The art world of Japan had a ton of options to fare in their much anticipated art festival, the event showcased amazing talent and a capacity to blend all that is ancient and modern in Japan. With all of this tradition and culture the festival was able to manage and create an eclectic coterie of artistic sights, sounds, and experiences last June 2011 that the upcoming art happenings of 2012 may find it hard to beat. The Grand Pacific at Le Daiba featured the majority of its art exhibitions from the early summer of 2011, with included a vast and dazzling selection of exhibitions throughout the whole of the month.
The Mori Art Museum featured works of contemporary French art by reputed Marcel Duchamp on the 13th of July, at Roppongi. Flowers, birds, and the sheer quiet majesty of nature’s fragile creations was the theme of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, which featured an exhibit on ‘The Beauty of Flowers and Birds’ on the 19th of the month. A three month exhibit culminating in a finale on the 31st of July, had breathtaking exhibitions during the later part of June 2011, had become the piece-de-resistance of the Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition on ‘The Wonder of Learning’.
Well known for their love of the written word and their complicated and subtle poetry, the Mitsui Memorial Museum featured an aptly titled exhibit called ‘The Power of Words, the Power of Writing’. Despite their roots in tradition, the Japanese have been keen on adapting art techniques from all over the world, refining them into their own brand of styles and techniques, earning them much recognition. European art toured the isles of Nippon from the 12th of March to the 12th of June when the National Museum of Western Art exhibited the master himself: ‘Rembrant: The Quest for Light, the Temptation of Darkness’ at 7-7 Ueno Park in Taito-ku.
Their take on Western art and the fascination that it holds for the refined and graceful art-circle in Japan took a turn back to nature when ‘The Sublime Art of Pierre-Joseph Redoute: The Intersection of Art and Botany’ was exhibited in Bunkamura, which was available at The Museum in Shibuya from the 29th of May well into the 3rd of July. France finally made its presence well-established when the Yokohama Museum of Art featured an exhibit on ‘300 Years of French Painting from the Pushkin Museum’ from the beginning of June up to the 26th of the month. Japan and its breathtaking landscapes exhibits took a pause when, last but not the least, an exhibit of the French Alps was displayed in the Sompo Japan Museum, featuring Giovanni Segantini’s ‘View of the Alps’. June 2011 was more than a fruitful month for Japan’s artistic circles, as the museums were jam-packed with sights and experiences that were transporting and transcendental, melding the cultures of East and West and uniting them under the banner of expressively fine and inimitable art.
