<research> Japan (4)

Chisai researches contemporary art world. Today Chisai complains.

What is art?

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2017 March

For response to this eternal question, I realized that "art" is too different between Japan and other countries since the 2010s, especially during the Covid-19 era.

For example, Impressionism is not once, and there are still artists who continue to paint works like Impressionism. As such, the art style continues, but it cannot be called contemporary art. In the same way, some artists present "sculpture". In contemporary art, format and form do not matter. In other words, contemporary artists represent their ideas as visible results, which are like sculptures. They are not making sculptures, they are artists, not sculptors.

But the Japanese love that kind of format. So, they insist on things like, "Is it Bijutsu art or Kogei craft or Design?", or "Is it a hand-painted painting or a NFT painting?". Japanese like easy-to-understand artworks which are portraits and colorful colors, and don't care about the content. Even the statue of comfort woman became so problematic in Japan that it went to court.

Japanese artists are particular about their own formats. It is natural for Japanese artists to show the same work as they did 10 years ago. Whether there is the Great East Japan Earthquake or Covid-19 era, they keep on their style.

And many Japanese museums have planned "collection exhibitions" or "not contemporary art exhibitions" in recent years. There are no problems and the museum's fans are stable. Contemporary art can be seen at events like Triennale.

My heart is getting more and more detached from Japan. What should I do?