Japan once broke the market. Is the country ready for a comeback?


Yuko Mohri thought she knew what the Japanese government wanted from its artists: something subversive and quiet. Certainly not a renegade rocker with a penchant for moldy fruit.

“It started as a joke,” he said during an interview at Tokyo Studio. He explained his memories of a school experiment in which a makeshift battery came up with the idea to fill the Japanese pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale with hanging lights. The exhibition was a great success.

But his real success story happened behind the scenes, where government officials, civil servants and business leaders created a financial network that could support Japanese artists like him in international scene. Part of a larger movement in Japan is to bring back the Clout Clout that the country enjoyed in the 1980s, when it dominated the global art market.

These were the days when the Japanese companies bought the wealth in Europe, helping to transform the art market from a hobby in the rich man’s car. Strong money and an aggressive campaign to promote foreign spending to expand Japanese business abroad led to prison sales for paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Cézanne. . From 1987 to 1991, official trade figures showed that Japanese collectors spent $8.5 billion ($16.5 million in today’s dollars) on Art. The trend was activated by the sale of “Dr. Gachet’s picture in 1990 for $ 82.5 million dollars, the highest price for a private work of the time – $ 200 million dollars in today’s dollars.

Then the stock market collapsed, leading to the economic stagnation of the 1990s, which is known as the “lost years”, until the end of the long-standing problems that people took out to ” lost 30 years.” The museum that was opened in the Corporate Skyscrapers Dotting The Tokyo Skyline was attached to its Tokyo budget, and the bank collectors sold the masterpieces because of their collapse.

Art and money collided in the boom days of the Japanese economy to help some Japanese artists find a global audience. And although today the collector does not have the purchasing power as in the 1980s, it was enough last year to help the Mohri exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Furthermore, this time, the government got involved.

Yasuta Hayashi joined the cultural environment of the country in the shadow of the crash. In 1994, and the program to support the Japanese market exploded. Another 20 years for the government for the government to have meaningful programs to cultivate a new generation of artists and merchants, which helped Whayashi spear.

“The cultural agency decided to hold a special meeting to decide how to promote Japanese art outside of Japan,” said Hayashi, the current director of Arts and Culture, adding that in October 2014 .

There was a list of priorities, and the government has made progress over the years, especially in trying to buy art more attractively with tax incentive programs. For example, in 2018 it was decided to remove 80 percent of the value of art from the tax payment for collectors if they participate in museums they are for at least five years; In 2021, the rules were expanded to include contemporary art.

Hayashi said his office is also working on additional proposals that would provide more tax breaks.

“We worked on the infrastructure,” he added. “The next step is that we need to strengthen the current business activities going forward to make the market more dynamic.”

Many gallery owners hope that the changes will not be long in coming. The record is that many tourists and programs such as Kyoto trade cooperation and Art Week Tokyo have raised the profile of the Japanese world. And the arrival of the gallery, a fine art dealer from the United States, is a sign that the Japanese art market may emerge.

According to the latest McANDrew economist report for the Japanese government, there was an 11 percent increase in the market value of Japan from 2019 to 2023, an increase of $ 611 million from $ 681 million dollars. The percentage increase is higher than the world rice market as a whole, which grew by only 1 percent in the same period.

Tim Blum, who has been working at a gallery in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood for the past decade, says he has seen positive changes in the work environment. “There’s been a big shift here with more collectors getting aggressive,” said Blum, who is based in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t mean that Japan is the biggest collection class in the region, but it means that everyone in Asia comes to Tokyo. I have many Chinese customers who have a second home here.”

Blum says that Japanese collectors are being pressured by Western collectors in how to select works to buy. And there are those who do not hesitate to spend money on foreign traders, especially after the value of the Yen fell this past summer. Many collectors are still loyal to the country’s major department stores, which have a history of good art trade.

“In Japan, my parents’ and grandfather’s department store was their go-to place,” says Kyooko Hattori, who directs Tokyo Pace Galeri’s admissions. “Department stores come to you, bringing you Fall fashions and home decor. For rich people, it’s like owning you.

But the department store is a closed system that sticks to the domestic customer; Few of the artists represented by the store attract international attention.

“There is a famous saying,” collector Ryutaro Takahashi joked. “‘It’s the end of the world when department stores start selling artists.’

Takahashi, who has built one of the country’s most important art collections over the past three decades, is the subject of a recent exhibition at Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Originally trained as a psychiatrist, Yayoi Kusama decided to focus his work on contemporary Japanese artists, including Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami and Akhashi Murakami and Akira YamaMaguchi. Then he turned to a group of young criminals – like the Japanese Core Conitive, which was inspired to build a political career after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

He does not doubt that new tax incentives or the arrival of Western galleries will improve the lives of Japanese artists.

“The Western art world has deteriorated because of finance,” Takahashi said during a tour of the museum’s exhibition. “It makes no sense to give a limited tax to rich people who buy art. We should look for a better environment so that young artists can live and promote their art.”

But trying to support Japanese artists like Yuko Mohri is still cool. For example, the initiative to finance the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale was started by Takeo Obayashi, a famous Japanese collector. He saw an opportunity to use Mohri’s exhibition at the Olympic Games to make a statement about the rise of contemporary art in Japan.

“Increasing the number of people connected to the cause will increase the number of art lovers,” said Obayashi, president of one of Japan’s largest construction companies. In an interview with Tokyo, he explained that “they realized that for a mature country, which is doing an economy and showing a strong economy and increasing national strength, it needs creativity. -the best technological balance that Japan has ever had.”

Even with financial support, Mohri said that 70 percent of his time preparing the Venice biennale was spent on administrative tasks related to raising money and logic. But he hoped that it would be an investment in the future, and that the next biennale artists in Japan would have a better road map, with the necessary support along the way.

“Time is very limited,” says Mohri, explaining why only a few Japanese artists find an international audience. Raised in a teacher’s family outside Tokyo, he joined a punishment group during college in 2000, working part-time on a bullet train and as a housekeeper. hospitality to support their work. “I really enjoyed the conversation, and I learned about human desires,” says Mohri, now 44, with a child’s eyes.

In 2014, when he participated in the Ty Yokohama Triennial, his artistic work began to gain traction. He taught himself English – a rarity in the Japanese natural world – and began networking with international surfers, which helped raise his profile around Asia. , Europe and America. In 2015, he won the Grand Prix at the 2015 Nissan Art Awards for “Moré Moré (Leaky),” a healthy movement presented by the improvisational method of the Tokyo radio station where there is space. Tokyo, including plastic pipes, umbrellas, tarps, requests and buckets.

The sculpture is included in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale along with an installation of mold, “which forms,” ​​which features orange and liquid.

Government officials say they are interested in building a more formal art scene, one that can match Mohri’s carvings.

“The Japanese are not very good at appreciating our culture,” said Hayashi, the cultural director. “We know the value of these arts that the west appreciates.”

He added: “We need to change this practice so that we can appreciate our own art.”

Sack Ueno share.





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