New Art City

Shimon Minamikawa Courtesy of Mizako and Rosen

Last week, after the Armory Show ended, the Materialist had a lovely and dishy dinner with Elisa Uematsu, her friend from Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo. Elisa told the Materialist that her colleague Jeffrey had just opened a new gallery with his wife (a former director at Tomio Koyama Gallery) called Misako and Rosen. (The Materialist loves the muted acrylic paintings--of people, of telephones--by Shimon Minamikawa.)

There aren't nearly enough galleries in Japan to hold all the talented young artists who deserve representation, so the Materialist is not only very happy that Misako and Rosen have stepped into the void, but also awestruck at their temerity and bravery--starting a gallery, after all, is not for the timid or cautious, and starting one in Tokyo is even harder.

So here's to you, Jeffrey! May Misako and Rosen live long and prosper. And this is the last posting about art in Japan. For now.

The Materialist SCOPEs it out

Tokyo's Takefloor 404 & 502 space at the Armory Show in New York City

Last Friday, the Materialist ditched work for the Armory show, the annual art extravaganza that descends upon New York on what is invariably the coldest weekend of the year.

Because the Armory show has grown more successful by the year-and because art itself has become, in the nauseous words of one of the Materialist's acquaintances, a "hot liquid commodity" (Yuk!)-the fair has inspired a number of satellites, including Scope and Pulse, which nip like puppies for fairgoers' attention, and which every year grow larger and grander themselves.

The Materialist's Favorite Magazine

Maybe it's because the Materialist is in an acquisitive sort of mood (more on that later), or maybe it's because she's preparing for her trip to India (much more on that later, and by the way, thanks for the great info, Globorati!), but she suddenly realized she hasn't yet mentioned one of her absolute favorite publications, Art It, a bilingual (Japanese-English) quarterly that's the single best resource to the contemporary Asian art scene the Materialist has encountered. Although they do the expected very well--Q&As, reviews, etc.--what the Materialist really values is the magazine's ability to authoritatively cover the continent's up-and-coming art scenes (China, Korea, and most recently, India), along with their dedication to exploring the work of young artists, not just the same established names recognizable from the auction circuits (although their interviews with Yoko Ono and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others, have been some of the most interesting the Materialist's encountered).

Comfort level

Hyatt Regency Kyoto
Photo: Hyatt Corporation

Why, the Materialist has often wondered, are there no good Western-style hotels in Kyoto? Certainly one could argue it's because there don't need to be: Kyoto is, after all, known for its ryokan, traditional Japanese inns that promise (and deliver) a fantasy of Japan, where everything, from etiquette to meals, follows a code written many years ago and perfected over generations.

But what if all that etiquette is making you a little squirrelly? What if, after a long day of pilgrimage, walking from beautifully maintained  (and this being Japan, they inevitably are) ji (shrine) to ji, you want nothing more than to go back to your room, flop down on your bed, and have a nice big beer followed by a nice big burp? Then what do you do?

This was exactly the problem confronting the Materialist when her father, after only three temples--Daitoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji,and Ryoan-ji, which march along Kyoto's northwestern flank--sank down onto a stone bench outside a rice-cake stand, and announced he "had had enough of the jis." (His comment echoed one the Materialist's friend Maer had made last December, when, upon sitting down in yet another spectacularly tiled restaurant in Fez, he looked around and said, "You know, I've really had it with these tiles.")

The Velvet Rope

The day before the Materialist and her family left for Kyoto, there was an article in the Daily Yomirui, one of Japan's English-language dailies, about a battle between two brothers.

Here's what happened: there's a store in Kyoto called Ichizawa Hampu (Higashioji-dori Furumonzen [Chion'in-mae] Agaru, Nishikawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto; 03-75-541-0138), which makes sturdy and plainspoken hemp bags in various butch-chic colors: gray, olive, navy, black. After the patriarch died, the company passed to his third son, Shinzaburo. But then Shintaro, his older brother, contested the will. The case went to court, Shintaro won, and Shinzaburo started his own company, Ichizawa Shinzaburo Hampu, earlier this year. It was like Rashomon as chronicled by WWD. The best part? Not only was Shinzaburo making essentially the same product--though his bags reportedly had a more updated silhouette, as well as a broader and peppier palette--but he'd opened his store almost directly across the street from the mothership. According to the article, the battle had sparked something of a frenzy, and every morning, long lines (sometimes up to 100 people) gathered outside both stores, waiting to get in. This was something the Materialist had to see.

Consumed

Over the years, the Materialist's father's enthusiasms have turned to many things, and places, and people. What appears at first to be a harmless affection for a certain diva, say, or city, can deepen into something closer to an obsession, often without his family noticing until the consequences of his adoration begin to affect them. The Materialist's father has, at various points in his life, been besotted with the Germans, Los Angeles, David Hockney, Robert Adams, Maria Callas, Renee Fleming, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and, most recently, the Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki.

Araki is a member of that great generation of Japanese postwar photographers whose pictures capture that period of modern Japan's most profound metamorphosis, those frightening and fragile years in the late forties through the fifties and early sixties, when everything the country was, and had thought of itself, was suddenly made to change. Their collective images chronicle a Japan so different than the one we think of today that they seem to belong to another world altogether: of filthy orphans, their faces already hard and brown as adults', smoking cigarettes by a curb; of a group of defeated middle-aged men and women, their clothes so shapeless it's difficult to tell one gender from the other, lining up for work; of a mangy dog, its fur oily, its eyes gleaming, its fangs bared, caught wandering the streets of Tokyo. Along with Araki, there was Daido Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Ihei Kimura, Shomei Tomatsu, Shoji Ueda, and many, many others, some of whom have become internationally renowned, and others of whom have receded from public memory.

Acts of Worship

Shugoarts.com

After their expedition to TKG Editions, the Materialist and her father stuffed themselves into a cab for Kiyosumishirakawa, and Tomio Koyama Gallery. This was the third space the gallery had occupied in less than five years. In 2002, Koyama, along with a number of other prominent galleries, was located in an old rice factory in Saga-cho that was remarkable for being, well, old.

In London and New York, not only are the gallery scenes relatively concentrated in two or three neighborhoods, but they have the sorts of wide, unfinished, converted warehouse spaces that are simply impossible in a city like Tokyo, with its population density and its relative lack of buildings pre-dating World War II. The Materialist loved that Saga-cho space, with its weedy, pebbly courtyard, its buffed cement steps, its dark, damp nooks and crannies. But at the end of 2002, the galleries were ordered out of the building, and forced to scatter across the city: at the time, Taka Ishii, Shugoarts, and Koyama all moved into a rather featureless low-slung structure across from a gas station, a space the Materialist was unmoved by but which was, she thinks now, at least very easy to find.

Stop and shop

When on family trips, there is always one leader. On this trip, the Materialist was meant to be that one leader. She set the agenda. She read the maps. She dictated when, and where, people could go. (All while trying desperately to ditch them at every step.) But while the Materialist's mother and brother were happy to follow protocol, trailing after the Materialist through subway stations and down twisty streets, as obedient as small white dogs, the Materialist's father instead attached himself to her side, contradicting her every move. The Materialist's father likes to say that surgeons (with whom he has some experience) are "not always right, but always certain"--the same, however, must be said for him. If the Materialist said, "OK, let's catch the Chuo line to Kanda and then pick up the Yamanote," the Materialist's father was right there to say, "But why can't we just take the Chuo to Tokyo station and then walk from there?" If the Materialist said, "Let's stop by the hotel and drop off our stuff, and then we'll go off to Mandarake before it closes," the Materialist's father would say, "What? It won't close now! It'll be open another few hours at least!" If the Materialist said, "You can all go to hell in a handbasket," the Materialist's father would say, "But I think if we went by plane it would be much faster, and a more pleasant ride besides."

Superfreaks

Did you miss the Materialist last week? DID YOU? Don't lie. It's very nice of you to make the effort, but the Materialist is well aware that her readers were too busy stuffing their craws with turkey and stuffing to notice her infrequent posts.

Well, the Materialist has a good explanation for her silence--she was (as promised, and promised, and promised) in Japan on her annual trip to visit her favorite city, Tokyo.

But is your favorite city still your favorite city when seen with your entire family in tow? The Materialist has visited Japan with her mother, and with her father, but never with the two of them at the same time, not to mention her brother as well. In the months before the trip, the Materialist's personal terror alert never fell below orange, especially after her parents informed her that all four of them would be sharing one room, and the Materialist and her brother a double bed, a bit of enforced incestuousness that was making the Materialist, ever slow to the wallet, begin seriously considering checking herself into the Park Hyatt, alone, her bank account be damned.

Tokyo 101

Worth the 16-hour flight Photo: Marumiya Tofu

In a few hours (two, actually), the Materialist is off for her annual November trip to Tokyo. November because, with its dramatic crimson leaves, the Materialist thinks of it as one of the country's signature seasons--the other being spring, with its pale, cottony pink blooms of cherry blossoms--and Tokyo because...well, so many reasons, which the Materialist will doubtless bloviate about endlessly upon her triumphant return. For now, she'll just say that it's impossible to be interested in architecture, and art, and design, and food, and not love, or at the very least admire, Japan, where such things have assumed a ritual and sort of worship befitting a secular religion.

However, for all this, Japan has relatively few tourists (in 2004, the country received only 6.7 million international visitors, a remarkably small figure when you consider that New York City alone welcomed 6.6 million in 2005), and the Materialist is always trying to get her friends who're designers and artists to go experience it for themselves.