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From: Jasper Joffe
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 08 March 2001
Painting for Joy: New Japanese Painting in 1990s Japanese Institute, Rome, April 28th 2000 When we arrived at the private view they switched off the lights. So I guess my impressions may be a little gloomy. I saw the catalogue before the show and I was looking forward to seeing a lot of painters I didn't know. These new Japanese painters were mostly born in the 60s. At first glance at their poppy painterly sort of cartoony figurative work, one can place them within the canon of those that have thrown off the heaviness of modernism and are expressing the age in paint without a care in the world. Yoshitomo Nara painted in nice colours a little girl with a big head and big eyes about to hang herself. Chiezo Taro painted a cartoon flower in a kind of painterly way. Yoshitaka Echizenya painted airbrushed cartoony oriental landscapes. There was a realistic picture of a hand holding chopsticks next to one holding a spoon. Nobuhiko Nukata paints abstract pictures that look like wrapping paper. So this is Japanese painting of the 90s, not very much unlike any other country's painting, and reminding me of a high quality British postgraduate show. It's great that painters feel they have nothing to prove these days, but also a problem when they end up proving nothing. The observation of visually interesting elements of the contemporary world, the occasionally imaginative manipulation or juxtaposition of this material, on canvas with the odd drip or bravura piece of realism or painterliness is not enough.
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