AST Press
ART SPACE TOKYO REVIEWED IN METROPOLIS
This week’s issue of Metropolis has a review of Art Space Tokyo in it, which you can read online here.
Craig and I are happy to see that writer and editor of Japan Today, CB Liddell, has enjoyed AST, which he calls “a compact, attractively designed book” that “manages to throw a lot of light on many of the broader issues surrounding Japan’s contemporary art scene.”
Liddell was particularly interested in the way that Yukihito Tabata of Tokyo Gallery + BTAP addressed the China’s dominance of Asia’s art scene and Takashi Murakami’s use of the term “peace lag” to summarize Japan’s infantilization, brought up in my interview with Atsuko Koyanagi of Gallery Koyanagi. The reviews of AST that we’ve had so far have tended to concentrate on the quality of book’s production, so it is satisfying to read an article that focusses on its content.
There are, however, a few points in the review that I find problematic. My response has ended up being twice as long as Liddell’s review, but I think the issues that come up are important and worth addressing.
Firstly, the article begins with the line “It’s a paradox: While Tokyo is one of the ugliest cities in the world, the Japanese are a naturally artistic race.”
Imagine an article coming out of a mainstream New York publication that began with the assertion that “While Brooklyn is one of the poorer boroughs of the city, the Jews who live there are a race naturally inclined to make money.” It wouldn’t happen.
It would have been better had Liddell left his racialist worldview out of the review (and I mean racialist, not racist), but then it seems to be a recurrent element in other articles of his. A quick search of his past writings has turned up gems such as:
“Very few people would argue with the idea that the Japanese are cuter than most other races.”
and
Both of these statements have been printed in Metropolis, so it would seem to suggest bad judgement on behalf of the editors as much as the writer.
Secondly, Liddell suggests that the book’s choice of twelve venues and its interview + article format is “a little too trendy and time sensitive.” He backs this up by saying that “As the art scene continues to morph and mutate, this work is likely to date more quickly than one focused on the recurring themes and wellsprings of Japanese art.”
Well, Art Space Tokyo is a guide book, and guides inevitably have some information in them that goes out of date, so it seems unnecessary to criticize that element. More importantly, for any book review to call for a different book altogether is entirely beside the point.
As far as we know, the twelve spaces chosen for the book are unlikely to close or relocate anytime soon, if ever, so the core of the guide’s information is sound for the foreseeable future. In fact, this was one of our key reasons for focussing on the spaces and their owners rather than the art itself: these galleries and museums should still be there in five to ten years, whereas the art they show will certainly change. Even if all of the information in this book outdates eventually, by that time one would hope that updated guides of this kind will be much more readily available, and AST will remain as a useful snapshot of the Tokyo art scene as it was in the late 2000s.
Liddell’s next critique is that “The fact that personal preferences and connections were important in this project gives it a cliquey, art insider tone, but this is mitigated by the clarity of the language, which, for the most part, successfully avoids the jargonism and dog-whistle phrases that normally litter art criticism.”
At the very least, Liddell is saying that despite its “art insider” origins, Art Space Tokyo is not pretentious and makes itself easily accessible. However, the suggestion alone that the book is somehow the result of cliquey nepotism is grossly mistaken, and the irony is that any Tokyo art world insider can clearly see that. The only point in common between these galleries and museums is that they all have distinctive architecture or histories — those are the primary reasons we chose them. In terms of the Tokyo art world’s internal hierarchies and interrelationships, AST’s choice of venues is actually highly unconventional, something that was noted by many of the people who took part. The book is a deliberate mix of spaces, be they old or new, famous or barely known, and their inclusion in the project was initiated irrespective of the various social circles that they are part of.
Liddell’s assumption about these “connections” is a misunderstanding that can probably be explained quite easily. Before writing the review, he emailed me a few questions about why and how we made the book. In my reply, I wrote about how well suited Craig and I were to collaborate with each other, because “Craig makes stunningly beautiful books, and from my work as an editor at Tokyo Art Beat, I had the kind of overview and contacts within the Tokyo art world necessary to get the project started.”
Perhaps “contacts” was a misleading choice of word that implies a cliqueyness that actually wasn’t there. My point of emphasis was more that my prior work at Tokyo Art Beat had given me the kind of experience required to recognise what each gallery represents within the broader art world. If Craig had simply wanted to make a book about pretty buildings, he could have done that alone. I was there to give a sense of the kind of narratives that would come out of each gallery before we approached them: for example, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP would help us cover the significance of Ginza and Beijing; Aoyama | Meguro is one of the key second generation galleries to have emerged in the last four years; GA Gallery is one of only two architecture focussed galleries in the city, and so on.
Once we had decided which galleries and museums we wanted to take part, we set up meetings with them and pitched the project, and there were no cards for us to pull. Of course, I knew a few of the participants beforhand, but I was meeting most of them for the first time, and equally there are many other gallery owners I know who weren’t a part of the book. Art Space Tokyo is hardly the product of an insider job.
Lastly, it was disappointing to see Liddell dismiss the value of the essays in Art Space Tokyo not because of any specific complaint, but merely because some of them were written by “foreigners” (the nuance of his choice of word is different from saying “non-Japanese"). Asides from the fact that the ratio of the six essay writers’ nationalities was in fact two Japanese, two half-Japanese and two non-Japanese — all of whom are long-term Tokyo residents — it doesn’t make much sense for Liddell to have started the review by decrying the Japanese art world’s lack of success in establishing itself on the international stage and yet ignore the value of commentary by non-Japanese who work in its midst. These people play an essential part in the internationalisation of Tokyo’s art scene.
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Update (Oct 24): Ian Lynam, who contributed the “Syntax of Tokyo Graffiti” essay to Art Space Tokyo linked to this post from the “META no TAME” blog at Néojaponisme. You can read his response and since the AST blog has no comments function, discussion can be continued on META no TAME.
The Tokyo Art Scene in ArtReview
A feature article I wrote on the Tokyo art scene has been published in the October issue of ArtReview.
In it I talk about the next generation of artists who are defining Japanese art, such as Lieko Shiga, Miwa Yanagi, Kohei Nawa and Izumi Kato, as well as cross-genre exhibitions like last year’s “Space For Your Future”. I also explain how gallery owners like Taka Ishii and Tomio Koyama have cultivated a new generation of dealers out of the former staff of their galleries, such as Jeffrey and Misako Rosen, who set up their own gallery Misako & Rosen in 2006, which is reflective of a broader trend over the past four years.
ArtReview asked the Tokyo-based Swedish photographer Anders Edström to shoot some of the galleries, artists and dealers mentioned in my article, and I was pleasantly surprised by the images when I opened the magazine for the first time. Edström has captured some delightful, informal moments: among them, Jeffrey and Misako Rosen at their gallery between exhibitions, getting paintings ready to hang on the wall, and artist Tomoo Gokita in his studio and out in the street with his mother in the Koenji neighbourhood.
You can read this issue of ArtReview, as well as all of its past issues, by registering for free on its website.
Art Space Tokyo in Art & Antiques Magazine
The October issue of Art & Antiques, a California-based magazine aimed at collectors of all kinds of art, including contemporary art, has a feature on the Tokyo art scene written by Edward M. Gomez.
Covering all kinds of art spaces that art enthusiasts should seek out on a visit to Tokyo, the article also mentions several that are featured in Art Space Tokyo, which Gomez calls “the best insider’s guide in English to the most interesting outposts for cutting-edge art in the Japanese capital”.
Quotes from AST crop up a couple of times in the article, including Tetsuya Ozaki’s views on the instability of the Chinese art market and Masami Shiraishi’s thoughts on how the Tokyo art scene is at its most vibrant in fifteen to twenty years.
Thank you Edward!
Japanese Contemporary Art in DAMN˚ Magazine
The next issue of the very slick DAMn˚ magazine (#18), a Belgium-based publication that focuses on contemporary design, art and architecture, will feature a six page article on Japanese contemporary art that I wrote.
The article is essentially an introduction to the Tokyo contemporary art scene, aimed at those who are still under the impression that it’s all about Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. I bring up a couple of other major figures like Naoya Hatakeyama and Tatsuo Miyajima, but more importantly some of the key names from the younger generation of contemporary artists, such as Tomoo Gokita, Izumi Kato and Tabaimo.
The article gives a brief overview of some of the galleries that established themselves in the post-bubble economic slump of the 1990s and how the Tokyo gallery world has developed since the early 2000s, in the shadow of the almost exclusive attention that has been paid to the rise of the Chinese contemporary art scene.
Interview in Ping Mag
A little while back, not long after Art Space Tokyo came out, Verena, the editor of Ping Mag interviewed us about a whole range of issues: from what led us to make the book, to how we made it, what we think of the state of art criticism in Tokyo and the current boom in museum building. We’re very pleased to have such an extensive, bilingual interview on a site with such a large, worldwide readership. You can read the interview in English here, or the Japanese translation of it here.
Art Space Tokyo in the Yomiuri Shinbun
A review of Art Space Tokyo was published in the Yomiuri Shinbun today. If the print in the image to the left is too small for you to see, you can read the online version here.
It’s a true pleasure to see the book get a positive reception. However, Christoph Mark’s focus on the idea that “investing in art is the domain of the rich” is potentially misleading. Later in the article he says:
“Though unlikely intended by the editors, one message that resonates through many of the stories is that, quite often, the people who run galleries or collect art appear to be those who can afford to.”
Running a gallery is no different to running any other business: you need money and a shrewd mind to do it. And people who buy art are by definition “those who can afford to”, just as food, paperclips, helicopters and Louis Vuitton handbags are bought only by “those who can afford to.”
Certainly, there are people in Tokyo who cannot afford to spend money on art, but the barrier to worthwhile art investment in Tokyo is currently set considerably lower than it is in London and New York. Prices for small works by young artists start as low as ¥20,000 - 30,000 ($200 - 300), and even the big name artists sell for very reasonable prices compared to their peers in Europe, the US and China.
As Mark notes, Art Space Tokyo is meant as “a snapshot of the Tokyo art world as it is now… and may help to better understand the city’s future.” In editing the book, I purposefully did not want to overstate the message that contemporary art in Tokyo is cheap. But it is. In my opinion, the Japanese contemporary art market is a collector’s paradise, full of insanely good bargains.
But it won’t stay this way for ever. When I asked collector Ryutaro Takahashi for his thoughts on future trends in Japanese contemporary art, he replied:
“Speaking in terms of quality versus cost, some Asian collectors have said that works by Japanese artists fetch a mere twenty-five percent of their true value, while Korean artists get fifty percent and Chinese artists are getting one hundred percent.... The talk is that in five or so years, the price-to-quality ratio for artwork in these three countries will equalize. At the very least, we can expect the work of young Japanese artists to grow in value for the next five years.” (p.49)
Art Space Tokyo in the Guardian
Back in March, Craig and I showed a reporter from the Guardian around some of Tokyo’s museums and galleries, including a couple of the spaces featured in Art Space Tokyo. The article came out today but you can read it on the Guardian website here, or for a look at the printed version, click on the image above.
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Art Space Tokyo is a 272 page guide to the Tokyo art world published by Chin Music Press.
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