Art, Architecture and Crafts
Art, Architecture and Crafts books that Ruth translated.
The Akita Ranga School and The Cultural Context in Japan
Samurai painters from Akita are fascinated by ranga (Dutch painting) and begin to add Western perspective to Chinese themes in their paintings. In this book, Gakushuin Women’s University Professor Imahashi Riko explores the mysteries embodied in the Akita Ranga School’s most famous work, Odano Naotake’s Shinobazu Pond. Through academic detective work that explores every detail and allusion, this book provides an unprecedented look at the domestication of European and Chinese influence in late Edo Japanese art.
[Text]tiles by SERIZAWA KEISUKE
The catalogue for an exhibition of more than four hundred works by Serizawa Keisuke, one of Japan’s most famous textile designers. Serizawa also designed book covers, calendars, kimono and objets. Most of the works on display for this exhibition, held March 3 to May 8, 2016 at the National Museum of Modern Art’s Kôgeikan (Crafts Hall) are from the Kaneko Kazushige Collection recently donated to the museum. The Japanese title Serizawa Keisuke no Iroha refers to the artist’s use of characters from the Japanese hiragana syllabary as motifs in his designs. We came up with the title [Text]tiles to capture this allusion and were delighted to have it chosen for exhibition’s official title.
Simple Forms シンプルカタチ
All art begins with simple forms, and simplicity itself can be exquisite. That was the message of this exhibition at the Mori Art Gallery in Roppongi Hills.
I Made It —You Name It
The catalogue for OTTO KUNZL-The Exhibition. Held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, this exhibition showcased the work of Swiss-German goldsmith and jewelry designer Otto Künzli, whose work challenges conventional notions of what jewelry is or ought to be. A gold bracelet sheathed in black rubber for example. A whole new, thought-provoking world for us.
Kusumi Morikage: From Adversity, a Gentle Gaze at Familiar Things
This catalogue for a 2015 Suntory Art Museum Exhibition is devoted to the work of an early Edo artist who “studied with Kano Tan’yu and was regarded as the most outstanding of his ‘big four’ students,” but moved to Kanazawa, where late in life he began painting scenes from peasant lives in a warm, lyrical style.