and over 65), or ¥300 after 17:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, open until 20:00. Some prints change on 17 November.
Look for
Fujita Tsuguharu, Five Nudes (1923)
Five nude women stand in a line against a curtained bed on a canvas two metres wide, the painting Fujita showed at the 1923 Salon d'Automne.
Saeki Yuzo, Gas Lamp and Advertisements (1927)
Look at the posters layered on a Paris street corner, their lettering painted in fast, thin, rhythmic strokes that stand out from the dull wall behind.
Okamoto Taro, Contrepoint (1935/54)
The canvas on the wall is Okamoto's 1954 remake: the 1935 original, painted during his decade in Paris, was destroyed in the war.
Hamaguchi Yozo and Minami Keiko, side by side
The married printmakers hang in one row, four prints each, with Hamaguchi's Roofs of Paris and Minami's Two Girls in the Rain until 15 November.
Mori Mami's paintings
Four canvases, including a self-portrait from about 1952, by Mori, who went to Paris alone and married the painter Domoto Hisao there; one Domoto work hangs alongside.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want a blockbuster: it's one room of about 40 works, mostly from the museum's own collection.
With kids
Free for high-school students and anyone under 18; adults pay ¥500.
Also at National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
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Image credits
6
- Amis de Paris: Japanese Artists in ParisCourtesy of National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
- Suikoden: The Water Margin, Outlaws of the MarshCourtesy of Tokyo Station Gallery
- The Beauty of Coolness: Edo-Tokyo Museum Glass Craft CollectionCourtesy of Edo-Tokyo Museum
- National Museum of Modern Art, TokyoKakidai, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Tokyo Station GalleryDaderot / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, TokyoDaderot, CC0