This year exhibitions are being held in Japan and abroad to mark the 100th anniversary of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto. In this section, we examine some of the diverse artistic expressions and worldwide influence of the Surrealist movement through a number of works from the museum collection.

The Surrealists adopted a variety of techniques to express ideas that could not be grasped through reason, such as dreams, the subconscious, chance, and the uncanny. One prime example is the practice of automatic writing, in which an artist wrote down a succession of words that came to mind without any regard for their literary merit.

Although initially a poetic movement, Surrealism expanded to include painting, photography, and film. The works of the German painter Max Ernst, who was active during that period in Paris, feature grotesque figures that dwell somewhere between the real and the unreal. These include a creature with a bird’s head called Loplop, and various other distorted bodies. Ernst also made pieces using the frottage technique in which he rubbed a pencil over a sheet of paper with a bumpy material underneath it; and grattage, a technique applied to oil paintings that enabled him to incorporate chance into the work. Some of the other Surrealists, including Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and René Magritte, also made works using their own original techniques. Their diverse approaches are embodied by The Surrealist Postcard series.

Surrealism spread from Paris to the entire world, influencing people such as the Kyoto-based painter Kitawaki Noboru. Kitawaki’s work Wonder in Autumn dates from the time that he began painting surrealistic pictures. By dipping leaves and tree branches in paint and stamping them on the canvas, he created an image akin to a dog howling off in the distance.

In addition, some artists from what was then Czechoslovakia, who had a close relationship with Breton and other Surrealists, gradually became attuned to Surrealism. The book designs of Karel Teige, the illustrations of Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen, and the poetry of Vítězslav Nezval convey the Surrealist trend that was underway in Prague and Brno.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the renaming of the SOGA-kai, we look back at the group’s career through a selection of works from the museum collection.

The Sozobijutsu, predecessor to the SOGA-kai, was established in 1948. Formed not long after the war, the group was distinguished by a professed opposition to official (i.e., government-sponsored) exhibitions. In the words of the Sozobijutsu manifesto, “…based on a desire for freedom and purity in the act of painting.” This desire is based on the fact that three of the core members, Uemura Shoko (then 46), Fukuda Toyoshiro (44), and Yoshioka Kenji (42), who had shown their work at government exhibitions until the previous year, were mid-career Nihonga (Japanese-style) painters from various parts of the country when they joined forces to form the group. (In addition to Uemura, the other members from Kyoto were Akino Fuku, Okumura Koichi, Kikuchi Takashi, Sawa Kojin, Hirota Tazu, and Mukai Kuma.) As the new group suited to the democratic era that had emerged after the war in Japan’s feudalistic and convention-bound art world, it attracted a great deal of attention not only among artists but in society as a whole.

Feeling something refreshing about the group, Asada Takashi selected the Sozobijutsu exhibition as the first place to show his work. Although one of his university professors advised him against taking part, his father, Asada Benji, who was associated with Shinchosha, a painting school with strong Kyoto tendencies, and later a manager of the Nitten (Japan Fine Art Exhibition), recommended that he join the new group because it was changing with the times. As this anecdote suggests, senior painters interfered with the Sozobijutsu’s first exhibition, but artists, including some who attended painting schools that were affiliated with the group’s founders, submitted a total of 283 works to the event, marking it a roaring success. In 1951, the Sozobijutsu merged with the Shinseisaku Art Society to become its Japanese-style painting section. (The Shinseisaku was originally founded as a private group in 1936 – a sculpture and an architecture section were subsequently added.) Then in 1974, all of the members in the Japanese-style painting section declared their independence and renamed Sozobijutsu the SOGA-kai.

The group’s founding members, who came up in an era when free and pure artistic creation was by no means a given, formed the SOGA-kai to ensure that future generations of painters would never face that kind of situation. This idea was carried on by second-generation members such as Utoo Sei, third-generation members such as Uemura Atsushi, and fourth-generation members such as Asano Hitoshi. The group’s members and friends recognized each other as individual artists, regardless of their age or career. While remaining conscious of each other’s works, they viewed as a positive stimulus without imitating or criticizing it. (Critiquing, though, was okay.) Moreover, their works, in which they delve ever deeper into self-expression, continues to provide the Japanese painting world with a breath of fresh air even today.

The exhibition LOVE Fashion−In Search of Myself focuses on the various human desires entrusted to fashion. Here, we consider the love and desire surrounding fashion through the works of contemporary artists.

Photographer Motoda Keizo captures the figures he meets on the streets who choose their own unique style and way of life. A portrait of a young man in regent style and a moto jacket expresses his desire to be a “social rebel”. Tsuzuki Kyoichi’s Happy Victims series, which appeared in the fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin around the 2000s, documented people who are obsessed with a particular fashion brand, show how fashion can be a mirror of personal aspirations. Through photographs that capture the real relationship between clothes and people in daily life, the series reveal the desire for possession of these “happy victims,” who despite living in a studio apartment in the city and spend much money for their favorite designer. It is the advertising strategies of fashion brands that drive such the aspirations and the desire for possession. We are tempted to become obedient consumers of what we love (J'adore). Alicia Framis juxtaposes a cemetery with a billboard of luxury brand perfumes in a virtual urban space in a metro station in Paris, suggesting both the light and shadow sides of the city known as the fashion mecca.

In Kasahara Emiko's MANUS-CURE, composed of 1050 nail polish colors, the naming of colors and their signification is seen as an element that directs one's mood of the moment and the person one wants to become. Kasahara points out that in the act of makeup lies a “capitalistic desire to enhance oneself to a certain commodity value.” On the other hand, Sawada Tomoko, who creates self-portraits in which she disguises herself as various occupations and social attributes through makeup, hairstyle, and clothing, returning to a natural face, she urges us to reflect on our own ways of love and desire, away from the desires of someone else imprinted by society.

Shimura Fukumi is highly regarded both for her exquisite silk weaving and her outstanding essays. She is a designated Living National Treasure who in 2015 received the Order of Culture from the Japanese government. In 2016, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto held an exhibition called Shimura Fukumi to commemorate the honor, providing numerous visitors with an opportunity to encounter her works.

Shimura was born in Shiga Prefecture in 1924 as the second daughter of a doctor, Ono Motozumi, and his wife, Toyo. However, in 1926, Shimura was adopted by her father’s younger brother, Shimura Satoru, and his wife, Hide, and went to live with them in Kichijoji, Tokyo. She first learned of the existence of her birth parents on New Year’s of 1941. After that, her birth mother taught her how to weave, and at the age of 32, Shimura set her sights on a career in textiles. While receiving further instruction from her mother in Omihachiman, Shiga, she began making textiles using vegetables dyes and tsumugi silk. In 1957, on the recommendation of the wood and lacquerware artist Kuroda Tatsuaki, Shimura’s work was selected for inclusion in the Fourth Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition. The following year, she received an encouragement award for her work Autumn Mist in the fifth edition of the exhibition. While continuing to show her works in the event (until 1994), Shimura enthusiastically dedicated herself to her practice, showing her pieces in solo shows and also being invited to take part in museum exhibitions.

Shimura’s works are distinguished by a rich harmony of colors made by carefully collecting natural plants and using them to dye silk thread. She uses the term “taking the plant’s lives” to describe this process, and sees making colored dye with vegetation as an act of respect for plants and love for silk thread. In this way, Shimura is an artist who has continued to pursue her practice while retaining a pure attitude toward nature. Her dyed and woven works are abstract and lyrical depictions of natural scenes that are realized through patterns of color and density.

Along with eight of Shimura’s work from the museum collection, this section includes pieces by three other artists who also use(d) tsumugi silk weaving.

Caroline Broadhead began her career as a contemporary jewelry artist before incorporating a variety of expressive forms, including textiles and performance, into her work. Broadhead has consistently displayed an interest in the body and things that are related to it. This interest might be seen as the boundary between things such as the external and internal, existence and non-existence, and public and private sensibilities. In this section, we present works that deal with the act of wearing clothes and the body.

The Seven Ages series is a work that makes use of different types of white cloth to express seven phases of life. It was inspired by the phrase “all the world’s a stage,” which appears in Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It. At the time that she started the series, Broadhead placed special importance on the ability to wear the pieces. For example, the cocoon-like No. 1 opens in the center, allowing the user to pass their arms through the sleeves. On the other hand, No. 7, representing the final phase of life, is a skeletal framework, which extends our line of sight outside the body through shade and movement.

Onagi Yoichi made use of a 3D tapestry weave to realize An Artificial Heart, a work that does not require any inner support. Meanwhile, by using glass as a material, Masuda Yoshinori’s work seems to give us a clear view inside the heart.

According to Hiroi Nobuko, “Hands basically have eyes, and fingers can talk.” Touching is an indispensable way of connecting with and understanding the outside world. With Hiroi’s words in mind, the gloves created by Pierre Degen, who originally studied jewelry making, have the paradoxical effect of making us realize how strange hand movements can be. The world’s textures are not always comforting, and when we come into contact with them, it might be useful to have something High Impact Resistance to serve as a breakwater-like boundary.

In this section, we introduce a group of self-portraits by artists who were either born in or otherwise linked to Japan. “In Search of Myself” is the subtitle of Love Fashion, a special exhibition that is currently on display in the museum. The phrase alludes to the fact that when Japanese artists encountered new forms of Western art and learning in the modern era, they felt surprise, admiration, and in some cases, jealousy, which inspired them to set out on a search for themselves.

Kyoto-born Tamura Soryu (1846-1918) was a pioneering artist who paved the way for Western-style painters in Japan. At a time when there were few opportunities to learn oil painting, Tamura made his own way by teaching himself. As a result of his devoted efforts to study English and paint anatomical charts for hospital use, he eventually was appointed to a teaching post at the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting. This striking self-portrait, depicting the artist’s penetrating gaze shining brightly in the darkness, was painted when he was 38.

In the 20th century, European art came to be introduced more widely in Japan due to the burgeoning magazine culture. Kishida Ryusei (1891-1929) first encountered works by artists such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse in the magazine Shirakaba (established in 1910). Above all, he was impressed by Van Gogh’s paintings to an almost religious degree. In a career that lasted for roughly 20 years, Kishida painted over 30 self-portraits, many of which date to the early 1910s, a period he referred to as his “second birth.”

Last but not least, there is Morimura Yasumasa (b. 1951), a currently active who uses his body to consider the significance of incorporating the Japanese self into Western art. Since showing self-portrait photographs in which he dressed up as Van Gogh in 1985, Morimura has continued to make work in which he is the subject, by “becoming” various characters in famous paintings and noted historical figures. In the past, Morimura has talked about how he sees Van Gogh as “the god of oil painting” and his works as archetypal art landscapes. This work, which appeared in a 2016 solo exhibition, marked the first time in some 30 years that Morimura had transformed himself in Van Gogh. At the same time, it is a self-portrait of modern Japanese art, which struggled against the art establishment.