Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection×Morimura Yasumasa M’s Gift of the Sea: Auto-Mythology

Jam Sessions are joint performances by the Ishibashi Foundation Collection and contemporary artists. For our second session, we welcome Morimura Yasumasa. Since 1985, when he produced a self-portrait photograph in which he had dressed himself to resemble van Gogh’s self-portrait, Morimura has continued to create “self-portrait-ish works” in which he disguises himself as the person in a painting or photograph, choosing sources from diverse periods and cultures and recreates it, adding his own interpretations. Morimura has long had a secret love of the works by Aoki Shigeru and has created works inspired by Aoki’s Self-Portrait (1903) and A Gift of the Sea (1904) in the Ishibashi Foundation Collection. For this Jam Session, Morimura addresses A Gift of the Sea anew, head on. He gives shape to the history of the many changes in Japanese culture, politics, and thought since the Meiji period, when Aoki created that work, in his own Morimura-style A Gift of the Sea-M’s Gift of the Sea. He has elevated his ardent feelings for Aoki into a new series of works. This exhibition will consist of about ten works by Aoki from the collection and about sixty works by Morimura. Of them, more than fifty are new works Morimura created for this exhibition. This session will be a never-before occasion with Morimura and Aoki performing.

The Ishibashi Foundation Collection
The Ishibashi Foundation Collection began as the personal collection of Ishibashi Shojiro, its founder, and is now owned by the Ishibashi Foundation, which continues those collecting activities. Presently consisting of about 2,800 works, the collection spans Western paintings, modern Japanese-style paintings, sculpture and ceramics from East and West, and Chinese and Japanese calligraphy and paintings, as well twentieth century and contemporary art.

Jam Sessions
The Jam Sessions embody “Experiencing Creativity,” the concept guiding the Artizon Museum. For Jam Sessions, artists and curators working together organize exhibitions with new works inspired by specific works in the Ishibashi Foundation Collection and sessions in which the collection and the artist’s works interact to create new points of view. Our goal is a project that will be a bridge past and present and lead on to the future. The museum plans to hold a Jam Session every year.

AOKI Shigeru
Born in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture, in 1882 and died in 1911. One of the most significant Western-style painters of the Meiji period, he made his debut in 1903 with a group of works on mythological subjects while still a student at the Fine Arts School. The following summer, he, his friends Sakamoto Hanjiro and Morita Tsunetomo, and his lover Fukuda Tane stayed in a fishing village on the Boso Peninsula (currently Tateyama, Chiba prefecture). His imagination stirred by the story of the large catch of fish that his friends saw, Aoki created A Gift of the Sea, a major work. The superb conceptual power and bold style of that painting attracted great interest, evoking a strong response, including arguments over whether it was finished or not. This exhibit of Aoki’s masterworks includes Self-Portrait from 1903, the year of Aoki’s debut, and Onamuchi-no-mikoto (1905) and Paradise Under the Sea, both paintings inspired by Japanese myths.

*Online tickets must be purchased up to 10 minutes before the end of each time slot.
*Same day tickets on sale at museum are available only for time slots that have not reached full capacity.