12 best art exhibitions in Tokyo right now

Master painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) is best known for Impressionist works that captured on canvas the ceaseless transitions of nature. As explored by this major exhibition, however, in the later years of his career, this French artist pursued a more abstract approach, with inspiration coming from both personal and wider realities such as bereavement, his own eye disease and the First World War.

The natural world remained Monet’s ostensible subject matter, such as his signature water lily ponds and their surrounding trees and skies, but his depictions of such scenes were then additionally coloured by internal distress.

For this show, around 50 pieces from Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris have been brought over to Japan, with many being shown in the country for the very first time. These are augmented by works held in collections across Japan, to form an expansive look at Monet’s later career.

The highlight here is a large screen of water lilies, which stands over two metres tall and makes for a truly immersive experience.

The shining full moon looms large in both the autumn night sky and Japanese cultural tradition that is so deeply rooted in nature. This event, at one of Japan’s most lavishly decorated hotels, brings together these two elements and mixes in a third element of contemporary art, in an aesthetic celebration of a natural phenomenon that has enchanted humanity for millennia.

From traditional moon-viewing season in early October, multiple rooms and spaces around the hotel’s Hyakudan Kaidan (‘The Hundred Stairs’, a designated tangible cultural property that spans seven storeys) host lunar-centric artworks ranging from Edo-period (1603-1868) woodblock prints to stunning, hi-tech projection-mapping installations.

Highlights include 20 prints by artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who is considered the last great master of ukiyo-e (woodblock print) painting and printmaking, and a selection of works by contemporary artists, in which the moon was rendered using a wide variety of techniques including glass and Japanese washi paper.

Across the ornate interiors of seven rooms, meanwhile, projection mapping helps conjure up a two-metre-wide full moon that shines above a series of installations inspired by ukiyo-e depictions of moonlit autumnal scenes.

The 1960s and ’70s were a perfect storm of art, social activism and emerging technologies, with newly accessible media such as video giving a platform to previously unheard voices, and socially progressive artists integrating these new technologies into their work. Feminism, as this exhibition explores, was prominent among the movements that leveraged new moving image media to challenge established social attitudes. Moreover, this dynamic deployment of tech in the battle against lingering sexism continues into the present day.

Nine important works from the National Museum of Modern Art collection are brought together to tell this story, with four ‘key terms’ serving as hints to understand and appreciate them: ‘The Mass Media and Images’, ‘The Personal’, 'The Body and Identity', and ‘Dialogue’.

Highlights include ‘Love Condition’ (2020), a vividly colourful video piece by Mai Endo and Aya Momose, in which the two artists knead clay while discussing the notion of 'ideal genitalia'. Mud, meanwhile, is the material of choice in Shiota Chiharu’s ‘Bathroom’, a 1999 video work which shows the artist covering her body with the substance, in an attempt to reconnect with pure sensation amidst the artificiality of urban life.

French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) has long loomed large over Roppongi Hills: her outdoor sculpture of a gigantic spider, named ‘Maman’, is a local landmark. The sprawling development’s Mori Art Museum, then, is a fitting venue for this major retrospective of one of the most important artists of the past century. As explored by Bourgeois’ first large-scale Japanese solo exhibition in over 25 years, fear was an ongoing motivation over her seven-decade career.

This fear, however, was not the arachnophobia that one might suppose, given the formidable ‘Maman’. Rather, Bourgeois’ work was driven in part by fear of abandonment; something rooted in her complex and sometimes traumatic childhood. Through her famed oversized sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings and other mediums, she confronted painful personal memories while simultaneously channelling them into work that expresses universal emotions and psychological states.

Across three exhibition ‘chapters’ that each explore a different aspect of family relationships, highlights include the ‘Femme Maison’ series of paintings from the 1940s. These works, which decades later were championed by the feminist movement, each depict a female figure whose top half is obscured by a house which protects yet imprisons her.

Bourgeois’ extensive use of the spider motif, meanwhile, is examined in depth. As hinted at by the landmark ‘Maman’ (the French equivalent of ‘mummy’), for Bourgeois the spider was symbolic of the mother figure who heals wounds just as a spider repairs the threads of its web. The artist's use of this powerful symbol is traced from a small 1947 drawing through to the giant Roppongi arachnid and its 'sister' sculptures located in several cities worldwide.

US-born photographer Alec Soth (b. 1969) has won worldwide acclaim for his largely narrative-driven images, which often depict scenes from his native Minnesota and the wider Midwest region. His work has also earned him full membership in the legendary Magnum Photos collective, whose former members include the likes of Ansel Adams, Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Though this major solo exhibition spans the entirety of Soth’s three-decade career, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum has curated the show to be somewhat more nuanced than the typical retrospective. The experts at what is Japan’s most prestigious photography venue have selected scenes shot almost entirely indoors to create a distinctive and new interpretation of the artist’s life-work so far.

Multiple works here are taken from series of photographs that Soth has produced on travels both across his homeland, and then further afield. One of these series, titled ‘I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating’, was key in his transition from US road trip exploration to more international shooting.

For this series, which in 2019 was compiled into a photo book, Soth hopped across the globe to visit and photograph numerous celebrated individuals in the rooms where they spent most of their time. Subjects range from the late dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin to Japanese novelist Hanya Yanagihara. 

What Museum’s latest exhibit, Synesthesia, is an interactive one. This engaging showcase is the work of a Japanese artist who uses air, water and light to craft mesmerising sculptures that blur the lines between perception and reality. 

With a background in sociology and art education, Akihito Okunaka is inspired by late philosopher Bruno Latour to explore the connections between nature and society through our five senses. Here you get to touch, enter and lie down in a balloon-like installation and feel connected with your surroundings.

The 12-metre in diameter balloon sculpture is weighed down by a water 'bed' and bathed in different light frequencies. This multi-sensorial work promises a visual and tactile experience that blurs the lines between sight and touch. Imagine light refracting through multiple layers of translucent plastic film, creating a kaleidoscope of colours that dance across the surface, all while being swayed gently by the water bed.

What Museum, in Tokyo waterfront district Tennozu, presents an ‘inadvertent’ collection of contemporary art belonging to renowned tech and AI entrepreneur, Takafumi Takahashi. The ‘T2 Collection’, which takes its name from owner’s initials, has been amassed over the past six years as Takahashi gradually dived deeper into the world of modern art. Along the way he picked up works which captivated him in some way, by notable Japanese and international artists including Kohei Nawa, Barry McGee and Tatsuo Miyajima. What was never consciously acquired with a ‘collection’ in mind is now on public display for the first – and possibly only – time.

Across the 35 diverse works featured here, a common thread is Takahashi’s recognition of a connection between art and entrepreneurship, in that the leading players in both spheres challenge the world with unique and unprecedented concepts and visions. One exhibition room, dedicated to the medium of photography, explores how contemporary artists have developed their photographic expression amid a rapid rate of change in both technology and the role of images in society.

The life of painter Tanaka Isson (1908-1977), best known for expressing the natural beauty of the Unesco World Heritage-designated island Amami Oshima, took a truly dramatic arc. While still a child, his outstanding talent for nanga – a Japanese painting style inspired by the aesthetics of the Chinese literati – led to him being hailed as a young prodigy destined for success.

After he dropped out of Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo University of the Arts) for still-unknown reasons, subsequent decades saw Isson work as a farmer, while continuing to paint despite lack of recognition. At the age of 50, in 1958, he relocated alone to remote Amami Oshima, close to Okinawa in Japan’s southwest, whose tropical flora and fauna would inspire him anew.

While working as a fabric dyer to support his artistic practice, Isson developed a way of conveying his idyllic new surroundings that was painterly and simultaneously marked by a level of vivid detail that could today be described as ‘high definition’. It was only following Isson’s death at the age of 69, while still residing on Amami Oshima, that his work began to receive its long-overdue acclaim.

Isson’s posthumous reputation has continued to grow, culminating in this major retrospective comprising over 250 works. Paintings, sketches, documents and other artefacts create a complete picture of the artist’s life and work, with some recently discovered pieces revealing hitherto unknown aspects of his creative practice.

Shibuya has a major new contemporary art venue with the opening of this museum, designed to share selections from the formidable private collection of entrepreneur Kankuro Ueshima. The six-storey facility, located within a dramatically renovated building that previously housed the prestigious British School, is set up to display Ueshima’s collection of over 650 works, from foremost Japanese and international artists, to their fullest potential.

This inaugural exhibition approaches contemporary art from a variety of perspectives, with most unfolding over an entire floor of the museum. Down in the basement, the trailblazing spirit of abstract painting is explored through work that ranges in timeline from a 1991 work by Germany’s Gerhard Richter to a piece from London-based Jadé Fadojutimi, known for her investigations of identity and self-knowledge, that was completed just this year.

Spanning the first and second floors, meanwhile, is a look at individual expression that encompasses a breathtaking range of global talent: artists include Olafur Eliasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dan Flavin and Theaster Gates, with several names being represented by multiple artworks. The power of collaborative efforts comes to the fore through pieces created by Takashi Murakami with late Off-White designer Virgil Abloh, and by Louise Bourgeois together with Tracy Emin.

The gaze of Japanese female painters is the theme explored on the third floor, through works by artists including Ulala Imai and Makiko Kudo, while on the fourth floor, works by Tatsuo Miyajima and others take diverse approaches to the notion of things changing and things disappearing. Finally, floor five is dedicated to a selection of paintings by Yoko Matsumoto, an abstract artist who derives inspiration from Western artistic modes while expressing an Asian sensibility.

Note that tickets are not available at the door; they must be purchased in advance online.