Tokyo, 1955-1970 A new avant-garde

The period covered by this richly detailed study finds Tokyo finishing an unparalleled physical and societal reconstruction following its destruction during WW II. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at MOMA, Chong (curator, MOMA) and five Japanese and American curators and professors analyze the work of over 65 artists and groups who used the new freedoms of postwar Japan to create art practically untouched by traditional Japan. The first of four major sections gives an overview of the 16-year era; the second focuses on graphic art; the third examines "things," essentially new forms of sculpture; the fourth treats "the relationships among art, technology and environment." Two smaller sections clearly summarize the era from different perspectives: the first uses biographical entries on each artist; the second, a chronology of the period, gives a year-by-year treatment of art events, exhibitions, transformations in physical Tokyo, and specific social and cultural events. Included are a checklist by artist, lenders' list, and fine illustrations. The energy of this important era in Japan's modern history truly comes through in this work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and beyond. D. K. Haworth emeritus, Carleton College

Tokyo during this 15-year span was the scene of intense economic, cultural, and political activity, and its artists displayed an awareness of global trends without sacrificing a sense of postwar Japanese trauma boldly represented by Tomatsu Shomei's stark photograph of a Nagasaki woman's bomb-scarred face. This catalogue of that period's art, which accompanies an eponymous exhibition, opens with the standard historiographical essay on the period and its art. Three subsequent essays are much more scholarly, throwing Marxist-Hegelian discourse, concepts of agency, and a kitchen sink of theorists (e.g., Walter Benjamin) at their topic. Reproductions of artworks show the tension between the seen and the repressed or shadowed: Yamaguchi Kasuhiro's "shape-shifting" wire-mesh sculptures; photographs of Nakanishi Natsuyuki's performance of Clothespins Assert Churning Action, in which he walked around Tokyo in a mask made of clothespins; and Takamatsu Jiro's Oneness of Concrete, "in which broken fragments of concrete are pieced together inside a container made of the same concrete, explor[ing] the infinite possibilities in opposing conditions of part and whole, absence and presence." The works possess a distinct sharpness, and the book does a thorough job of explaining their nuances. The Japan Foundation, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, has again provided a definitive examination of Japanese art for an American audience. 270 illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.