Takanobu Kobayashi, Dog, 1998, Oil on paper

ROANOKE, VA.- Painting for Joy: New Japanese Painting in the 1990s, a worldwide touring exhibition organized by the Japan Foundation and the Consulate General of Japan in Atlanta, will open to the public tomorrow at the Art Museum of Western Virginia. The exhibition will remain on view through December 31, 2007.
Painting for Joy: New Japanese Painting in the 1990s features the work of nine artists who were born in the 1960s and came into prominence in the 1990s: Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Makoto Aida, Yoshitaka Echizenya, Takanobu Kobayashi, Taro Chiezo, Nobuhiko Nukata, Miran Fukuda, and Naofumi Maruyama. These artists helped to bring about a rejuvenation of contemporary Japanese painting during the final decade of the twentieth century. They consciously sought an alternative to the existing artistic heritages of Japan which they perceived as traditional or conservative and, by doing so, established their own individualist, post-modern styles. Their works appropriate popular themes from mass media and pop culture – especially Japanese animation and comic graphic stories.
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