Quest for Vision 2

ISHIDA TAKASHI AND GENEALOGY OF ABSTRACT ANIMATION

Dec. 22, 2009—Feb. 7, 2010

• Dec. 22, 2009—Feb. 7, 2010
• Closed Every Week Monday (When a closure day is a public holiday or a substitute holiday, it is the next day),from December 29 to January 1.
• Admission：Adults ￥500（400）／College Students ￥400（320）／High School and Junior High School Students, Over 65 ￥250（200）

Since opening in 1995 as Japan's only museum specializing in photography and imaging culture, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography has held exhibitions spanning a wide range of image-related fields. The museum’s visual media collection includes about 3,000 items dating from the prehistory of imaging to the present, including works of art in visual media, imaging equipment, antiquarian books in the field, and other references. This remarkable collection makes possible the exploration of imaging culture in depth. Quest for Vision, the new series of exhibitions launched last year, is planned as an annual series in which each exhibition addresses one of the fundamental concepts underling the activities of the Images and Technology Gallery. The full series will include imagination (2008), animation (2009), 3D vision (2010), enlarging and reducing (2011), and the image as record (2012). All are focused on works from the collection, augmented by a variety of special exhibits. All also employ a methodology of broad thematic presentation that combines historic and contemporary approaches in a multifaceted exploration of the concept of vision. Ishida Takashi and the Genealogy of Abstract Animation, the exhibition for 2009, is the second in the Quest for Vision series. In exploring the world of abstract animation, it presents the principles of animation in an easy-to-understand way and abstract animation as an alternative to the more familiar character animation (which features representations of people, other living creatures, or things as characters and a narrative line). The exhibition also offers a special collection of abstract animations, old and new, by the dynamic artist Ishida Takashi.

 Exhibition Structure and Highlights

The exhibition will include about 60 items, including visual media, photographs, prints, installations, imaging equipment, and reference materials.

Part 1: The Principles of Animation This section traces the evolution of visual equipment, focusing on a selection from the museum’s visual media collection of over 3,000 items. Some of the historic sets of equipment, such as the phenakistoscope, are beautifully decorated works of art in themselves. Here visitors will discover how Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, among others, used photography to capture how human beings and animals move and provide an accurate explication of their motions, which had until then been only imagined and poorly understood. Through these and a variety of other materials, this section introduces the history and principles of animation, including contemporary work. The exhibits will include a phenakistoscope, a Newton’s disk, and works by Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey.

Part 2: The Genealogy of Abstract Animation This section explores the history of abstract animation in early films. Those early works are presented along with paintings from the same period to explore the relationships between animation, painting, and music. The exhibits will include work by Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Oscar Fischinger, Len Lye, Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Ishimoto Yasuhiro, Ohtsuji Kiyoji, and Tsuji Saiko.

Part 3: Special Ishida Takashi Exhibition Each of this series of exhibitions also presents new and recent work by dynamic, internationally known artists in the field of imaging. This year’s special exhibition showcases the work of filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Ishida Takashi, whose work has been shown at film festivals and exhibitions throughout the world. The exhibits will include Scroll (1995), The Art of the Fugue (2001), Film of the Sea (2006), and an installation of new work.