Metropolis Magazine

Articles by: C.B. Liddell

Listening to Nature

Japan’s tragic aftermath reveals some sensitive economic indicators

Looking for a Miracle

How Japan can turn the tables on its economic decline

The Real Last Word

Death comes to the expat—unexpectedly

No Mercy!

Human life is sacred. So hang Tatsuya Ichihashi

Two-Headed Monster

Beware Japan’s new political beast

Fuzzy Democracy

Saitama has its Obama Moment

Murderer’s Row

A rogue’s gallery of heinous killers reveals the dark soul of a nation

Alphonse Mucha

More to Mucha at the Mori

El Greco

My big skinny Greek painting at Tokyo Met

Enku’s Buddhas

Religion and art come together at the Tokyo National Museum

Artist File 2013

Contemporary art with popular appeal at Roppongi’s NACT

Takao Trick Art Museum

Take your eyeballs on a visual joyride

Hyperrealism

Going beyond the photographic

Anonymous Life

Strange new forms of life and art take shape at the ICC

The Spirit of Kuniyoshi

The ukiyo-e master placed in context

Japanese Modern

A turbulent century of Japanese art at a renewed MOMAT

Art of Gaman

Free exhibition recalling Japanese-American wartime experience

Treasures from Sacred Izumo

Japan’s Shinto legacy at the TNM

Hisashi Tenmyouya “Rhyme”

Neo-Nihonga retro-yakuza pastiche

James Ensor in Context

A touch of madness at the Sompo

Ayami Nishimura by Rankin

Make up for art at Diesel

Yoshitomo Nara

Coming back to kawaii in Yokohama

Ultraman Art!

Life-size fun at the Museum of Modern Art Saitama

Edward Burne-Jones

A Pre-Raphaelite Master in Tokyo’s Little London

The Cult

Choice of Weapon

Omiya Bonsai Art Museum

Art and nature battle it out in Saitama

Sato Sakura Museum Tokyo

Tokyo’s newest museum brings Nihonga to Nakameguro

The Temper Trap

Lee Bul

The Mori shows the feminism and femininity of the avant-garde Korean artist

Cézanne: Paris and Provence

A town-and-country look at the “father of modern painting”

Art Fair Tokyo

Find your own way at this feast of variety

Jackson Pollock

The first major Japan exhibition of the abstract superstar

Mirei Shigemori

The Garden as Zen and Art at the Watarium

Songbook

Chris Cornell

Irving Penn and Issey Miyake

Creative synergy remembered at Tokyo’s temple of style

Noh Masks and Costumes from the Mitsui Collection

Get into Noh, face first

Prints by William Blake

Poetry and Old Testament visions make a perfect holiday exhibition

New Era of Tokyo Fashion

An entertaining show tries to reboot Japan’s lost fashion edge

Countercultural Kusama

Last weekend of this exhibition evoking 1960s NYC

The Phillips Collection

America but (sadly) not as we know it, at the NACT

Welcome 2 My Nightmare

A timeless rock institution only partially aided by his zombie makeup

Deconstructing Tokyo

Get into architecture this fall, with a major symposium and related exhibitions

Taro Okamoto

The second part of the 100th anniversary show honors the legacy of an artistic phenomenon

Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces

Impressionism with frills

Ming Wong

Mixed-up movie magic delights at the Hara

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

An irrepressible ukiyo-e talent shines at the Ota

Nazareth

Big Dogz

Zipangu

Modern art with an inherently Japanese aesthetic

Design Festa

Tokyo’s biggest art event channels sympathy for an injured nation

Wild Beasts

Smother

Okkervil River

I Am Very Far

Buddha — The Story in Manga and Art

On paper, putting ancient Buddhist artifacts next to original artwork from a comic book depicting the life of Buddha might seem somewhat irreverent and even a bit tacky, but “Buddha — The Story in Manga and Art” at the Tokyo National Museum turns out to be a stylish and classy show. This may be because ...

Forest and Art

The Teien takes us for a mysterious walk in the woods

“Bad” art

"Chronicle of Showa Era Erotic Gegika"

The Kills

Blood Pressure

Cathedral

The doom metalers offer quake catharsis and carnivore guilt on their final tour

MOT Annual 2011

Tokyo’s emptiest art venue stages a requiem for the voiceless

KT Tunstall

If you want to see a great gig, check out someone like KT Tunstall, whose career is essentially built on her ability to cut it live rather than in the studio. Since stunning the audience on BBC live music show “Later… with Jools Holland” with her deftly managed pedalled-up acoustic and husky singing back in ...

Edwyn Collins

Losing Sleep

Christophe Jacrot

In the classic comedy Play it Again, Sam, Woody Allen’s character, in Bogart mode, suavely says, “I love the rain; it washes memories off the sidewalk of life.” Somebody else who loves the rain—and any other kind of inclement weather—is French photographer Christophe Jacrot. This is not because it helps him forget, but because it ...

Le Surrealisme

The NACT takes a short-sighted, Francophone look at an international art movement

Iron Maiden

The metal monster ploughs ahead by putting egos on hold

Masaya Yoshioka

Masaya Yoshioka’s approach to art is simple. Working as a carpenter, the self-taught artist occasionally puts down his tools to pick up a paintbrush and depict the things that flash through his mind. Being a relatively young, red-blooded heterosexual male, those thoughts are often of naked ladies or couples in flagrante delicto. Using a fluid, ...

Anna Calvi

300 Years of Meissen

The Suntory ramps it up with some rocking rococo ceramics

Holy F**k

The techno-shy Canadians breathe new life into electronica’s grooves

All Off

From Midnight to Sunshine

Motohiko Odani

A rising star astounds with a death-obsessed show at the Mori

Firewind

Heavy metal groups are notorious for their complex genealogies, as members switch bands and moonlight for other outfits. Greek metal warhorse Firewind is no exception—both singer Apollo Papathanasio and lead guitarist Gus G put in stellar performances at last year’s Loud Park festival, but with different bands. While Papathanasio provided a charismatic focus to Swedish ...

Manic Street Preachers with Carl Barat

Studio Coast, November 26

Argentine Artists

For me, Argentina has always been two parts Diego Maradona to one part invasion of the Falklands, with a twist of Borges’ “magical realism” thrown in. Now I’ll have to remix this neat little cocktail to include the talents on display at “An Intimate roar about sex, corruption and gamble” (sic), an exhibition of three ...

Little Barrie

King of the Waves

Hoki Museum

A new shrine to real excellence opens in Chiba

BLACK MOUNTAIN

Wilderness Heart

Rhapsody for my Wretched Little Universe

The demographic trends resulting from its famous “one-child” policy—plenty of male offspring but fewer lassies—mean that China should get used to the idea of a burgeoning gay population. Offering an intriguing insight into the country’s present-day gay scene is Rhapsody for my Wretched Little Universe, at the often interesting Zen Foto Gallery. The exhibition presents ...

Edgar Degas

The Yokohama Museum of Art freshens up an old master

Carl Barat

The ex-Libertine is finally free to step away from the big guitars

Loud Park 2010

Saitama Super Arena, Oct 16-17

Sengai: Zen and Humor

Sengai (1750-1837) was the head abbot of Shofuku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyushu, but it’s his post-retirement career for which he’s now famous. After stepping down as chief priest, Sengai took up ink painting, turning out rough, doodle-like brushworks, often with verses or proverbs. These were done at the request of local people, including ...

Sensing Nature

The Mori scales up a show of small ideas to fill a big space

Variation on Mission X

Exploring themes of freedom, martyrdom and history, US artist Paddy Shaw unveils his new exhibition, “Variation on Mission X,” at Hiromart Gallery in Bunkyo-ku. The centerpiece of the show is “The Seven Severed Heads” series, which features iconic victims of oppression, ranging from Scottish hero William Wallace to modern figures like film director Theo Van ...

Swinging London

As the John Lennon Museum winds down, MOMA Saitama revives the '60s

Look at Me! Portrait Photographs of Nude

New technology spreads fastest if it can be adapted to a sexual purpose. Without the appeal of erotic application, inventions like videotape, internet and 3D TV would probably still be looking for start-up capital. As demonstrated by the new exhibition “Look at Me! Portrait Photographs of Nude” (sic), photography in the 19th century was no ...

World of Trick Art: It’s Fun to be Fooled

It’s no coincidence that the Sompo Japan Museum of Art is hosting its new show, “World of Trick Art: It’s Fun to be Fooled,” during summer. As the saying goes, “children of all ages” will enjoy this exhibition, including those who are actually on their school holidays. Just so we don’t get too confused, the ...

The Birth of Chinese Civilization

An extensive exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum leads straight to the souvenir shop

Mystery Jets

Serotonin

Hans Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics

No one who visited the Lucie Rie exhibition at the National Art Center Tokyo recently could have failed to notice the prominent part played in the ceramic artist’s career by Hans Coper (1920-81). Like Rie, Coper was a Jew from Central Europe who escaped the Nazi takeover and the ovens of Auschwitz and found himself ...

William Eggleston

A photo legend snaps Paris and Kyoto minus the clichés

Makoto Aida + Hisashi Tenmyouya + Akira Yamaguchi

It’s nihonga, Jim, but not as we know it

Playing with Oni

Toyoshige Watanabe is one of those Japanese artists whose work is full of twee humor and visual puns of the kind that would work well in children’s picture books. Using a formal language that owes a great deal to Taro Okamoto, he paints and sculpts works that are just sophisticated enough to please curators but ...

Post-Impressionism

A wide-ranging portmanteau show unpacks its wares at the NACT

Ever

“The Japanese eat sushi all the time. And they are obsessed with kinky sex.” These are just a couple of the prejudices that Westerners have about Japan, according to Boris Hoppek, yet another German artist seemingly paying off his country’s moral deficit from WWII by banging on about tolerance and political correctness. In Ever, his ...

These New Puritans

Duo Music Exchange, June 4

Tale of Tales

MoMA Hayama pays tribute to Russian animation legends

Japan Blues & Soul Carnival

Hibiya Open Air Concert Hall, May 30

Sofie Livebrant

From Here to Here

New Waves

The sea is often associated with peace and serenity, but the reality is more complex. On the shoreline, the incessant crashing of waves is testament to the eternal battle with the land, while further out the vastness of the ocean holds a perpetual sense of horror and dread that fuels our sense of the sublime. ...

Where is Architecture?

MoMAT poses itself a question… and gets lost looking for the answer

Plastic Memories: To Illuminate Now

One reason the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo was built so far from the city center was because it needed a big site, not only to run two exhibitions at a time (as it usually does) but also to store its massive collection of modern art. So what do you do when you have a ...

Rodchenko & Stepanova: Visions of Constructivism

There are Reds under the beds at Meguro’s palatial Teien Art Museum

Grand Avenue

Place to Fall

Hussein Chalayan: From Fashion and Back

In certain walks of life, fame is a concept-driven thing—the more offbeat and unforgettable your concepts are, the more chance you have of standing out from the crowd. But in the world of fashion, where everybody has the same idea, this is not as easy as it sounds. One designer who has managed to take ...

Manet & Modern Paris

A new venue in Marunouchi reboots the past with the first modernist

Guido Argentini

Can there be filthy art and beautiful pornography? In a world where contemporary art is often lurid and explicit, and where “porn” can include the serenely beautiful work of Italian photographer Guido Argentini, the answer is clearly yes. Delicately poised on the fine line between art and smut, Argentini’s latest show, “Love Lyric” at Galerie ...

Lady Gaga

Yokohama Arena, April 17

Roppongi Crossing

The Mori’s annual show ticks boxes and encourages lunatics

Artist File

Artist File, the annual group show of “currently active artists” at the National Art Center Tokyo, is always interesting. But it’s important to remember that the selections are made by a committee of curators on the public payroll, keen to show just how vital they are. This creates an unfortunate tendency to give visitors a ...

Tokyo Art Fair

The annual event offers a time to indulge your senses and trust your taste

Trevor Brown

Thanks to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s Victorian fantasy is very much flavor of the month. The tale—variously interpreted as a psychedelic parable or an exploration of pubescent female sexuality—also provides the inspiration for Trevor Brown’s latest exhibition at Bunkamura Gallery, “Time for Alice,” a joint show with doll artist Yuriko Yamayoshi. Brown ...

Ono Chikkyo—120 Years After His Birth

Showing until April 11 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Ono Chikkyo—120 Years After His Birth is a major retrospective of one of the most accessible of Japan’s nihonga painters. Born in 1889 and painting up until his death in 1979, Ono demonstrates some of the currents that flowed through Japanese neo-traditional art ...

AC/DC

Saitama Super Arena, March 12

Galleria Borghese

Purity and profanity on loan from Rome

Nobuyoshi Araki + Katsura Funakoshi: An Image of Love Supreme

It’s not the meek who will inherit the Earth; it’s the breeders. Japan has finally woken up to this fact and is taking steps to counteract the silvering of the national demographic by encouraging women to use their ovaries more. Moreover, this imperative is now finding its way into culture expression. Nobuyoshi Araki + Katsura ...

Biffy Clyro

Daikanyama Unit, March 1

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

A major Impressionist is thrown into sharp focus at the NACT

Hina Dolls of the Mitsui Family

There’s no point having your own museum if you can’t use it to occasionally blow the family trumpet. That’s part of the story behind Hina Dolls of the Mitsui Family at the Mitsui Memorial Museum, showing the ornamental dolls once owned by the daughters of the powerful plutocrats. Japan has always had a strong doll ...

Cecil Balmond

An architectural genius gets placed on a pedestal at Tokyo Opera City

Everyday Life

Realism is a troubling concept. Behind it lies the assumption that there is some objective “reality” on which we can all agree. Everyday Life, a retrospective of paintings by Masayoshi Aigasa (b. 1939) at the Sompo Japan Museum of Art, shows just how shaky such a premise is. Aigasa, a so-called realist painter, calmly and ...

Tabaimo

A leading contemporary artist dissects Japan’s “lost generation”

MAM Project 10: Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen

A lot of places around the world are going through hard times at the moment. Helsinki-based artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen have found a unique way to tap into the international angst and occasional black humor this generates with their “complaints choirs.” Visiting various cities around the world, the pair has been inviting ordinary ...

Zeshin Shibata

The lusciousness of lacquer delights at the Mitsui

Medicine and Art

A mixed show at the Mori unleashes morbid musings

Biffy Clyro

Only Revolutions

Rebecca Horn

The edgy contemporary artist unfurls her sad wings of destiny at the MOT

Russian Circles

Geneva

Luxury in Fashion Reconsidered

The starting point of Luxury in Fashion Reconsidered—a major fashion-themed exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo—is the need to revamp the idea of luxury for a post-credit-crunch, “herbivore” Japan that has been partly freed from the malevolent spell of brand-name-driven, Bubble-era consumerism. The exhibition presents an extensive historical survey of female Western fashions, ...