Volume 39, Number 05
Diversions
By Owen Schaefer
Corporate art with cohesion
The recent Mori show Art is for the Spirit gains its title from a featured Jonathan Borofsky piece, which is neither his best nor contributes much to the exhibition as a whole—but don’t let that dissuade you. The subtitle tells you all you need to know. These are “Works from the UBS Art Collection,” and while the name may be weak, the exhibition certainly isn’t.
The UBS collection is really the result of the PaineWebber collection being handed over to UBS after a corporate merger in 2000. It focuses largely on works of photography and painting, with a smattering of video and one or two sculptural pieces. And whatever you may think of corporate collections, UBS has shown a discerning eye in its acquisitions. The collection’s various changes in focus over the years reflect not only its changing management, but the shifts and changes in the art scene over the last 50 years.
This uniformity of vision transfers well to the Mori Art Museum, which has wisely chosen to simplify its presentation and allow the collection to speak for itself. The show is divided into three segments: Body, which focuses primarily on portraiture; Built World, focusing on human environments; and Space, a kind of catch-all segment for everything from landscape to outer-space and the abstract.
The big names in the show are bound to draw in the crowds. Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jean-Michel Basquiat form the pop-art roots of the collection, and the show doles them out according to theme rather than strictly time period. Gerhard Richter makes an appearance in all three sections, including a Mao portrait likely chosen for its synergy with the accompanying Warhol work on the same subject.
But photography now makes up the bulk of the collection and could easily be shown in an exhibition of its own. The real gold here lies in the show’s European artists, particularly of the Becher School and all that it inspired. Andreas Gursky, Massimo Vitali and the incomparable aerial work of Olivo Barbieri all approach vast spaces and high-information images, and are contemporary highlights of the Built World segment.
Taking things further into the present, the collection has most recently begun to expand its focus into other parts of the world. Oscar Munoz’s work Pixels turns grids of sugar cubes stained with coffee into the images of Columbian murder victims, and his video work Project for a Memorial is no less fascinating, as the faces he paints in water on concrete gradually disappear as he works.
There is a distinct Asian flavor to more recent acquisitions. Japan’s photographers make a big impression—the single print by Hiroshi Sugimoto may seem somewhat lonely next to the somewhat over-represented Yasumasa Miruma and his disturbing self-portraits. But Naoya Hatakeyama’s Blast series is a photographic wake-up call; Ryuji Miyamoto’s Kobe earthquake photos add a sober tone to their segment; and Nobuyoshi Araki’s works are refreshingly cute.
The collection’s expansion into Asian art markets is conservative so far, and only time will tell when farther-flung countries such as Thailand make the cut. But it provides Tokyo with an opportunity to see some of the best contemporary names together under one roof. And that is good for the spirit.
Art is for the Spirit (to Apr. 6) Mori Art Museum. Roppongi Metro Station. ¥1,500. 10am–10pm. (Tue. until 5pm) Tel. 03-6406-6100. www.mori.art.museum