museum views©

 news  &  reviews

 

about us     news     articles     advocacy     photoessays    gallery     books     links      contact       

 

 

   

 

 

signUp

museum views news

 

 

 

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

 

 

Harvard Art Museum Lands Major Gift

 

 

The King of the Met's golden age

 

 

Big bucks London art market feels economic chill

 

Barnes Foundation move takes its first step

 

 

Death of Patricia Faure is loss for LA art scene

 

 

Russians Turning To Art Market As Recession Looms

 

 

 

 

 

Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), tegning: Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), 1963

Collection of Mike and Jeanne Glad

 

 

MANGA!

Japanese Images

Louisiana, Denmark

Kenji Yanobe, Biografen i skoven, 2004

Foto: Seiji Toyonaga, Courtesy: Yamamoto Gendai

 

 

Manga is the Japanese word for comic strip, and the multi-coloured universe of war and love, eroticism and mythology, science fiction and everyday life in the Japanese graphic stories has now achieved huge international popularity with millions of comic sold every month.  
The exhibition Manga! Japanese Images is a historical introduction to the universe of manga, illustrated by comic books and cartoon films, and offers unique insight into the pictorial universe on which this worldwide cultural phenomenon is based. The exhibition shows how the Japanese comic-book culture has developed, where the visual tradition manga comes from, and where it is heading, with examples that range in time and medium from woodcut to comic-book, from book illustrations to cartoon films and from computer games to contemporary art. Today manga is not only comicbooks, but a widespread culture with ramifications in many other areas such as cartoon films and computer games. It has also left clear traces on contemporary art. Three important figures from the Japanese contemporary art scene will be represented in the exhibition: Kenji Yanobe, Tabaimo and Kumi Machida. 
 

Historically manga goes back 200 years. It was originally the famous Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai (1769-1849) who called his drawn portrait sketches manga. But before Hokusai too there was a tradition of showing drawings – often caricatures – of personalities (for example actors) in Japanese woodcuts. They were printed in mass editions to be distributed widely as advertisements for the theatre; so the tradition of mass-producing popular pictorial narratives existed long before the comic books as we know them today, and this is one of the things that can be seen at the exhibition.

 

Manga! Japanese Images is on view at Louisiana between October 8 2008 and February 9 2009