This is a history of the Japanese art world from 1990 up to the tsunami of March 2011, and its struggle to find a voice amidst Japan's economic decline and China's economic ascent. It looks at how the pop-culture fantasies of Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and the other artists of the Superflat movement came to dominate the art of Japan today. It also delves into what lies behind their imagery of a childish and decadent society unable to face reality.
With a heightened sense of the boundless possibility and lurking doom that Orwell and Huxley once envisioned, Matthew Derby's stories provide a glimpse into an intricately imagined world: a world in which clouds are treated with behavioral serum, children are handicapped by their ability to float, and all food (including Popsicles) is made of meat.
Every three years, three hundred square miles of land in northwestern Japan are transformed into the most ambitious and largest-scale art installation in the world: the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field. One hundred sixty of the world's best-known landscape artists, sculptors, and architects create artworks in two hundred villages that dot the mountains and terraced rice fields of the Japanese countryside, with the intent of rediscovering relationships between nature, art, and humanity, forging collaborations between global artists and local communities, and connecting people to each other and the land. Half a million people make the annual pilgrimage to witness this unique art project. Art Place Japan offers an exhaustive full-color catalog of the eight hundred artworks created during the past fifteen years. For those lucky enough to visit, this book, the first in English on the subject, also offers detailed information on how to visit the often-remote sites, with travel information and a newly commissioned map that locates the projects throughout the Niigata Prefecture.
"A sumptuously documented book, one that makes innovative use of the principle of montage to generate informative historical readings of Japan's myriad mass cultural phenomena in the early twentieth century. Both in terms of its scholarship and its methodology, this is a truly admirable work."—Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University "As Miriam Silverberg has brilliantly shown here, the modern times of 1920s and ‘30s Japan were rendered in a cacophony of cultural mixing: a period of consumerist desires and Hollywood fantasy-making but also the rise of nationalist empire-building. Excavating its kaleidoscope of everyday culture Silverberg astutely offers a theory of montage for how Japanese subjects 'code-switched' in juggling the mixed cultural/political elements of these times. Utilizing a montage of media, texts, sites, and scholarship, Silverberg leads the reader into the terrain of the 'erotic grotesque nonsense' in a work that is as scintillating as it is theoretically important."—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination "Unlike other scholars who merely view ero-guro-nansensu in its literal meanings, Silverberg brilliantly documents it as a complex cultural aesthetic expressed in a spectrum of fascinating mass culture forms and preoccupations. With great erudition and humor, she traces the sensory and conceptual modes that are animated with potency and sophistication through this cultural metaphor. This book is destined to be a classic in Japan scholarship."—Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics
The first major U.S. monograph in ten years on Murakami is the definitive survey of the paintings of one of today’s most influential artists. Takashi Murakami (b. 1962), one of contemporary art’s most widely recognized exponents, receives a long-awaited critical consideration in this important volume. Accompanying the first retrospective exhibition devoted solely to Murakami’s paintings, this book traces Murakami’s career from his earliest training to his current studio practice. Where other books address the commercial aspects of Murakami’s work, this is the first serious survey of his work as a painter. Through essays and illustrations— many previously unpublished—it explores the artist’s relationship to the tradition of Japanese painting and his facility in straddling high and low, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, commercial and high art. New texts address Murakami’s output in the context of postwar Japan, situating the artist in relation to folklore, traditional Japanese painting, the Tokyo art scene in the 1980s and 1990s, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. This richly illustrated volume also includes a detailed biography and exhibition history. Takashi Murakami is a true essential for collectors and fans alike.
Sociology of the European Union examines how core sociological theories, concepts and methods can be applied to the study of the EU. Carefully integrating theory and empirical research, the book: - Explores key concepts in European studies, such as Europeanization, integration and transnationalism - Assesses the social foundations of Europe, from class and citizenship to mobility and culture - Includes contributions by internationally renowned names in political, economic and cultural sociology - Contains a postface from George Ross, one of the leading figures in contemporary European Studies This thought-provoking book opens up new questions and debates whilst introducing readers to essential ideas and cutting-edge research. It is invaluable reading for students of Sociology, European Studies, Politics and International Relations.
Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe examines intra-European Union migration in the cities of Amsterdam, London and Brussels. Based on sixty in-depth interviews of free moving European citizens, and more than five years of ethnographic and documentary research, it uncovers the rarely studied human dimension of European integration Examines the mobility, lifestyle and career opportunities created by the borderless society of the European Union, as well as the barriers that still persist Analyses the new migration trends, challenges to the welfare state, and forms of urban cosmopolitanism linked to processes of European integration
This is not your run-of-the-mill fitness book. Developed by world-renowned gluteal expert Bret Contreras, Strong Curves offers an extensive fitness and nutrition guide for women seeking to improve their physique, function, strength, and mobility. Contreras spent the last eighteen years researching and field-testing the best methods for building better butts and shapelier bodies. In Strong Curves, he offers the programs that have proven effective time and time again with his clients, allowing you to develop lean muscle, rounded glutes, and greater confidence. Each page is packed with information decoding the female anatomy, providing a better understanding as to why most fitness programs fail to help women reach their goals. With a comprehensive nutritional guide and over 200 strength exercises, this book gets women off the treadmill and furnishes their drive to achieve strength, power, and sexy curves from head to toe. Although the glutes are the largest and most powerful muscle group in the human body, they often go dormant due to lifestyle choices, leading to a flat, saggy bum. Strong Curves is the cure.
Pioneers of European Integration contributes greatly to European sociology by offering unique quantitative data on the so far uncharted group of intra-EU movers. Theresa Kuhn, European Sociological Review Free movement has become a defining feature of European society. This important study answers the question who are these free movers? Using both quantitative and qualitative research evidence, it brings new perspectives to the sociology of European migration and integration, broadening the analysis from traditional labour migrants to various new kinds of spatial and social mobility in the continent. Russell King, University of Sussex and Sussex Centre for Migration Research, UK The free movement of EU citizens is the most visible sociological consequence of the remarkable process of European integration that has transformed the continent since the Second World War. Pioneers of European Integration offers the first systematic analysis of the small but symbolically potent number of Europeans who have chosen to live and work as foreigners in another member state of the EU. Based on an original survey of 5000 people moving to and from the EU s five largest countries, the book documents the demographic profile, migration choices, cultural adaptation, social mobility, political participation and media use of these pioneers of a transnational Europe, as well as opening a window to the new waves of intra-EU East West migrations. Students and scholars of sociology, political science, human geography, anthropology, migration studies and European studies will all warmly welcome the volume. Civil servants and policymakers will also find this book an essential tool in coming to terms with the implications of EU citizenship and the transformative effects of this unprecedented European integration from below .
