Japan

Asia Week New York bounces back from Covid-19 restrictions with $131m in sales

A print of the "Great Wave" by Hokusai sold for a record-breaking $2.8m at Christie’s during the series of exhibitions and auctions

Relief for Art Week Tokyo galleries as Japan eases travel restrictions

Second edition comes as Tokyo attempts to regain its lost status as an international art hub amid a booming contemporary market and a forthcoming fair

Typhoon-battered Yayoi Kusama pumpkin goes back on display in Japan

Artist’s huge sculpture at Benesse Art Site Naoshima has been restored after being severely damaged last year

Prizesnews

Ai Weiwei and museum architects Sanaa win £100,000 Praemium Imperiale art prizes

The annual award, under the patronage of Japan’s Imperial Family, spans five categories including painting, sculpture and architecture

Issey Miyake, ground-breaking Japanese fashion designer and favourite of museum costume institutes, has died, aged 84

After surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a child, Miyake turned to clothes as a modern, optimistic form of creativity, and revived the use of pleats to create wearable, free-flowing, unisex clothes

Fish scales, nettles and banana leaf? Exhibition of traditional Japanese garments made with unusual materials opens in Minneapolis

A show at the Minneapolis Institute of Art displays more than 120 Japanese textiles made from the stuff of nature

Paris Photo proves that photography is now a woman’s game

Contemporary explorations of femininity that extend beyond the male gaze headline the fair’s latest edition

Exclusive: Rescued from an attic, lost Van Gogh landscape surfaces in Japan—here it is in colour

Vincent's watercolour of a Dutch meadow with cows was exhibited once, in 1903, and is known only from a small black-and-white photograph

a blog by Martin Bailey

Discovered: American couple buys a picture by Van Gogh’s friend Edmund Brooke for $45 in antiques shop

Vincent was fascinated by his Australian colleague’s links with Japan—and together they painted landscapes in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise

a blog by Martin Bailey
Art marketanalysis

Tokyo aims to take art trade crown from Hong Kong

Can reforms to Japan’s onerous tax system allow Tokyo to replace Hong Kong as the leading art trade hub in Asia, as it was during the “bubble period” of the late 1980s?

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Kenzo Takada, the designer and artist who created the first global, multicultural, fashion brand

In everything he made—clothes, spectacles inspired by his trademark round lenses, home furnishings, parfumerie—Takada's love of fine art remained close at hand

Gauguin and Van Gogh: their shared love of Japan revealed

“Beautiful women” in Gauguin’s rediscovered manuscript are now identified as by Kunisada—Vincent’s favourite Japanese printmaker

a blog by Martin Bailey

Now stuck in Japanese lockdown, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers will not return to UK until next summer

Londoners will have to wait even longer to see the National Gallery’s 60 touring masterpieces

a blog by Martin Bailey

All eyes on Asia: normality is still a long way off as museums emerge from lockdown

Visitor numbers at some of the world’s most popular art venues have nosedived and uncertainty for the future remains

China, South Korea and Japan start to reopen museums after strict coronavirus lockdown

Shanghai's Power Station of Art and Shanghai Museum welcomed visitors today after China's tough measures helped curb the spread of the disease

Tokyo’s treasure house of Impressionist painting reopens as Artizon Museum

Former Bridgestone Museum of Art will have new focus on creativity through the ages after a three-year renovation

Taiwan to host censored Aichi Triennale show

Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art is planning to restage the exhibition, which was partly closed due to violent threats over the inclusion of a 'comfort woman' statue

Eleven artists withdraw or modify their works at Aichi Triennale in ongoing censorship row

Cuban activist Tania Bruguera closes down her exhibit while other artists reconfigure works to reflect the controversy

Scattered over 12 islands, Japan’s Setouchi Triennale offers poignant reflections of local life by the sea

Triennial features more than 200 sculptures and installations scattered across a dozen islands in the region

Artists wade into row over Japanese triennial dedicated to freedom of speech

More than 70 participants including Candice Breitz and Tania Bruguera have signed a statement demanding reopening of Aichi Triennale's exhibition

Lost artfeature

Lost Art: the mysterious allure of Japan’s Three Sacred Treasures

Does the imperial collection really include a mirror of wisdom, a sword of valour, and a jewel of benevolence gifted from the gods?

Manga and Camp: the art of going over the top

We talk about Manga, the subject of the British Museum's huge new show, and we explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Camp: Notes on Fashion. Produced in association with Bonhams, auctioneers since 1793.

Hosted by Ben Luke and Nancy Kenney. Produced by David Clack and Julia Michalska
Prizesnews

New Japanese art prize chooses inaugural emerging artist winners ahead of $1 million award

Chinese new media artist Cheng Ran and US artist Cameron Rowland receive $100,000 Nomura Emerging Artist Awards with world’s biggest art prize to be announced in October

Van Gogh’s most important painting leaves Europe for the first time

National Gallery’s Sunflowers heads to Japan where it is likely to be seen by around a million people

a blog by Martin Bailey

National Gallery in London to send Van Gogh's Sunflowers to Japan

Exhibition with 60 other loans from the museum will help celebrate the Tokyo Olympics in 2020