Editor’s Note
This exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, closing January 18, explores the Art Deco movement through the lens of Van Cleef & Arpels’ high jewelry. For more details, read our venue report and an explanatory article by Professor Yoko Hirakata.
The exhibition “Eternal Moment: Van Cleef & Arpels – Art Deco Narrated by High Jewelry” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum runs until January 18. A venue report is available here. An explanatory article by Yoko Hirakata (Professor, Kobe University Graduate School) is available here.
Van Cleef & Arpels is a high jewelry maison founded in 1906 at Place Vendôme in Paris. It is highly regarded worldwide for its poetic creations inspired by nature, couture, dance, and fantasy worlds. It has produced numerous pieces rich in technique and creativity, including the innovative “Mystery Set” technique, the Zip necklace, and the Alhambra motif.
This exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 1925 “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” (Art Deco Expo). The venue displays approximately 250 pieces of jewelry, watches, and objets d’art selected from the maison’s historical “Patrimony Collection” and private collections, along with about 60 archival documents. The main building of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, known as the former Asaka Palace residence, showcases works from the Art Deco period of the 1910s-1930s, while the new wing introduces the “Savoir-Faire” (craftsmanship) carried into the modern era.
The “Kobayashi Tokusaburo” exhibition is being held at the Tokyo Station Gallery until January 18. A venue report is available here.
Kobayashi Tokusaburo (1884–1949) graduated from Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1909 and participated in the avant-garde painting movement known as the Fyūzan-kai. He was also involved in publishing as an associate of the magazine “Kiseki” (Miracle) and handled stage design for the theater troupe “Geijutsu-za.” As a Western-style painter, he exhibited at the Inten and Enten exhibitions, and from 1923, his activities centered on the Shun’yō Exhibition. From his mid-40s, he produced many works featuring children as models and also worked on still lifes with bright color tones. In his later years, he painted natural landscapes such as Enoura (Numazu City) and continued creating until just before his death.
This exhibition is the first major retrospective of Kobayashi Tokusaburo, introducing his artistic career through approximately 300 works and materials. In his early period, he sketched his future wife Masako and depicted diverse subjects like harbors, shorelines, and spectacles. Alongside peers from his Tokyo School of Fine Arts and Fyūzan-kai days, he challenged himself with oil painting, watercolor, woodblock prints, and etchings, deepening his style. The exhibition also displays works by his close associates, including Hisayoshi Sanada, Tetsugorō Yorozu, Shōhachi Kimura, and Inosuke Hako.
The “Keizo Kitajima Photo Exhibition: Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time” is being held at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art until January 18. A venue report is available here.
Keizo Kitajima began photography seriously after participating in Daido Moriyama’s class at “WORKSHOP Photography School” in 1975. The following year, following the school’s dissolution, he co-founded the self-managed gallery “Image Shop CAMP” with Moriyama and others. He has numerous awards. From the 1980s, he photographed in East and West Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Hong Kong, Seoul, and elsewhere, documenting cities and people under the Cold War structure.
In 1991, after covering the former Soviet Union, he shifted from snapshot-centered work and subsequently developed series based on fixed-point, continuous shooting, such as “PORTRAITS” and “UNTITLED RECORDS.” This exhibition re-examines layers of time and memory through post-earthquake disaster areas and landscapes across Japan.
The exhibition “Netherlands × Chiba: Capturing, Narrating – Sarah van Lee & David van der Leeuw × Yuki Shimizu” is being held at the Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art until January 18. A venue report is available here.
This exhibition is the first in Japan to introduce the works of young Dutch photographers Sarah van Lee and David van der Leeuw. The venue displays approximately 80 works, focusing on their “Metropolitan Melancholia” and “Still Life” series created in New York.
It also highlights the history of photography related to Chiba, introducing old photographs associated with Chiba and the museum’s painting collection through the approach of Yuki Shimizu, a photographer and novelist based in Chiba.