This show will present video and film pieces by artists inside and outside the country from the 1960s until today. In the late 1960s when a radical reconsideration of existing media such as painting and sculpture was called for, many artists began using video and film to expand artistic expression. Connecting early experiments to more recent attempts, this exhibition will try to identify present-day possibilities of video and film works in the 1960s and 1970s through about 50 pieces by Vito Acconci, Francis Alÿs, Izumi Taro, Kobayashi Kohei, Bruce Nauman, Nomura Hitoshi, Paul Pfeiffer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Bill Viola, Andy Warhol and others.

Since the 1960s to today, Kawaguchi Tatsuo (b. 1940) has worked through a consistent approach in which he uses various materials to visualize hidden relationships among substances or between substances and human beings. Presenting his new works in addition to earlier important pieces, this exhibition also involves various relationships that will kindle our imagination around time and life as we explore them.

In the late 1980s, William Kentridge (b. 1955) began using 35 mm movie camera to produce animated drawings by shooting charcoal and pastel drawings frame by frame. This is his first solo exhibition in Japan comprising nineteen film projections from his early Soho Eckstein series to his latest work based on the Shostakovich opera The Nose, as well as thirty-six drawings and sixty-three printings, to give a full view of the artist's activities.

Ono Chikkyo (1889-1979) has been familiar to many Japanese with his gentle landscapes. In his youth he had an exceptional interest in modern Western paintings as a member of the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai. Later he studied Nanga and Yamato-e to establish his own style. Celebrating the 120th anniversary of his birth, this exhibition will trace the painter's career with about 100 masterpieces including Illustrations for Haiku Poems in Basho's “Narrow Road to a Far Province” (1976) as well as sketches.

For a long time Japanese have found something supernatural in trees, and have used them for producing various images including those of Buddha. Even after the Meiji period (1868-1912) when such production waned, many artists have found some quality beyond mere material in wood, and have attempted to link it to plastic expressions. This show presents eight works including an installation, mainly from our collection. Featured artists include Hashimoto Heihachi, Endo Toshikatsu, Okamura Keizaburo, and Odani Motohiko.

* Photo: Sakamoto Photo Research Laboratory

Yorozu Tetsugoro's Nude Beauty is a puzzling piece, presenting a nude lying in a meadow that seems also as if standing owing to a visual device. What do the acts of standing and lying on the ground mean to human beings and the painting? Beginning with the masterpiece of Yorozu, this show presents pieces of various artists to explore the question.

The genealogy of bather painting has never been broken in Western art. Deeply connected to female nudity, this traditional subject took on new meanings in each period, linking itself to themes such as sexuality and violence, life and death, through the feeling of contact between water and the body. This show explores the expanse of the bather motif including the reception and variations in modern Japanese art.