Customer Reviews

Japanese Experience: Inevitable, The (In the Floating World: Slash with a Knife, 1999)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

i bought this book pretty much sight unseen (it was wrapped in plastic), and for a not so thrifty price. that said, i do not regret that decision at all. this is a great informative book, and i think it handles the distinction between "high art" and "pop culture" quite well. i wish more american artists would follow this lead, basing great works of beauty on comics and tv. highly recommended.

This is a fantastic catalogue of an important exhibition held in Kraichtal, Germany in 2002. The curator was Margrit Brehm. So, do not be mislead: this is not a Murakami-curated exhibition, unlike the current Japan Society show entitled "Little Boy." (This book does contain works by Murakami and others of the Kaikai Kiki alongside other important contemporary figures).
Also important to note is that as this is a catalogue of an important art event, it contains several essays on topics relevant to the Japanese Neo Pop movement. It is not necessary that one fully comprehend these essays in order to enjoy the artwork reproduced here. However, these essays are very valuable for anyone interested in placing these works in a historical context.

Not only the selection of artists and artist's work is good but the stories they tell about each of them is between the finest you can find. The writer makes it easy to understand the artist's mind in very few words. I'm sorry I didn't go to the exibition that generated this catalog.

This book has some great images. It is in both German and English, but it's pretty well laid-out. Very very colourful with some pull-out pages for longer works, specifically those of Takashi Murakami.

An excellent source of information on the recent Japanese pop art movement. Prominent figures such as Murakami and Nara make their appearances within its pages, and images of each artist's work are presented in large numbers.

As an analysis of the movement, the essays of "Japanese Experience" show both a historical context as well as a future vision of what these artists are trying to achieve. Simultaneously, the book serves as a good visual record of the artists' work and provides them in high quality.

The artists featured in "The Japanese Experience: Inevitable" are artists that I have come to enjoy from seeing their art in magazines such as "Giant Robot" and other publications. As a purveyor of art in Europe and especially in Asia, the art presented in this book is quite amazing. The book features fine artists in Japan and the copy is featured in English and Jerman.

As much as I enjoyed looking at the book, reading the book is a different story. As much as I enjoy cultural literacy and learning new words, upon reading this book, I felt that Gregor Janse may be a bit too cerebral in the words and the way he writes.

The book, while informative, reads like one of those cerebral college books that you just don't want to read. I own so many art books and this book has to be one of the most cerebral and for me that's fine but for others...

By the cover alone, this book is going to attract anime fans and fans of Japanese pop culture but is this book targeting them or the art afficionado?

A book with so much potential and what could have been a fun book to read is more like a scholarly thesis.

HMMMMMMM? where is Tenmyouya Hisashi's masterful work that actually engages what is going on in Japanese culture. Why Murakami's pandering to the west when the JApanese clearly do not buy into his cheapened schemes? This is a great book to peruse if you are hell-bent on finding insipid mis-information about Japanese culture. with flights being ~$500 from NYC (round-trip) go see for yourself that his strategy preys on western ignorance and is really a self-exoticized version of what is not really happening in Japan. If you like this book you must surely beleive everything Geroge Jr. says about the links of WMD and Al Queda in Irak :P hahahahaahha