Electric Samurai
In the Zen Buddhism pantheon, Hotei is a popular figure. He is chubby and unruly, roams the countryside barefoot with a sack and staff, and entertains children with his carefree laughter. In the Japanese music ...
In the footsteps of Hiroshige
When I was back in London last summer, I came across Carl Randall’s painting, Mr Kitazawa’s Noodle Bar, Tokyo‚ while wandering through the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award 2012 exhibition. The way ...
Taoism
Tao Okamoto is not a typical Japanese bijin (“beautiful woman”) even though she embodies the classic beauty imagined by artists of ancient times, as if she has stepped out of a hanging scroll of Edo-period Japa...
Framing the veil
The power of Shirin Neshat’s work resides in her uncanny ability to turn ordinary things into meaningful art. The Iranian artist, born in 1957, became an international art star in the mid-1990s when she transfo...
Tacita Dean and “the genius of Nothing”
Before I met with the English artist Tacita Dean at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, I came across an article she had written for The Guardian about the late British writer JG Ballard right after his dea...
Testino me out!
Mario Testino, the prolific chronicler of the famous and fashionable, is content to be a mere fashion photographer without needing to be revered as an artist as well. Yet he’s now being exalted as one, by cur...
Capturing light
Hiroshi Sugimoto has made his name as a chronicler of time immemorial. His photography emerges from and lives in the interstices of personal and collective memory, as part of what he calls “the history of histo...
The contrarian couturier
Yohji Yamamoto’s fashion constructs, renowned for their unconventional forms and innovative use of fabrics, continue to create a sensation thirty years after his first show in Paris. His clothes have upende...
Gods and mortals
Since the invention of photography in the 19th century, photographers have aspired to capture memorable moments in sports and create defining images of young mesomorphs doing great things in athletic events. In...