Araki: Self•Life•Death
6 October 2005 - 22 January 2006
Barbican Art Gallery
Curator: Tomoko Sato
"Nobuyoshi Araki has been called a monster, a pornographer and a genius - and the photographer quite agrees."
Andrew Searle, The
Guardian Online 4/10/05
"Nobuyoshi Araki is arguably Japan’s greatest living photographer – and certainly its most controversial.
This is the first major exhibition of Araki’s work to be held in London, and is the most comprehensive overview of his prolific career. With over 4,000 images on display, the show reflects Araki’s extraordinary breadth of work – from the shocking to the sublime – and includes new work never previously seen.
Influenced by Shunga, the erotic art of the Edo period (1603 – 1867), as well as the glossy imagery of contemporary culture, much of Araki’s work confronts taboo subjects such as sex, nudity and death head on. Subjects range from poetic scenes of old Tokyo, to sensual close-ups of exotic flowers and erotic photographs of kimono-clad women bound in rope.
Covering over forty years, this exhibition showcases the extraordinary talent of one of the most charismatic and prolific photographers working today."
Barbican
Art Gallery (accessed 27/11/05)
It requires a concerted effort to go to an Araki exhibition; not
because it will be arduous, or tedious, or even shocking, but because it will be
emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually challenging. It is also a mammoth
undertaking: attempting to give justice to over 4000 photographs in one
visit. It is fair to say, though, that it doesn't feel or even look like
there are four thousand images to view - the exhibition at The Barbican is
spread over several spacious room on two levels and, to be honest, many of the
images are tiny 4x4s, whole tranches of which can be taken in with one sweep on
the eyes. The photographs are unframed - pinned to the walls in the simplest
fashion. Some are several layers high - giant walls of saturated colour or long,
single rows of monochrome prints. Each physical section of the gallery plays
host to a different Araki project.
There are several key elements to Araki's work. The first is the
fact that he is Japan's best-known photographer. In the UK we have fashion
photographers, landscape photographers, even war photographers; in Japan they
have Araki, whose stark, sexually charged, voyeuristic, exploitative, sadistic
and probably masochistic photographs (he will dispute several of those
adjectives, with just cause) have made him the most reviled and yet respected photographer
in contemporary Japan.
The balcony and the Cat. Araki's wife Yoko had a cat called
Chiro, whom she adored. The cat was frequently photographed on the balcony
outside the Araki home. When Araki's wife died in 1990, the cat became a
precious talisman.
Dinosaurs, lizards... little plastic toys appear in many of
Araki's photographs. They are said to there in place of his own physical
presence - an avataristic device which make sure we don't forget who the author
is and where he would rather be positioned. In an interview with Jérôme Sans
for Taschen Araki explained their presence thus:
"I'm a person who needs company all the time. I need to have playmates around me because I often feel lonely. These monsters are my alter ego. They signify my desire to be in my photos, as though they were parts of my body. I love these dinosaurs and I have the simple desire to be with them all the time and to collect them. This is a sexual desire. I want to take photos of the things I love and always be with them."
One of the less jarring exhibits is a series of 100 portraits of
women from aged from 1 to 100, each print some 18 inches square and the whole display
taking up an entire wall. There is a delightful sense of continuity here; one
inevitably plots one's own progress along the sequence: did I look like that at
thirty? Will I look that good at sixty? Will I live to make it to the end of the
line?
URLs
(Accessed and working 27/11/05)
Guardian
Unlimited Adrian Searle on Araki at The Barbican
Out
of Range Review of Barbican show
Eyestorm
on Nobuyoshi Araki
Official
site
An
alternative viewpoint Monty DiPietro
Araki interviewed by Jérôme Sans
for Taschen
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