From “the art of losing love, pt.1″ by Stacy Oborn:
masahisa fukase’s best known work was made while reeling from loss of love. after thirteen years of marriage, his wife yoko left him. while on a train returning to his hometown of hokkaido, perhaps feeling unlucky and ominous, fukase got off at stops and began to photograph something which in his culture and in others represents inauspicious feeling: ravens. he became obsessed with them, with their darkness and loneliness. his photographs capture them midflight; crouched in trees at dusk with glowing …

Photos by Masataka Nakano:

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for the initial pitch of this exhibit. Like some acid-laced alien invasion, Murakami’s superflat style takes over Versailles.

I would suggest that the following links were NSFW if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been spending my day at work researching this stuff. Check out the hyper-retro work of Japanese artist Rockin Jelly Bean.
Here, here & here.

I was quite taken tonight by the cover of Criterion’s re-issue of Paul Schrader’s Mishima. Interestingly, from what I’ve found online, not everyone approves, my favourite pan being “this thing reminds me of the make-up gun that Homer invented in that Simpsons episode.”
The design is by Tadanori Yokoo, a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter who was not just a contemporary of Mishima’s but also a friend and collaborator (he actually makes a brief appearance in the movie). All of which makes his contribution of the DVD art appropriate …

For some time now, I have been on the lookout for examples of Japanese street art. The uncanny means by which Japan adapts Western culture, reprocesses it and then spins it out as something altogether hyperreal, combined with the ever-prevalent superflat movement suggested that there must exist something extraordinary in the darker corners of the Tokyo streets.
So it was great to read PingMag’s recent piece on The Ghetto, a former love hotel in Shin-Okubo that has been converted into a skater shop/graffiti space. The article also provided links to …

Playing online companion to the retrospective exhibition on Takashi Murakami that is currently showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, an eight part exhibit tour with the artist himself + bonus videos including the making of the Oval Buddha.

Riding the London Tube can be a cold & claustrophobic experience. Down in the underground the rat race stops for no one; so it is best to keep your head down, find your place in the flow, and shuffle on.
In this mindset, imagine the ethereal, childlike effect that happens upon the commuter who stumbles out of the train and discovers the mural installation, City Glow, Mountain Whisper” by Superflat artist Chiho Aoshima at the Gloucester Road station. Part of the Platform for Art initiative, and her first solo project …

This video, found over on William Gibson’s blog this morning made me immediately nostalgic for my old Tokyo ‘hood.

I always tend to venture beyond the local borders when it comes to searching for inspiration, looking to what is big in Japan, or germinating in the New York streets or rising out of Europe. So it was a pleasant surprise to find myself spending a good chunk of my afternoon pouring over the work of local designer Marian Bantjes.
With a whimsical and organic style that suggests that she spends more time with a pen and paper than in front of a computer screen, Marian has been described by …