ARTIFACTS

Artists have it rough in Tokyo. Finding affordable gallery space—let alone profiting from your work—is nearly impossible. Enter The Artists Web, a simple and affordable way to publicize and sell paintings, digital art, ceramics or other products from the right side of your brain. The website was founded three years ago in the UK by Chris Kirkland, who has now relocated to Tokyo and launched a Japanese version. It takes just 5-10 minutes to sign up, pick a design template and upload your first images. “Most people find the website editor easy to use and addictive,” Kirkland warns, “and tend to spend a few hours tweaking things to their hearts content.” Take advantage of a free two-week trial, and if you enjoy having your own site, sign up for the Starter (¥12,000 per year) or the Value (¥18,000 per year) packages. The site currently helps approximately 750 artists around the world promote some 30,000 works, which are searchable by size, price, keyword and even color scheme. See www.theartistsweb.co.uk (English) or www.theartistsweb.jp (Japanese) for more information. BJM

PAST ISSUES

749: George Raab: Canadian Wilderness Etchings 743: Daido Moriyama 741: Bauhaus Experience, Dessau 739: The Perry & Harris Exhibition 737: The House 735: XXIst Century Man 733: Kaii Higashiyama 731: Three Weeks of Art Celebration 729: Fashion + Art 727: New Horizons: The Collection of the Ishibashi Foundation 725: Yokoyama and Toulouse-Lautrec 723: Goth: Reality of the Departed World 721: Genesis Art Lounge 717: Tatsuya Matsui: Flower Robotics 715: Space for Your Future: Recombining the DNA of Art and Design 713: MoMA Design Store + Gallery White Room Tokyo 711: Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art 709: Daikanyama Installation 2007 707: Nippon to Asobo 705: Marina Kappos at Tokyo Wonder Site 703: African-American Quilts: Women Piecing Memories and Dreams 701: Kids Earth Fund 699: The Mural Art of Kotohira-gu Shrine: Okyo, Jakuchu and Gantai 697: “Ayakashi” and “Odilon Redon” 695: Architects Around Town 693: Chocolate 691: My Civilization: Grayson Perry 689: Henry Darger: A Story of Girls At War—of Paradise Dreamed 687: Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco 685: Marlene Dumas: Broken White 683: The Mind of Leonardo: The Universal Genius at Work 681: Suntory Museum of Art and 21_21 Design Sight 679: Art Fair Tokyo 2007 677: Gregory Colbert: Ashes and Snow 675: The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop 673: World of Kojima Usui Collection 671: Keeping TABs 669: The National Art Center, Tokyo 667: New Year’s Preview 665: Jason Teraoka: Neighbors 663: The 3rd Fuchu Biennale: On Beauty and Value 661: Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) 659: Shinro Ohtake Zen-Kei 657: Prism: Contemporary Australian Art 655: The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium Exhibition 653: Luisa Lambri 651: Modern Paradise 649: The Legend of Ultraman 647: Nihonga Painting: Six Provocative Artists 645: Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 643: Art × Communication = Open! 641: YOROYORON: Tabaimo 639: Africa Remix 637: Mashcomix 635: Move On Asia and Hitoshi Nishiyama’s White Out 633: A Passion for Plants 631: Chikaku: Time and Memory in Japan 629: A Sense of You, Created by Me 627: Beautiful Cities in Dreams 626: 77 Million 625: No Border 623: The 9th Annual Taro Okamoto Memorial Award for Contemporary Art 621: Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo 619: Conversation With Art, On Art 617: Olafur Eliasson: Your light shadow 613: Mayumi Terada: New Works 611: Gerhard Richter: New Works 609: Hokusai 607: Stephan Balkenhol: Skulpturen und Reliefs 605: International Triennale of Contemporary Art 2005 603: CWAJ 50 Years of Print Show 601: Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time 599: Shinji Ohmaki: Echoes-Infinity 597: Miwa Yanagi 596: Cubism in Asia: Unbounded Dialogues 595: Canada Tsuga: The Feeling of Wood 594: Laurie Anderson: The Record of the Time 593: Today's artists X: Nishimura Morio/Matsumoto Yoko 592: Masaaki Yamada 591: Follow me! 590: Daido Moriyama: Buenos Aires 589: Mutsuro Sasaki: Flux Structure 588: Shinro Ohtake 587: Masterpieces of the Louvre Museum 586: Tabaimo: Yubibira 585: Yasumasa Morimura: Los Nuevos Caprichos 584: Julian Opie: Films and Paintings 583: Masterpieces of the museum island 582: The Elegance of Silence 581: Tapies 580: The world is a stage: Stories behind pictures 579: Shigejiro Sano At Play in the Esprit of Paris 578: The Body: Hitoshi Abe 577: Tenshin Okakura: The Awakening of Japan 576: Contemporary Spanish Photography: Ten Views 575:Taro Okamoto Memorial Award 574: Takeshi Tamai: Till Moss Grows On 573: Laura Owens 572: Alphonse Mucha: Treasures Of The Mucha Foundation 571: “Welcome, Welcome” Art-Beijing-Contemporary 570: The hidden side of Japanese art 569: Art Scope 2004: Cityscape Into Art—Michiko Shoji + Johannes Wohnseifer 568: Life Actually 567: Traces: Body and Idea in Contemporary Art 566: Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and the 20th Century Art 565: Archilab: New Experiments In Architecture, Art and the City, 1950-2005 564: The Second Annual Fuchu Biennale 563: Have We Met? 561-2: Fluxus: Art Into Life 560: Christopher Wool 559: Pop Art and co. 558: Art & Money 557: Art of the Japanese Postcard 556: Yayoi Kusama: Eternity-Modernity 555: Ihei Kimura: The Man with the Camera 554: Wolfgang Tillmans: Freischwimmer 553: Emerging Generation 552: Larry Clark: Punk Picasso 551: Cool & Light: New Spirit in Craft Making 550: Angelo Mangiarotti: Un Percorso 549: Endo Akiko: Poetry of an Everlasting Life 548: Paris and Klein 547: Yoshitomo Nara: From the Depth of My Drawer 546: Colors: Viktor & Rolf & KCI 545: Micro Presence & Macro Presence 544: Non-sect Radical: Contemporary Photography III 543: Pastoral and Flowers in Modern French Painting 542: Collapsing Histories: time, space and memory 541: Supernatural Artificial 540: Jiro Takamatsu: Universe of His Thought 539: The World Press Photo 2004 538: I Dreamt of Flying: Noguchi Rika 537: Man Ray Exhibition: The Gift of His Vision 536: Why Not Live For Art? 535: Brazil: Body Nostalgia 534: n_ext: New Generation of Media Artists 533: Empty Garden II 532: Street Art in Africa: A Color Commotion 531: Modern Crafts and Design from the Museum Collection: Art Deco 530: And or Versus? : Adventures in Images 529: Modern Means 528: Remaking Modernism in Japan 1900-2000 527: Treasures of a Sacred Mountain: Kukai and Mount Koya 526: Jan Jansen: Master of Shoe Design 525: Yasuo Kuniyoshi: Between Two Worlds 524: Beyond The Border: Seung H-Sang and Yung Ho Chnag 523: Testimony of Life: Ancient Roman Portraits from the Vatican Museums 522: I Love Art 521: "My" Siberia and "My" Earth: The 30 Year Memorial Retrospective Exhibition of Yasuo Kazuki 520: Time of My Life: Art with a Youthful Spirit 519: Joy of Life: Two Photographers from Africa-JD 'Okhai Ojeikere and Malick Sidibé 518: Roppongi Crossing: New Visions in Japanese Art 2004+Kusamatrix 517: Exposition Musee Marmottan Monet 516: Treasures of a Great Zen Temple: Nanzenji 515: Johannes Itten: Ways to Art 514: Meiji Kaigakan (Memorial Picture Gallery) 513: Kaii Higashiyama: One Man's Path 512: Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film 511: Yasujiro Ozu: Japanese Film Master 509/10: End-of-the-year review and 2004 preview 508: Surface tension 507: Jean Nouvel 506: Makoto Aida: My Ken Ten 505: Gaudi: Exploring Form 504: Ino Tadataka and Old Maps of Japan/Fusuma Paintings of Jukoin 503: Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum 502: Happiness: A Survival Guide for Art and Life 501: Today's Man 500: Taro Shinoda: Helicopter 1 Issues 499- Issues 449- Issues 399-

By JEFF MICHAEL HAMMOND

Masterpieces of the museum island

The Tokyo National Museum offers glimpes of the eternal

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Virgin with Child (“Madonna Colonna”), ca. 1508, 78.9x58.2cm Photos © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

On an island in Germany’s Spree River sits a group of five museums that for over a century have housed a collection of art and artifacts to rival the Louvre and the British Museum. After being caught up in the vagaries of the Nazi era and the subsequent Cold War, the works on the Museum Island have only recently been brought back together. Now, following the unification of Germany and the listing of the island as a World Heritage Site, the museums are being renovated. Until the reconstruction is completed in 2015, the artworks are free to travel, and their first stop is the Tokyo National Museum.

“Masterpieces of the Museum Island, Berlin: Visions of the Divine in the Sanctuary of Art” focuses on religious works, and it gathers together highlights of the Museum Island collection, including Greek and Roman and Byzantine works, as well as Islamic and Medieval art.

The centerpiece of the prehistoric collection, the 3,000 year-old Berlin Gold Hat, is a conical, 74cm-tall tower of beaten gold. Elaborate rings that cover its surface are believed to be an incredibly detailed solar-lunar conversion calendar. Similar objects found across Europe had puzzled historians for decades, but are now widely believed to be hats worn by priest-kings who could predict the best time to cultivate crops. With the ability to see into the future, these wizards, of sorts, were credited with supernatural powers.

Mummy masks, fragments of wall, and stelae (ceremonial stone slabs) fill the Egyptian section, along with dozens of elaborate bronze sculptures, some of them incredibly tiny. These last include deities with animal characteristics, such as Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, and his counterparts Hathor (goddess of love and music) and the cat-like Bastet. By contrast, the figure of Queen Tiyi made from yew wood and gold foil is all too human—her strong facial features are sharply punctuated and strikingly realistic. This and other sculptures show another side to the stylized flat representations that are the most frequently seen images from ancient Egypt.

Glazed brick wall (striding lion), ca. 575 BC, 230x107cm

Many of these artifacts were uncovered by German and British teams who, like the English, followed the lead of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition and conducted excavations in the area. Between 1899 and 1917, digs also took place in Babylon (modern-day Iraq), where hundreds of thousands of glazed bricks were discovered. Among the objects pieced together is a three-dimensional relief of a proud and striding lion from a frieze on the east wall of Babylon’s processional avenue. This route led to the Ishtar Gate and was thronged at the time of New Year festivities, in what was a major and powerful city in its time.

Raphael and Botticelli were among a number of Renaissance European artists who attempted to capture the divine in two dimensions—Botticelli through depictions of Classical mythological figures like Venus, and Raphael through Christian imagery like the Virgin with Child—both displayed here. Islamic artists, meanwhile, were forbidden to represent human forms, hence the intricate geometric patterns that adorn Mosques across the Middle East and throughout the world.

This extensive exhibition introduces the sheer range of ways in which different cultures through the ages have conceptualized the divine and represented it in art.

Tokyo National Museum, until June 12. See exhibition listings for details.

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