Presenting the first retrospective in France devoted to Nobuyoshi Araki means a lot to the Musée Guimet, intended by its founder Emile Guimet in 1889 as a window onto Asia in Paris. It’s in the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art that we find the keys to understanding Araki’s genius, his complexity and his roots. The exhibition presents, as well as some 400 of the master’s works made between 1965 and 2016, some Japanese erotic photographs of the 19th century that show the singular work of Araki, particularly the hojojutsu, the martial art of bondage, in a historical iconographical context and from a cultural perspective. Araki is an artist who is 100% Japanese and at the same time 100% universal. Love, life, death: Araki constructs a unique poetic style from the most fundamental themes. The exhibition opens onto a vast library of some 500 works published by Araki since 1970. For this is the particularity of the artist: Araki is a writer on photography, at first he was a creator of books, the first destination of his photographs, well before the picture rails of galleries and museums. The exhibition’s dozen rooms unfold like a series of books, with Araki’s signature style – the photo novel, the private journal, the photos hung in inseparable groups – is, in fact, a contemporary continuation of the tradition of the Japanese scroll. It is with a last maki that ends this retrospective of more than 1,000 sq m that I wanted to kaleidoscope (Araki photographs as he breathes, compulsively, voraciously), a scroll of unpublished photos hanging around a Japanese Buddha, images composed or chosen by the artist especially for the exhibition and entitled Tokyo Tomb in reference to the poetic tradition of the tomb, a literary epitaph. Araki’s testament. On a personal note, there is also here a great satisfaction in being able to complete a work begun many years ago and, after the curating of the retrospectives of Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, to pursue the exploration of the great photographs of this obscure object of desire.
Until next Thursday, The Eye of Photography will present a chapter of the exhibition.
EXHIBITION
Araki
From April 13th to September 5th, 2016
Commissariat : Jérôme Neutres et Jérôme Ghesquière
Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet
6, place d’Iéna
75116 Paris
France
http://www.guimet.fr
BOOK
Araki Nobuyoshi
Editions Gallimard / Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet
By Jérôme Neutres
304 pages, 719 illustrations
39,90 euros
ISBN : 978-2-07-017955-8
