A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection

A comprehensive showcase of Japanese contemporary postwar art.

The exhibition A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) is the definitive guide to Japanese contemporary art, presenting works by 115 individual and groups of artists whose work is incisively critical and indispensable to the history of contemporary Japanese art.

The exhibition explores the state of contemporary Japan from the specific viewpoint of a 1946-born psychiatrist and art collector, Takahashi Ryutaro. He began collecting Japanese contemporary art in the mid-1990s and has acquired more than 3,500 works to date, making it one of the largest collections of its kind in the world in terms of both quality and quantity.

The first section, “Prenatal Memory,” which features many of Kusama Yayoi’s works from the 1950s and 1960s, examines the cultural situation in Japan during the approximately 50 years between the end of the war and the mid-1990s when Takahashi seriously started collecting artworks. This is followed by “An End and A New Beginning”, which the collection seriously took off in the mid-1990s, revolving around works that can be described as “portraits of postwar Japan,” and which are representative of the Takahashi Ryutaro Collection at large. It was at once a time when contemporary art had begun to circulate on an increasingly global scale, and numerous artists, such as Murakami Takashi, emerged expressing fierce criticism toward Japanese culture and society. “New Types of Humans”, the maturing phase of the collection, focuses especially on works that depict human figures - one of the collection’s central themes. Exhibits in this section range from renowned works such as those by NARA Yoshitomo to the most recent creations of young artists.

Considering Takahashi’s roots in the Tohoku region, the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in 2011 had a particularly big effect that changed his sensibility. Introduced in “Breakdown and Rebirth” are works themed around life and rebirth that satirize social behavior since the accident; works that represent the first actions of artists after the earthquake; and other creative endeavors undertaken in response to these events. Since “reality” is no longer perceived in strongly subjective statements, a special emphasis is placed on artworks that reexamine the position of the “self” as a subject. The following section “The Redefinition of ‘Self’” presents works that reflect this new sensibility, in elements that emphasize the processes of things being created, their state of incompleteness or unfinishedness, or whose outcome seems to be entrusted to the effects of external environments and phenomena. The final section of the exhibition is “Back onto the Street”, which shows the present state of the collection as it continues to grow, while incorporating the latest trends of young artists. Takahashi is particularly fascinated by the creative activities of artists who have a “street” view of the world, which brings back memories of avant-garde art to Takahashi and an experience that takes him back to the street, so to speak.

The founding of the Takahashi Ryutaro Collection coincides with the so-called “lost 30 years” after the burst of the economic bubble in Japan. This exhibition of over 200 selected works traces the path of the collection from its beginnings through the period after the Great East Japan Earthquake to the present, from the “personal view” of the collector’s. Featuring many essential works of Japanese contemporary art since the 1990s, including legendary figures as well as promising young creators, this is a comprehensive overview of his massive collection and an occasion to introduce a personal perspective on art historical currents, as well as a rare opportunity to see some of the most important works of Japanese contemporary art.

Click here to see the list of artists.

Curated by YABUMAE Tomoko, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo