“For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979” Debuts in Houston

More than 250 works include major loans and many never seen by U.S. audiences

HOUSTON—October 22, 2014—The years from 1968 to 1979 in Japan are among “the missing pages in history,” according to influential architect Arata Isozaki, a time when the activist generation of the 1950s and 1960s was replaced by introspective young artists, writers, and intellectuals. In March 2015, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, attempts to fill some of these missing pages by examining the role of photography in the formation of contemporary art in Japan.

For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 presents some 250 works: photographs, photo books, paintings, sculpture, and film-based installations. The unprecedented survey demonstrates how 29 Japanese artists and photographers enlisted the camera to make experimental and conceptual shifts in their artistic practices during a time of radical societal change. The exhibition debuts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where it will be on view from March 7 to July 12, 2015 (changed from the previously announced dates of February 1 to April 26, 2015).

“This groundbreaking exhibition draws from the Museum’s permanent collection and initiates partnerships with institutions in Japan, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, that enable us to bring important experimental works outside of Japan, in this context, for the first time,” said Gary Tinterow, Museum director. “The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is thrilled to introduce American audiences to this period of Japanese art, previously little known outside of that country.”

“Japanese art and photography in the 1970s was characterized by an intense search for new directions,” said Yasufumi Nakamori, associate curator of photography, who organized the exhibition. “For a New World to Come sheds light on these shifts, while unveiling photography’s importance in modern-day Contemporary and Conceptual art in and beyond Japan.”

Exhibition in Context
The late 1960s and early 1970s marked a period of political and social turmoil in Japan. In the wake of the years following World War II, the country was struggling to forge a new identity on the world stage while still bridling under U.S. occupation, and Japanese artists were seeking a medium that could adequately respond to these uncertain times. By the 1970s, a group of artists had devoted themselves to experiments with the camera, individually searching for new directions in their traditional media-based practices and using the camera as a conceptual, experimental, and personal intermediary in the production of art.

For a New World to Come explores in depth, for the first time, the relationship between art and photography during this period. The exhibition addresses five loosely organized tendencies:

• Images of student protests and the underground art world by photographers. Artists represented include Shunji Dodo, who photographed the fall of the student protesters’ barricade at Kyushu University (1969); Shōmei Tōmatsu, whose Oh! Shinjuku series (1970) captures protesters and underground theater actors in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district; Toshio Matsumoto, whose triple-projection film and sound installation, For the Damaged Right Eye (1968), portrays student protests and underground subcultures in Tokyo; and various members of Provoke, an independent photography journal known for its radical departure from conventional documentary and fine-art photography, including Daidō Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, and Yutaka Takanashi.

• Conceptual photographs by artists who put down their brushes and broke away from previous mediums. These artists incorporated photography as part of their conceptual practices, often as a way to capture and incorporate the dimension of time into their work. Featured are sculptor Hitoshi Nomura, whose installation Time on a Curved Line (1970) will travel outside of Japan for the first time; Kōji Enokura, an artist and sculptor associated with the Mono-ha movement (translated as “The School of Things”) who adopted photography to visualize the continuing tension between himself and the surrounding environment; Keiji Uematsu, a sculptor and performance artist who was interested in photography’s ability to make a structure visible (or invisible) through performance; and Tatsuo Kawaguchi, whose installation Land and Sea (1970) documents four wooden planks placed on the beach over three days.

• Works by artists who harnessed the Postmodern concepts of repetition, copy, or circulation, and the powers of the photocopier and the projector as alternatives to the camera. This section shows works by Nobuyoshi Araki, who created thematic books by photocopying his snapshots; Hiroshi Yamazaki, who employed a photocopier to capture street traffic; and Tsunehisa Kimura, who combined found pictures of war-devastated landscapes and iconic visual signs of corporate capitalism. It will also feature two installations that will be re-created for the Houston exhibition only, and seen in the United States for the first time: Takuma Nakahira’s time-based photographic mural, Circulation: Date, Place, Events (1971); and Nobuo Yamanaka’s 15-screen projection of an image from Tokyo’s Tama River, Fixed River (1972).

• Konpora, a term derived from the English phrase “contemporary photography.” This specific snapshot style emerged as an antithesis to subjective and high-contrast documentary photographic practices epitomized by Provoke photographers. Konpora photographers developed a matter-of-fact approach in snapping the everyday, responding to the 1966 exhibition Contemporary Photographers: Toward a Social Landscape (George Eastman House, Rochester, New York). This section features work by Shigeo Gochō, Kenshichi Heshiki, and Kiyoshi Suzuki, and emerging color snapshots by Daidō Moriyama.

• Works created by some of the exhibition artists in the mid- to late 1970s that indicate new directions for contemporary art in the 1980s. Among the works in this section are large and grainy prints of intimate interior space by Miyako Ishiuchi; an installation of 48 color photographs by Takuma Nakahira; and a time-based performance project by Keizō Kitajima, who transformed an artist-run gallery into a darkroom.

The exhibition will travel to two New York venues: Grey Art Gallery (New York University) from September 11 to December 5, 2015; and Japan Society from October 9, 2015, to January 11, 2016.

Catalogue
This exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive, illustrated catalogue—published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and distributed by Yale University Press—that includes new scholarship on Japanese art and photography of the time, written by 13 noted curators and art historians in both Japan and the United States. It is the first scholarly publication in English dedicated to this subject.

Organization and Funding
For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Generous funding for the exhibition and catalogue is provided by:
The Japan Foundation
Michael A. Chesser
Bettie Cartwright in memory of Colin Kennedy
Taka Ishii Gallery
Japan Cultural Research Institute
Kuraray
John A. MacMahon
NOLTEX L.L.C.
Yasuhiko and Akemi Saitoh
Ms. Miwa Sakashita and Dr. John R. Stroehlein
Toshiba International Corporation
Manfred Heiting
Japan-United States Friendship Commission
Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies
Marcia and Mark Goldstein
Japan Business Association of Houston
Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America, Inc.
Yumi and Toshi Yoshida

Media Contacts
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