Neo-nihonga artists in Time Magazine

nihonga · (#1 (**permalink**))

I found this article on Japanese Neo-nihonga artists Kumi Machida, Hisashi Tenmyouya, and Fuyuko Matsui on the Time Magazine website.

"I'm not interested in drawing with free form, just from emotion. What's interesting is using an established technique, but drawing from your private feeling." - Fuyuko Matsui

That could describe the motivations of a loose collection of rising Japanese artists who are as well schooled in their country's artistic traditions as they are eager to remake them. Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art identified the trend with its 2006 exhibition No Border: From Nihonga to Nihonga, which showcased talents like Matsui and Kumi Machida, whose idiosyncratic ink portraits of macabre toylike figures are the product of supreme painterly skill.

You could call these painters "neo-nihonga," a term popularized by the album-cover designer turned fine artist Hisashi Tenmyouya, whose brilliantly colored acrylic paintings tweak symbols of Japanese nationalism and culture. They may be diverse in style, theme and personality, but what these artists have in common is a fierce devotion to the meticulous work ethic of the solo painter—a welcome change for a scene defined for over a decade by the brand-conscious pop art of Takashi Murakami.

Painting: Outside the Lines, Japanese Neo-nihonga art - TIME

Okinawa · (#2 (**permalink**))

I just love looking at art from Japan.

gesshoku · (#3 (**permalink**))

Ditto Okinawa's statement.

I love that first image. It looks like a traditional Japanese painting at a glance, but then you see the realistic face and just get pulled into the surreal-ness of the whole thing.

ThEgOlDeN · (#4 (**permalink**))

wow good photo

pandayanyan · (#5 (**permalink**))

Ha! I like the gundam like guy witht he dragon. It looks like it is done on an old parchment but it is obviously something they would have never thought of back then. I find it cunning and rather comical. HA HA!

MMM · (#6 (**permalink**))

This is a great style which is receiving a lot of deserved attention right now. There are Japanese, and non-Japanese artists with a wicked sense in combining the cute and the grotesque and the anti-establishment in different, new and exciting forms. I think it is awesome, and so inviting and thought-provoking at the same time.