Fukuoka Art Museum

We recently visited one of the art museums here in Fukuoka. There was a special exhibition of everything Hello Kitty, that we couldn’t resist. This character was created so so long ago, but still remains extremely popular here in Japan. We got to see the timeline of the development and production put into creating Hello Kitty. There was also a very comprehensive collection of Kitty memorabilia. From rice cookers, calculators, notebooks, lunch boxes, bicycles, stamps, to credit cards, etc etc etc. There were also figurine toys of Hello Kitty in every kind of outfit you could think of. Astronaut, cowboy, bear, fish, food items, etc etc. Sadly we weren’t able to take too many photos due to security. But we did get a few.

After seeing this special exhibit, we wandered around and looked at the normal collection. Everything was Asian Art, mainly contemporary pieces from Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, India, and Vietnam. We were especially excited to see our first Cai Guo-Qiang! This artist from China creates many spectacular large scale installations and has created a large amount of “prints” using gunpowder. There is a great interview of him we highly recommend you checkout the ART 21 series either at the library or PBS.org (he is in the Power episode aired May 09).

We also learned about an amazing photographer Long Chinsan..

Long Chinsan (1892-1995), a photographer who lived in Shanghai and Taipei. He developed the composite photo technique, in which he photographed landscapes, people and still-lifes before arranging them as a montage. In changing traditional Chinese art from painting into photography, he created utopian landscapes in which nature and humanity became one.

Yes, you read that correctly, 104 years old! And he was taking photos and touring to museums up to the day. This also says that he mastered the technique of combining negatives to make a single print. Which means, everything you can do in Photoshop on the computer, he could do by hand with darkroom equipment. This a such a difficult skill, that is easily forgotten with the ease of today’s editing methods. But for our art savvy readers his works are worth checking out.