I love my adopted home of Tokyo, but I love heading out of it every now and then.  I sometimes forget that there is a world out there in Japan that isn’t an urban jungle of concrete and iron.  We decided, at the suggestion of a close friend, to visit the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in the sticks of Chiba prefecture.  My peeps in Japan that have never been there it is definitely a place to explore.

I was pleased to see a world class collection that included Rembrant, Chagal, and a room filled with maroon colored Rothkos.  Unfortunately half the museum was closed as they were prepping for a László Moholy-Nagy show that opens in a few days.  I was a little miffed, but it is a good reason to go back to the museum to see the other half of the collection that I missed.

The highlight of the museum, for my artistic soul, was the painting David’s Dream by Marc Chagall, and the room filled with Mark Rothko paintings.  The Chagall was luscious in its colors, filled with spirited shapes that just floated in the space.  The movement with in the image was amazing.  I just sat and watched the painting as if it were a movie being told in 24 frames a second.  Those blue hues are just amazing.

The Mark Rothko Seagram paintings in a low lit room as they are suppose to be viewed was an exploration in the power of color.  Color that just seeps in through the eyes, and rolls around inside your spirit.  The muted colors fill the entire field of vision.  There is nothing to do but to surrender to the colors and let them flow through your veins.

There is a connection between these two artist.  They both use color to tell stories.  In the case of Chagall the stories come from his roots as a Jewish artist.  Telling stories through the color dances and the floating figures.  Rothko was stripped his paintings down to their pure color elements.  Color its self is the theme.  The colors dance and play with in our vision.  Striving for that mystical connection with the Creator.

After the museum we wandered around the large gardens.  A stroll trough a small cedar forrest.  A walk around a lotus and a lilly pond.  The skies were large and filled with a blue of the Chagall paintings, as cotton wisps of clouds speckled the color field.

A lovely day among art and nature. A perfect combination as the summer is quickly drawing to a close.  A mystical trip to the sticks of Chiba for art, skies, and mushrooms.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 4:51 am and is filed under Photography Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.