Every time we talk about the impact of the epidemic, there will always be people around who lament "those trips that have been planned or expected for a long time but have not been able to make a trip", "missed exhibitions or cancelled performances", not everyone has a life-and-death or lack of food and clothing experience, for most people, these specific and small feelings more truly reflect the mental and physical torture suffered over the past two years.
Spring is the most suitable season for travel, if there is no epidemic, probably the Shanghai art museum will be crowded with people, wuhan university cherry blossom trees will be a scene of tourists, or many people simply fly to Japan to combine the joy of traveling to see the exhibition.
At the moment when you can't travel freely and have no exhibitions to see, it's good that there is a little eye candy provided by the Internet. Play a favorite piece of music to blur the boring background, stare at the picture to hypnotize yourself, and maybe experience the happiness of enjoying the whole scenery.
The Yamato nation is famous for its love of cherry blossoms, and there are countless works depicting cherry blossoms. Whether it is "Mountain Cherry Blossoms" by Yokoyama Daikan or "Spring Quiet" by Higashiyama Kuiyi, most of the cherry blossoms painted by Japanese painters bring people the beauty of hazy silence, and the splendor implies a sadness of withering. But in the English artist Damien Hurst Hirst's pencil, cherry blossoms are given a completely different kind of warmth and splendor, a kind of life force that spews out.
Hirst began creating the cherry blossom series in 2018 and completed 107 related works in three years. Hearst explains himself in the exhibition catalogue: the cherry blossom series is about beauty, life and death. They're extreme, somewhat wild, like Jackson Pollock's faces distorted by passion. They are decorative, but they are born out of nature. They have about desire, about how we deal with and change things around us, and they are also a visual fragility and crazy beauty.
This time, the 24 cherry blossoms on display at the Tokyo National Art Center, Hearst blended impressionist pointillist and abstract expressionist action paintings, using a slightly "rough" way to sprinkle oil paint on a large area of blue background, forming cherry blossom trees that bloomed wildly under the clear sky.
Looking at Hearst's cherry blossoms reminds me of Osamu Dazai's description of the seaside mountain cherry blossoms in "Human Disqualification": "Close to the coastline, leaning against the seashore with layers of waves, there are more than twenty tall mountain cherry trees with dark bark standing side by side." At the beginning of the new school year, the mountain cherry blossom trees bloom brilliantly against the background of the strong brown leaves and the blue sea, and when the autumn season is colorful, the cherry blossoms that fall like flying snow flutter and scatter to the sea, decorate the sea, with the waves, and are beaten back to the shore by the waves. ”
So gorgeous, so magnificent, is the cherry blossom.
Spring and autumn are the seasons of each year when Japanese environmental art projects come together. In addition to the famous Setouchi, Naoshima is also a destination that many travelers who love to go to Japan to experience the atmosphere of art and nature are not to be missed.
This year, Hiroshi Sugimoto returned to Naoshima, and the "Corridor of Time" encompasses both his early classic photographs and incorporates new material studies, installations, and sculptures. From the glass tea room work "Mondrian" to the photography exhibition hall, to the lounge where the furniture and decoration are all made by Sugimoto, the whole process is an immersive artistic enjoyment. Immersed in it, you can see a rich and multi-faceted Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographic work "Huayan Waterfall" is exhibited in the first floor space of Benesse House Park.
The 1977 film "Huayan Waterfall" was also the inspiration catalyst for Hiroshi Sugimoto's masterpiece "Seascape" series. Since then, Sugimoto has completed 220 black-and-white seascape photographies in order to photograph the seascape, traveling across the English Channel, the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea, the Tasman Sea, and the Black Sea. Whether it is the "Huayan Waterfall" or the "Seascape" series, Hiroshi Sugimoto believes that he is not dealing with natural scenery, but with the theme of time, the history of things.
Hyenas, Jackals, Vultures in the 1976 Diorama series
The exhibition space on the negative floor is a series of architectural works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, including the famous "Church of St. Benedict" (2000), "World Trade Center" (1997), "Notre Dame Church of Paris" (1998) and so on.
Architectural model of the Go-King Shrine
Hiroshi Sugimoto's first architectural project, the architectural model of the Gono Shrine, completed in Naoshima in 2003, is also on display.
Hiroshi Sugimoto's first group of color photographs "Opticks"
Since 2008, Sugimoto has partnered with junior designer Tomoyuki Sakata to establish the New Materials Research Institute. Contrary to the name, the Institute for New Materials aims to apply the materials and technologies used in ancient, medieval and early modern times to modern furniture design and house construction. This time, the coffee lounge renovated by Sugimoto still has his latest photographic and carving works hanging on the walls, while the table on the right is Sugimoto's "Three Sacred Trees - Kandai Sugi", which is said to be made by the 4,000-year-old Kandai Sugi Root, and the left is the "Three Sacred Trees - Yakusugi", which is made from the trunk of yakusugi trees that are about 1,500 years old.
Looking out from the lounge, you will see the highlight of this exhibition, Sugimoto's glass tea room "Mondrian". Created for the 2014 Venice Biennale, Mondrian is Sugimoto's work that uses elements of wood, glass and water to blend traditional Japanese tea ceremony culture with modern art.
Coming out of the lounge, you can see works from the Sea view series hanging on the concrete curtain wall facing the sea, the Isle of Man filmed in the Irish Sea in 1990.
Kyoto, which has always been known as a cherry blossom viewing destination, is also an artistic city. Recently, the Kyoto International Photography Exhibition celebrated its 10th anniversary, bringing together twenty artists from around the world to set up ten exhibition venues in Kyoto's historical and modern architecture.
The work of Emerging Visual Artist Prince Gyasi from Ghana appears on the original location of the Rabbit Hill shopping street in "Tamako Market", the deimachi yoke-shaped shopping street street, where Ghanaian men in bright kimonos collide with the japanese morning taste of the small street culture.
Photographs by the deceased portrait master Owen Pan, as well as more than 80 works of still life, landscapes, and portraits collected by the MEP (European Museum of Photography) are also exhibited at the Kyoto City Museum Annex.
Among them are also the classics of Owen Penn — his portrait of Christian Dior in 1947, his portrait of Picasso at Cannes in 1957 and his portrait of cartoonist Saul Steinberg in 1966.
Kondaya Genbe, a well-known kimono broadband manufacturer founded in the 1700s, welcomed the "BORN-ACT-EXIST" series by Spanish photographer Isabel Munoz and Japanese dancer Akira Tanaka. Isabel Munoz was deeply moved by the fabrics and old kimono fabrics of Yudaya in an exhibition. At Amami Oshima Island, which has a reputation for its Taaya Genbei Studio and preserves its ancient natural landscape, the dancer Tanaka was photographed dancing underwater.
Tanaka's photographs dancing in the sea are printed using the artist's original printing technique "coral type", which is printed on top of broken coral and has a painterly texture.