TAB Event - "Art is for the Spirit: Works from the UBS Art Collection" Exhibition

The individuals come together
UBS holds a meeting of art works at the Mori's office
By Ashley Rawlings
Special to The Japan Times

Whatever you make of the connections between works suggested, you cannot go wrong with the individual pieces, especially if all you have seen until now are reproductions. At the Mori, the dirty roughness of Lucien Freud's brushwork reveals itself; the vast scale of consumer excesses depicted in Andreas Gursky's "99 Cent" (1999) is vigorously apparent; and you can revel in the depths of Vija Celmins' enchanting graphite depictions of galaxies ...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20080207a1.html

バスキアとリヒターは日本でなかなか実物に触れる機会がないので
一度見てみてはいかがでしょう。

他にも貴重な作品がありましたが
中国のアーティストが作成した映像作品は印象に残ってます。
中国の工場で、ただ黙々と蛍光灯を作り続ける人々を捉えた作品なのですが
「そんな単純作業を何時間も続ける人々にも、個々の夢や希望があるんだぞ」
と訴えているようで、現在の日中関係を考えさせられました。

少なからず、今の世界経済は中国に頼っているということも忘れてはいけないですよね。

中国にこんな鋭いアーティストがいるとは驚きです。
一度行ってみないといけないですね。これは。

あと、ミハラヤスヒロさん本人が普通に美術鑑賞にいらっしゃってましたｗ

http://dokudan.seesaa.net/

A corporate collection . . . for whom?
Japan Times: Inside art
By Edan Corkill

In Japan, the decidedly private nature of "corporate" collections meant they tended to undergo major ructions when their art-enamored sponsor resigned or passed away. Matsukata's collection was split and, in 1959, part of it became the core of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Ishibashi divested himself and his company of his treasures by creating in 1956 the independent and private Ishibashi Foundation ...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20080228ec.html

Art as Bling

What on Earth was the point of this exhibition? All the works on display are of the kind that any museum of modern art in the world would be very proud to have in their collection. If this had in fact been a 常設展 from Mori Museum's own collection, I would have had no complaints, but instead it is just a display of somebody else's wealth. Taken individually, many of the works are very good, of course, but together they are all very familiar works by blue-chip artists, which ultimately makes for a rather bland show with no edge whatsoever. Very safe, nothing particularly adventurous, and certainly nothing disturbing or provocative. Nice pictures that make even nicer investments. Contemporary art as corporate bling.