Page 74 - Studio International - January February 1975

Second British International Japanese, for all their mimetic Suntory doesn't only make that Tokyo Central Station was
Drawing Biennale. Open to all skill, will never truly understand whisky. They also produce Vino built as a close replica of
artists. Prizes include 2 months' Western art and that it is perhaps Rosso, pastis, vin blanc, Amsterdam's railway terminus.
exhibition of selected works and better that way. vermouth, cointreau and cherry The second building of the
£2,000 to be shared. Write: More, less substantial, evidence brandy. Thinking of Eskimoes National Museum contains the
Biennale, Cleveland County and is provided by the Museum of and refrigerators, I jokingly asked Japanese collection and perfectly
Leisure and Amenities, Gurney Western Art, a hopelessly and if Suntory also sold vodka to the reflects the ideology of the 1930s:
House, Middlesbrough, helplessly lit Corbusier building Russians. 'Oh yes', said the it looks like part of a set for Chu
Cleveland, England. in Ueno Park, Tokyo, not far director, 'Suntory sells more Chin Chow as designed by Albert
Winsor and Newton Award. New from the National Museum itself. vodka to the Russians than it does Speer. The third building, for the
award open to final year The Corbusier (strange how a to the Americans.' The evasive rest of the Oriental collection, is
undergraduate students in GB. lionized architect has never been answer did not conceal the fact much more recent and shows the
Prizes £750, £250, £100. Write: able to design a great museum) that exhibitions and other renewed interest in what is
Michael Lazarus, Richmond contains the sad remains of the cultural events aid and assist the happening on the other side of
Towers Public Relations Ltd, collection of Impressionism and company's business drive. the Pacific and in Europe. It is a
1 Bloomsbury St., London Post-impressionism assembled by The cultural activities of private glass, concrete and steel building
WC1B 3QG. Kojiro Matsukata during and companies are the more important which might be found in any
Association of Art Historians: after the First World War. in view of the lack of state country in the world.
Formed in 1974, it welcomes the Matsukata, the head of a large patronage. True, craftsmen, It is such cultural confusion
individual membership of all shipbuilding company, was actors, puppeteers, painters and which remains uppermost in the
those directly concerned in living in London in 1915 and writers are sometimes proclaimed memory and it remains there in
Britain with the advancement of made up his mind to collect 'Living National Treasures' and the form of fragmentary images:
the study of the History of Art. modern Western art with a view given a pension of about £2,000 a a bearded Japanese singer in a tv
A conference will be held annually to exhibiting it in a special year. True, the Japanese spectacular show doing a
in the Spring. For further museum in Japan. He bought Government stages exhibitions, passable imitation of Johnny
information please write to The nearly 10,000 works, many of usually in the USA, at some Mathis singing 'Moon River' and
Honorary Secretary, Assoc. of Art which were dispersed during the expense. But it is significant that then changing abruptly to give us
Historians, c/o Courtauld 1929 economic crisis. Most of the Culture does not merit a ministry `Bridge Over Troubled Water' in
Institute, 20 Portman Square, remainder was stored in France itself, is looked after by the voice of Paul Simon. A fibre-
London W1V OBE. Annual subs awaiting shipment to the special Education. It is also significant glass, working model of the Trevi
are presently £3.00 for Ordinary museum which had still not been that almost all of the important fountain in the Shimbashi district
members and 50p for students. built. Japan declared war, lost it exhibitions are sponsored and of Tokyo, looking for all the
and the Matsukata collection was even researched by newspapers world like a permanent fixture. A
given to France under the terms and staged in the large art garbage truck announcing its
Japan of the 1951 San Francisco Peace galleries of the big department arrival in a street by playing a tape
stores on the Tokyo Ginza.
Treaty. Soon after, the French
of a musical box rendering 'A
handed it back to Japan. A prominent museum man in Maiden's Prayer'. A slot machine
They knew what they were Kyoto told me that were it not showing a blue movie (they're
Schizoid traits are evident in doing. The generally poor quality for these special shows, paid for called pink here, by the way) on a
the visual arts in Japan and of these 417 items means that they by newspapers and advertised on landing of a ryokan, a traditional
especially so in the National can be compared with very few the TV stations they own, few Japanese inn. But all is not
Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. similar things in French people would come to look at the necessarily what it seems. Often
On show is the work only of collections. They would have permanent collections. A visit to in Tokyo you will see a tiny,
Japanese artists (the Museum of filled no gaps and their return was the National Museum in Tokyo castle-like building, complete
Western Art is elsewhere) which good propaganda. The museum confirmed this surprising view. with turrets and towers which
is divided into groups of `Western is dominated by a large number of A long group of serge-uniformed could have come from a mountain
Style' and `Japanese Style' — in Rodin casts and contains two schoolchildren emphasized the on the Rhine were it not for the
Japanese the terms are these Cezanne watercolours, a Monet emptiness of the place. strings of fairy lights which hang
English ones. The 'Western Nympheas, a drab Gauguin, a Meanwhile, back at the municipal across its facade and the spiky
Style' paintings are at once poor Van Gogh and a number of museum 200 yards away, people palms which grow from its
impressive and hilarious, for nondescript paintings from the were queueing for the privilege of battlements. These buildings are
although almost all are pastiches Delacroix to Picasso period. paying almost a pound for a show not follies but short-time hotels
of famous styles, they are Where, then, are all those of purely transitory quality. which sell privacy to couples
breathtakingly brilliant pastiches: masterpieces which, as we never But the National Museum is a frustrated by the constant
the Barker pens, Bridgestone cease to hear and read, are being disappointment in any case. The proximity of others in this
Tyres and Sister sewing machines bought up and shipped out Japanese word 'collection' is a overcrowded city.
of modernist painting. Before wholesale and daily from the borrowing from English: in other Enough of Kultur; back to
the war most Japanese painters auction rooms of Europe and words the concept came in with culture. The deep involvement of
went either to Paris or London. America? Most of them (if the all the other Western ideas after the big department stores and the
All eyes are now directed to New rumours are true) are in private 1868 and after most of the best larger newspapers in the cultural
York and Los Angeles, although, collections. Many of them are in things — even Japanese — had gone life of Japan is unique. The
as far as this museum is concerned, private museums. to the colonial nations. The reputation of private dealers in
modern painting ends with The private museum is a very National Museum is also the Tokyo has recently been damaged
Japanese versions of Pollock and Japanese institution. There are worst lit and worst designed by allegations of profiteering and
De Kooning. several of them in Tokyo, each museum of its size I have ever sharp practice. It is therefore not
The Western-style section is founded and funded by a large visited. Pictures, furniture, surprising that the opulent
ultimately depressing. The company. The one with the best kimonos, screens stand in what galleries in the department stores
Japanese-style works provide, on collection of Western art is the seem to be like department store (where you can buy anything from
the other hand, a welcome relief Suntory Museum which grew windows running the length of an ukiyoe woodcut to an oil
from the thick syrupy mixture of from a nucleus assembled by the each room. They are dimly lit, painting by Monet) have
styles so international that you company's first president. The but not as dimly as the room itself. flourished. The stores, after all,
see them in all shapes and sizes Suntory Museum also owns a Viewing them is like window are above the kind of activities for
and range from bad to dreadful small number of impressionist shopping on a bank holiday in the which private dealers are known.
on the walls of galleries from Rio works, although it concentrates on rain. No Photographing, read the More surprising are the special
to Bombay. These Japanese-style Japanese art. It is situated on the notices around every corner. No exhibitions which the stores stage
paintings are on screens, scrolls or ninth floor of the annexe to the Writing With Fountain Pens Lest and to which they often devote an
hanging kakemonos and treat the Palace Hotel, a strange location The Works Be Damaged ! No entire floor. For these exhibitions
same subjects which these forms for a museum but easily explained Smoking, No Making of Bonfires. are anything but a free come-on.
have always done: trees, flowers, by the fact that the president of The architecture of the National They often cost as much as a
birds and even portraits on the liquor company was also on Museum tells the story of modern pound a ticket and are packed
screens, panoramic landscapes on the board of the hotel when he Japan in miniature. It consists of from opening to closing time.
scrolls so long that you can only decided that a museum might be a three distinct buildings around While I was there Mitsukoshi
see one small part of them at a nice idea. three sides of a rectangle. The offered traditional Chinese
time, and legendary battles and It is more than a nice idea, It is oldest, which houses the handicrafts of Ming and Ch'ing
portraits painted on silk also good business. In the archaeological collection, looks dynasties, while Seibu in another
kakemonos. Groundless perhaps, director's office a poster like an Italian Renaissance district offered paintings by
inexplicable certainly, but the proclaimed that treasures from palazzo and was built during the Friedrich Schroeder-Sonnenstern
Tokyo Museum of Modern Art Suntory Museum were at that first phase of the infatuation with and a large Matisse and Fauvism
leaves me with the feeling that the moment on show in Moscow. the West, during the same period show.