The Museum of Modern Art in NYC is launching an exhibit called Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, that investigates the transformation of Tokyo from a war-torn nation into an international center for arts, culture and commerce. The exhibition will run from November 18 through February 25, 2012 and includes over 200 works of various media including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, drawings, graphic design, video and documentary film.
More after the break.
The work will include iconic works as well as some recently reevaluated works, concentrating on a network of creative individuals and practices through a turbulent time in the country’s history.
Artists in the exhibition include: artist collectives such as Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), Hi Red Center (Takamatsu Jiro, Akasegawa Genpei, Nakanishi Natsuyuki), and Group Ongaku (Group Music); critical artistic figures such as Okamoto Taro, Nakamura Hiroshi, Ay-O, Yoko Ono, Shiomi Mieko, and Kudō Tetsumi; photographers Moriyama Daido, Hosoe Eikoh, and Tomatsu Shomei; graphic designer Yokoo Tadanori; and architects Isozaki Arata, Tange Kenzo, and Kurokawa Kisho, among others.
In conjunction with Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, MoMA will present a 40-film retrospective of the Art Theater Guild, the independent film company that radically transformed Japanese cinema by producing and distributing avant-garde and experimental works from the 1960s until the early 1980s.
The retrospective will feature such filmmakers as Teshigahara Hiroshi, Shindo Kaneto, Imamura Shohei, Oshima Nagisa, Matsumoto Toshio, and Wakamatsu Koji, and will run concurrently with the exhibition. The retrospective is organized by Go Hirasawa (Meiji-Gakuin University), Roland Domenig (University of Vienna), and Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.
Text and Images Courtesy of MoMA
