#Sogetsu Gallery

[zegalba]

Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie, Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo 24 and Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka (1989)

[mybeingthere]

Ceramic buttons by Lucie Rie

Celebrated as one of the most important studio potters of the 20th century, Dame Lucie Rie is famous for her distinctive modernist tableware and vessels. However, it is through Rie’s lesser-known, early work making buttons in the 1940s that we discover the fascinating story of her arrival in London as an Austrian Jewish émigré, the establishment of her career, and how she came to develop her innovative array of glaze textures and colours. These small, wearable objects reveal a story of survival and collaboration at a poignant moment of international conflict.

Born in Vienna, Rie studied pottery at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule under decorative artist and sculptor Michael Powolny. In 1925 Rie set up her first studio in Vienna, and, over the next twelve years, established her place in the artistic community, winning a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937. In 1938 she, like other artists such as Frank Auerbach, Naum Gabo and fellow ceramicist Hans Coper, fled Nazi-occupied Austria to begin a new life in London.

Upon arrival in London, Rie continued to work and volunteered for Home Defence duties. However, whilst establishing her studio in London and a new market for her work, Rie needed to make a living. Fellow Venician, Fritz Lampl, was re-establishing his glass manufacturers in London, successfully producing a range of modern decorative glass tableware and figurines for the luxury market. Lampl also began producing press-moulded and blown glass buttons and offered Rie and others work at his company, Bimini, to supplying glass buttons to fashion houses and department stores such as Harrods and Liberty’s.

Rie began to produce her own stoneware buttons in her studio at her house near Hyde Park. She made buttons on the wheel and by hand, producing up to two hundred buttons a week. In 1942 Rie hired Rudolf Neufeld, a fellow refugee, as an assistant. Together they developed a series of plaster moulds, which rapidly sped up the production of the simpler button shapes. The moulds remained on the shelves in her studio until her death. Rie developed a wide range of button designs and employed six people, including Hans Coper, in her studio to support production. Rie also developed a range of innovative glazes that contributed to the development of her distinctive later glaze textures and colours, that she’s so well known by.

The more elaborate and expensive buttons were aimed at the couture market and were laid out on presentation panels so that visitors to the studio could pick out designs. Leading fashion designers of the period also sent fabric samples to the studio, and within a few days she would have to produce buttons to match. In 1980 Rie met the Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, and their friendship resulted in the 1989 exhibition ‘Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie’ at Tokyo’s Sogetsu Gallery. In the same year, Miyake also used several of her wartime buttons in his collection.

Rie later extended the range to include a variety of jewellery, umbrella handles, and frames for mirrors. For her, the business represented a pragmatic approach to generating an income during the war. However, today the buttons represent a fascinating insight into this lesser-known aspect of Rie’s highly documented career.

Katharine Malcolm, April 2023

https://www.vam.ac.uk/.../lucie-rie-a-secret-life-of-buttons

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/lucie-rie-ceramics.../

[flowersfortheriot]

Walking through the cabin garden VIII, Pansies, 1993,acrylic on canvas

In 1993, Ken Done was asked to create a series of works to be shown in the Sogetsu Keikan in Tokyo. ‘Walking through the Cabin garden I – XII’ is a suite of twelve large canvases, each almost 2 metres square.

The wonderful gallery space, designed by Isamu Noguchi for internationally acclaimed artist and patron Hiroshi Teshigahara, forms the massive entrance to the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.

"My wife Judy has created a wonderful garden full of colour and life and I have tried to capture a little of the joy that flowers bring to me and I'm sure most people. I cannot match nature, only show - through art – the feeling that I have for the garden."  - Ken Done, Tokyo, 1993

[satoshi-mochida]

SNK has released the Season Pass 2 trailer for Samurai Shodown, featuring a first look at previously announced downloadable content character Mina Majikina, as well as confirming the leaked Sogetsu Kazama, Iroha, and a fourth mystery character.

Samurai Shodown is available now for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One worldwide, as well as for Stadia. A Switch version is available now in Japan and due out on February 25 in North America and Europe. A PC version is also planned for release.

Watch the trailer below.

Update 01/26/20 at 9:20 p.m. Updated trailer with direct-feed version. View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.

[kei139-line]

現代アートと草月流作家の融合で日本の伝統文化の継承とアートの新たな可能性を見出す『現代ART×SOGETSU』4/9〜17に福岡市西新のアートギャラリーにて開催

展示会企画、運営を行う株式会社AIR PLANT / ICBA JAPAN PROJECTは、現代アーティスト×草月作家による作品の展示、���売『現代ART×SOGETSU』を4月9日〜4月17日、入場無料で開催いたします。 福岡市西新のアートギャラリー『THE GALLERY…

[recentanimenews]

Pokémon Creates New Short With American Artist Daniel Arsham To Promote Art Exhibition Series In Tokyo

  Following up on Friday's animated music video release for Piplup, the official Pokémon channel has uploaded a new six-minute short in collaboration with American fine artist Daniel Arsham to promote a series of exhibitions featuring the acclaimed artist's work across multiple Tokyo-area art galleries being held later this month. The short, like the exhibition series is titled "A Ripple in Time" and features English subtitles, embedded below: 

    The short was directed by long-time Pokémon anime director and now creative director Kunihiko Yuyama in close collaboration with Arsham. The galleries Nanzuka Underground, Sogetsu Plaza, Nanzuka 2G, Roppongi Hills 66 Plaza, and 3110NZ by LDH Kitchen will host Arsham's respective exhibitions. Each location will feature different pieces, such as paintings and sculpture based on bronze metalwork and quartz crystal, among other media, and are tied into the forthcoming release of the book "Arsham's Pokedex".

  "Arsham's Pokédex" Front Cover

  The book is a large-format art book of the respective pieces that make up the exhibition series and the first exhibition being held at the Nanzuka Underground venue will also feature exclusive and limited official merchandise based on Arsham's pieces. The exhibition series will begin on February 22nd and the exclusive merchandise is available for pre-order, in limited quantites and select merchandise such as apparel is being limited to Japanese mail-order only.

      Charmander Resin figure and Crystallized Charizard Card for sale

  SOURCES: Official YouTube Channel, Official Site ©Daniel Arsham Courtesy of NANZUKA ©2022 Pokémon. ©1995-2022 Nintendo/Creatures Inc. /GAME FREAK inc. ©Nintendo･Creatures･GAME FREAK･TV Tokyo･ShoPro･JR Kikaku ©Pokémon

  By: Humberto Saabedra

[baileye]

By Ian Chang, with tea at Metro Pictures Gallery in a show curated by Asad Raza

https://serpentine-galleries.myshopify.com/products/coming-soon-ian-cheng-emissaries-guide-to-worlding

https://ocula.com/art-galleries/metro-pictures/exhibitions/group-show/

Central to the exhibition are its hosts, who guide visitors through Raza’s droll environment comprised of such fairy-tale objects as a talking stone by Philippe Parreno and a glass and stone egg sculpture–crystalised yolk pouring out from its craggy inside–by Rachel Rose. Prompted by Ian Cheng’s e-book Emissary's Guide to Worlding, the hosts help visitors draw connections between works such as Camille Henrot’s Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?, a series of floral arrangements inspired by the Sogetsu Ikebana school, and Dan Graham’s film Rock my Religion, which surmises Shaker religion to be the foundation of rock and roll. Sound works by David Lynch and Tunde Adembimpe regularly punctuate the experience, while a mysterious interaction by Tino Sehgal functions as a pregnant pause. The guides, whose eye colours have been altered by an artwork by Rirkrit Tiravanija, will take visitors through a pavilion by Hana Miletic that offers a type of ritual space. Eventually, the visitor is asked to take part in a participatory exchange devised by Raza himself, inspired by Shaker song and movement.

[micaramel]

Artist: Sofu Teshigahara

With: Kaz Yokou Kitajima, Ken Domo

Venue: Nonaka Hill, Los Angeles

Date: February 8 – April 11, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

  Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Video:



Hiroshi Teshigahara (the artists son)(1927-2001), Ikebana, 1956, mp4, 32:29

Images courtesy of Nonaka Hill, Los Angeles

Press Release:

Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Sofu Teshigahara (1900-1979). The artist’s first exhibition in Los Angeles introduces a selection of rarely seen metal sculptures and calligraphic works produced from the 1950s to the 1970s. The artist was founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana (1927 – ongoing), which is recognized as having made a significant mark on the history of postwar Japanese art. A grand-scale ikebana work composed by Teshigahara’s direct Sogetsu student, ikebana-master Kaz Yokou Kitajima, Ikkyu Shihan Riji of Sogetsu School of Ikebana spans the exhibition spaces. In the gallery’s back room, vintage photographs by Ken Domon (1909-1990) of Teshigahara’s ikebana works are also on display. The exhibition is on view until March 28, 2020.

Sofu Teshigahara was born in Osaka in 1900. It was the Meiji Era, a period of industrialization and modernization when the Japanese government imposed a mandate to “eliminate old customs” and to “search for new knowledge throughout the world”. At the same time, counteractive initiatives rose to preserve Japanese aesthetics, folk arts and the nation’s prehistoric spirit. In this paradoxical cultural climate, Sofu’s father Wafu Teshigahara taught the centuries old formalities of ikebana, but while wearing a Western-style suit. Under his father’s direction, young Sofu trained in ikebana and calligraphy during childhood, excelled and was already teaching ikebana by the age of thirteen.

The artist’s teenage and formative years, from twelve to twenty-six years old, were spanned by the liberal and worldly Taisho Era (1912-1926), and it was in this culturally expansive time that Sofu developed a disdain for the formalities of traditional ikebana and set his ambitions towards a radicalized ikebana practice. In 1927, Teshigahara left his father’s school in Osaka and moved to Tokyo to establish his Sogetsu School of Ikebana (Sogetsu translates as: Grass moon). Very soon thereafter, he was making exhibitions with students. By 1931, he had become very well known for his avant-garde works, which disregarded symbolisms, transcended the scale of living-room “tokonoma” alcoves, and could be shown outdoors. Together with fellow ikebana artists, Houn Ohara and Yukio Nakagawa, an “avant-garde Ikebana movement” rose which deviated from conventional practices and resulted in its unprecedented and thriving popularity. These artists referred to their temporal floral arrangements as “Objet”, borrowing the term from French Surrealists and inviting contemplation of ikebana as sculpture. Teshigahara stated “I hope to demonstrate that it is possible to create expressions using anything” and believed that ikebana could be made by anyone anytime, anywhere, using any material. Through treating materials such as iron, stone, and wood as equivalent to flowers, Teshigahara served to liberate Ikebana from its restricted visual and material language, meanwhile forming an approach to a considerable sculptural practice.

Teshigahara, who had spent decades working with ephemeral materials and saw his sculptural ikebana efforts come and go, chose more lasting materials for his sculptural practice. Around 1955, he devised a method of overlaying carved wood forms with brass, bronze or lead sheets covering the wood entirely or partially. The result was a hybrid of the organic and manmade, which covered and accentuated the forms underneath.

Throughout his sculptural practice, Teshigahara worked in themes that had apparent associations with the Japanese heritage. As the art historian, Soichi Tominaga had proposed, Teshigahara’s references to traditional Japanese arts were not a regression to the past but injecting new life into tradition. On his visit to Teshigahara’s studio, Tapié praised Teshighara for the experimental savoir vivre as an artist in contrast to academic artists. Tapié favorably described his sculptures as evoking internal reverberances from ancient Japanese pantheistic culture. Uzume [ウズメ] (1960), on display in the gallery comes from Teshigahara’s Kojiki series made in in the 1960s. His continued fascination for Kojiki [古事記], an 8th century anthology of Japanese ancient myths and history stemmed from a young age, being introduced to the book by Japanese literary scholar, Shuzo Okuda. The tall column form Tachi (sword) from 1968 bears associations in Japan to safeguarding the country, or to risking one’s destiny.

In his book Avant-Garde Art in Japan (1962), French art critic Michel Tapié writes: “The master Sofu Teshigahara is one of the three or four great masters in the art of flower arrangement (the Ikebana schools are certainly the only essentially artistic schools in the world which know what structure is and what space is). Though ruling an empire comprising some thirty thousand teachers and about a million pupils, Teshigahara engages in a number of other activities — I was going to call them annexes. I regard him as one of the three or four greatest living sculptors, not only in Japan, but in the world.” Tapies, who came to Japan in 1957 seeking to familiarize himself with Japan’s avant-garde artists, is credited with identifying the Gutai artists and debuting their works overseas. Teshigahara exhibited in Gutai exhibitions and could be said to be driven by a similar ethos to “make something which has never been seen before”.

Calligraphy demonstrated Teshigahara’s speed and deliberation of the brush, producing works which are at once word, image and action. With his swift yet, dramatic black ink lines on paper, Teshigahara formed words associated with nature and mythology, often from everyday language. In the gallery corridor, the large-scale ink calligraphy, Ryusui (Flowing Water) [流水] (1977) evoke a dynamic landscape. Compositionally, the kanji are off-center, off-kilter, and at times brimming at the edges of the panel. Kanji is deconstructed in various degrees, at times essentialized to symbolic gestures of the word exemplified specifically in Gekko (moonlight) [月光], and Nichirin (Sun Rays) [日輪]. The vigorous brushwork unbound by convention echoes that of Teshigahara’s approaches to ikebana and sculptures.

Yet another aspect of Teshigahara’s legacy is the Sogetsu Art Center. As early as 1936, Teshigahara spoke with journalists about wanting Japan to have a museum for Modern Art and finally, in collaboration with his son Hiroshi, Sogetsu Art Center opened in the basement auditorium space of the Sogetsu Kai-an. Notable events include early performances by Yoko Ono (1962) John Cage and David Tudor (1962), Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Japan performance (1964), and “20 Questions for Bob Rauschenberg” (1964), a legendary Q&A session while the artist composed an extraordinary Rauschenberg work on a gold folding screen in front of an audience. The Sogetsu school was rebuilt and opened in 1977 with a ground floor exhibition space designed by Isamu Noguchi. Art installations are frequently held in the space currently.

Sofu Teshigahara, at a very young age was nick-named “Little Teacher”, and it seems that he embodied a life-long leadership role in Japan’s post-war culture. In rapidly changing times, Teshigahara engaged his considerable gifts in the visual arts to adapt intrinsically Japanese aesthetics with vigor into his work, reflecting a more globalized condition. Teshigahara received numerous honors including, L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Officier (1960); French Legion of Honor, Chevalier (1961); and Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’ s Art Encouragement Prize (1962). Sofu Teshigahara’s influence on Ikebana remains unparalleled as Sogetsu Schools of Ikebana continue to operate brances in several cities worldwide, led currently by Iemoto (Headmaster) Akene Teshigahara in Tokyo.

Currently, Sofu Teshigahara has a major sculpture on view in Paris at Foundation Louis Vuitton in the “Charlotte Perriand” exhibition.

Recommended viewing: Ikebana, 1956 By Hiroshi Teshigahara Color/sound. 32:29 minutes Japanese with English subtitles. Available on YouTube: “The history and art of ikebana, a centuries old Japanese art of flower arrangement and a look inside the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, where the director’s father Sofu Teshigahara worked as the grand master of the school.”.

Link: Sofu Teshigahara at Nonaka Hill

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2JiNmJH

[jculture-en]

May 2018: Ikebana Meets The Art League’s Cocktail Competition, Art On The Rocks

#ikebana [AlexandriaNews]Spring will be in full bloom in The Art League gallery as The Art League welcomes back the Washington, DC branch of the Sogestu School for the 17th Biennial Ikebana Show, May 1-6, 2018. Sogetsu members select works of art by Art League instructors and …

[tribelamag-blog]

Review Highlight: The stunning "Ikebana Series" – Meet Sandy Bleifer and tour her Japanese Garden designed by Kaz Kitajima TribeLA Magazine • Los Angeles #Tribelamag #Arttoday #Ikebana #Japanesegarden #Sbeifer

New Post has been published on http://tribelamagazine.com/art-today-07-29-17-the-stunning-ikebana-series-that-we-saved-for-the-finale-by-sandy-bleifer-in-her-japanese-garden-by-master-designer-kaz-kitajima/

Review Highlight: The stunning "Ikebana Series" – Meet Sandy Bleifer and tour her Japanese Garden designed by Kaz Kitajima

Ikebana V-A: Rimpa

Thank you Sandy Bleifer, for making us aware of our love and devastations to each other and the planet, through your beautiful art

  I have created artistic interpretations of my own Ikebana arrangements and, as I have done in much of my previous work in other subjects, revealed the distress that persistently undermines our aspirations of beauty and serenity. I think of these diptychs as “Memorials” because I have noticed the spontaneous collection of flowers, notes and memorabilia at sites of tragedy – and these roadside arrangements are as much a human response to loss as formal public memorials. (Sandy)

The Japanese Garden, Ikebana and Ikebana Memorials (The video says it all)

The video below documents a joint exhibition in my studio of my Ikebana Series alongside of the art, flower arrangements and landscape design of Kaz Kitajima, noted master of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana. The Japanese Garden presents a heightened sense of nature and Ikebana represents a highly refined representation of the beauty of flowers.

This post was originally published on July 29, 2017, and has since been updated and highlighted as a “best of” for TribeLA Magazine.

ART TODAY 07.28.17: The “River Rocks Series” by Sandy Bleifer, sharing her art-making methods

ART TODAY 07.27.17: Sandy Bleifer’s “Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial project” included a live human performance exhibit, “Passage Into Tomorrow” by the Iona Pear Dance Theatre (Watch this remarkable video on the ‘Essence of the Soul’)

ART TODAY 07.26.17: “Hurricane,” the Devastation series from Environmental Degradation by Sandy Bleifer – watch the video inspired by nature

ART TODAY 07.25.17: Another immense Sandy Bleifer art project titled “Stone’s Stones,” using Music as a Structural Model with Carl Stone’s classical musical composition, “Gallery Environment II” (also watch the Making of Stone’s Stones video)

ART TODAY 07.24.17 Graffiti 35, 1993 by Sandy Bleifer – Collage by Sandy, Graffiti art by Eric Fisher

ART TODAY 07.23.17: “Paper Becoming Me” by Sandy Bleifer – Explore with us this week, the intricate art of this renown artist, her expressive use of paper as a medium and subject, and her favorite food indulgence, a hot fudge Sundae.

#Tribelamag #Arttoday #Ikebana #Japanesegarden #Sbeifer

[lucaram]

Ikebana di Luca Ramacciotti realizzato durante la dimostrazione presso la Galleria degli Uffizi. #ikebana #sogetsu #生花 #いけばな #floralart #sogetsuikebana #草月 #生け花 #floraldesign #florist #floristry #concentusstudygroup #sogetsuryu #sogetsuschool #華道 #草月流 #勅使河原茜 #インスタレーション #花 #展覧会 #個展 #flower #flowers #exhibition #design #roma #livorno (presso Uffizi Gallery)

[lucaram]

#Repost @concentus_ikebana_sogetsu (@get_repost) ・・・ Dimostrazione di Ikebana Sogetsu alla presenza del Dott. Eike Schmidt direttore della Galleria degli Uffizi. #ikebana #sogetsu #生花 #いけばな #floralart #sogetsuikebana #草月 #生け花 #floraldesign #florist #floristry #concentusstudygroup #sogetsuryu #sogetsuschool #華道 #草月流 #勅使河原茜 #インスタレーション #花 #展覧会 #個展 #flower #flowers #exhibition #design (presso Uffizi Gallery)

[lucaram]

Dimostrazione di Ikebana Sogetsu alla presenza del Dott. Eike Schmidt direttore della Galleria degli Uffizi. #ikebana #sogetsu #生花 #いけばな #floralart #sogetsuikebana #草月 #生け花 #floraldesign #florist #floristry #concentusstudygroup #sogetsuryu #sogetsuschool #華道 #草月流 #勅使河原茜 #インスタレーション #花 #展覧会 #個展 #flower #flowers #exhibition #design (presso Gallerie Degli Uffizi)

[micaramel]

Artist: Joel Holmberg, Tory J. Lowitz

Venue: Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Date: May 27 – July 8, 2017

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Press Release:

Michael Benevento is pleased to present a new series of painted works by Joel Holmberg and a specific sculptural Ikebana installation by Tory J. Lowitz.

Joel Holmberg’s painted works are produced via a sophisticated system of layering. In his new series Holmberg finds an allusion to his process in an atypical site, the bathroom. In previous bodies of work Holmberg revealed relationships between painting and the digital screen, both through the subject of web design and through his unique process of layering painted information as if in a digital design space like Photoshop. Holmberg’s painted images consistently contain graphic qualities, largely due to his printing of intricately cut vinyl sheets for masking and painting in layers. In contemplating this process Holmberg stumbled upon a similar, albeit more banal system of shaping and arranging sheets on a surface. It is an American phenomenon to cover the toilet seat in a public restroom before sitting down, and most public or shared restrooms stock the stalls with flushable paper seat covers. When on vacation abroad or in a shared bathroom with no official seat covers Americans will usually rip and arrange small sheets of toilet paper to provide a protective ring to sit on. The shared bathroom in Holmberg’s studio building became the site of several snapshots of toilet-paper arrangement and shifting ambient light. Those snapshots have been converted into a new series of paintings that are sharp and humorous but also surprisingly beautiful in their paint application and formal elegance. The abject qualities of the subject matter are obscured.

There is a dry serial presence to the grouping, but individually they have portrait qualities that hover between something playful like coy bathroom selfies, something deadpan like celebrity mugshots, and something more cold like Kubrick’s close framing of HAL. Politically charged in the contemporary moment, the subject of the bathroom is complex and varied with discussions ranging from gender normativity to the concept of the drain.

The arrangement of objects and effects in a space to produce a phenomenological experience is as crucial to the Ikebana artist as it is to the Minimal and Post-Minimal artist. The beautiful sculptural installations of artist Tory J. Lowitz are informed by his continuing study and mastery of Sogetsu Ikebana. Though some Ikebana schools focus strictly on flower arranging and limit the use of other materials, Sogetsu Ikebana encourages the use of any material at any scale. Lowitz produces works for viewing within a more traditional Ikebana context and works for viewing in an art context. All works are aesthetically informed by modern Ikebana philosophies as well as by painting and sculptural histories. It is this unique blend of aesthetic awareness that allows Lowitz’s installations to separate themselves from more traditional Ikebana arrangements. For this exhibition his generous yet subtle material and flower arrangements will emerge gracefully out of the gallery architecture as if extensions of the existing conditions of the space. An Ikebana artist forms a relationship between arranged objects and a container; for Lowitz the gallery itself provides the containers. In preparing for the exhibition the artist studied marginal spaces and light movement within the gallery and committed to a color palette and materials specific to the architecture. Throughout the exhibition the installations will be replenished with fresh flowers.

Link: Joel Holmberg, Tory J. Lowitz at Michael Benevento

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2ttjG5j