Until September 14, 2008, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be hosting a special exhibition entitled, Hosoe Eikoh and Butoh: Photographing Strange Notions, in the Pavilion for Japanese Art. Hosoe has created two unique nine-meter long emakimono with photographs from his two series, "Ohno Kazuo Breathes in and out Soga Shohaku", and "Shumpon Ukiyo-e Projections", the images interspersed with poems by Shiraishi Kazuko and Asakura Isamu, respectively. In addition, selections from Hosoe's seminal series, "Kamaitachi", continue the theme of butoh in photographic storytelling.

Hosoe Eikoh (b. 1933) is one of the most significant Japanese photographers since World War II. Brilliantly fusing photography with performance, he has set a unique benchmark for the visual arts. Hosoe is best known for his so-called "subjective documentaries", which combine straight photography with manipulated development, use of storytelling props, and bird's-eye or worm's-eye views, to create photos with their own, dream-like, internal space. He is a master of dark and light, abstraction of organic form, and storytelling.

Curated by Hollis Goodall and Charlotte Cotton, LACMA

This exhibition runs concurrently with The Age of Imagination: Japanese Art, 1615-1868, from the Price Collection, previously seen at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institute. An encore display of Price collection works not displayed at other venues will continue in LACMA's Pavilion for Japanese Art from September 18 until January 4, 2009.

Curated by Money Hickman and Jane Burrell, LACMA

Related Lecture: July 20, 2008, 2 p.m. by Guest curator Money Hickman
Dr. Hickman will discuss the work of the eccentric painter Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). Free admission. Brown auditorium.

During the encore exhibition of the Price collection, contemporary ceramics will be on display in the Helen and Felix Juda Gallery, and will remain there until May of 2009.
Upcoming exhibition in San Diego:
Kimono as Art: the Landscapes of Itchiku Kubota
Exhibition will be on view jointly at the San Diego Museum of Art and the Timken Museum of Art from November 1, 2008 to January 1, 2009.
The exhibition features the work of internationally recognized Japanese textile artist and kimono designer, Itchiku Kubota (1917-2003) who used a variety of traditional techniques and unique personal innovations to create shimmering, abstract landscapes through a complex layering of dyes and inks on oversized kimono.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Dale Carolyn Gluckman and Hollis Goodall co-published by SDMA and Thames & Hudson, London and New York.

The exhibition will travel to one other US venue, the Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio where it will be on view from February 8, 2009 to April 26, 2009.

Curated by Dale Carolyn Gluckman