村上隆のインスタグラム(takashipom) - 8月14日 12時10分

On August 12th, starting at 3pm, Japan time, I held a solo talk show at Kaikai Kiki Gallery. Thankfully we had a truly great attendance and I spoke for two hours including the Q & A.
The talk was related to the current exhibition at the gallery, What Is the Relationship Between Ceramics and Contemporary Art? (Considering the Context of Ceramics in the Lineage of Contemporary Art), and sought to revisit and review the situation of Japanese art during the rise of the so-called Bubble Economy.
In recent years, among those ceramicists and craftsmen who produce products that closely adhere or cater to everyday life, riding the popularity of the back-to-nature sentiment of late, we are starting to see some who are creating highly artistic works. My attempt was to reintroduce the late ceramicist Ryo Aoki, who should be acknowledged as the pioneer yet is all but unknown today, and to skewer the artistic modality of post-war Japan by filling out the twenty-year void between Mono-ha and Superflat.
The reason there is no social upper class in Japan after its defeat in the Pacific War is because the post-war tax system made it impossible to inherit wealth, and I believe that, in turn, eliminated the zone in which high art could have survived. Because the tax system eradicated high art, all the creative talents that would have pursued high art exclusively poured into subculture; as a result, we saw the rise of truly singular mode of creative expression in the Japanese subculture. As I believe it would be impossible to understand the Japanese artistic modality while overlooking this point, I discussed this development in my talk.
This week, I will be hosting a dialogue with Masanobu Ando, one of the ceramicists included in the current exhibition. As the event will be in Japanese only, I would like to report on it in English in the following days.

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