Tate Modern

Portraits of cities: William Klein + Daido Moriyama at Tate Modern



William Klein + Daido Moriyama is possibly the best thing I’ve seen all year. Comparing and contrasting both photographers’ approaches to street life in New York and Tokyo, it instantly appealed to my love of graphics and energy in documentary photography. Years ago I saw a Garry Winogrand exhibition at The Hayward and I still vividly remember those in-yer-face compositions of life in New York. Some of these reminded me of those.

The exhibition space is a layout of vast, high ceiling-ed rooms that give breathing space to the biggest and most dramatic Klein artworks (he often mashed up photography and art by sploshing paint around the borders of the image or across the image itself for even greater impact). Like his wide-angle compositions that put you in the midst of the action, the design of the exhibition repeats Klein’s sense of big city chaos. Framed photos are densely ordered row on row, depicting the busyness and character of Rome, Moscow, Tokyo and New York. Also integral are the photo books on display by both Klein and Moriyama, many on loan from Martin Parr’s extensive collection.

Moriyama’s work is less punchy and more detached than Klein’s, with greyer, grainier portraits of Tokyo and New York street life. They didn’t have such an immediate impact for me but I loved the room of Polaroid montages towards the end. The exhibition is on at Tate Modern until 20th January and I highly recommend going on a Friday evening to avoid the weekend crowds.



Yayoi Kusama covers June Wallpaper magazine



You can keep Jessica Alba for Marie Claire and Cameron Diaz for Harper’s Bazaar, I’m more interested in Yayoi Kusama on the cover of Wallpaper (and she designed it too). My problem with actresses and pop stars on the cover of mags is that each celeb has done so many covers with the required !!EXCLUSIVE!! interview that they literally have nothing of interest left to say. Everything of consequence has been said already. Artists on the other hand tend to be less publicity hungry (obviously there are exceptions) so rarely give interviews and they have a more specific outlook on life which means that when they do, they actually have something worth saying.

If you haven’t yet seen the Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern, do hurry. It ends on 5th June when it then moves to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art on 12th July. And then on the 15th, we’ll finally see the long-awaited Louis-Vuitton-Yayoi-Kusama ready-to-wear collaboration – with windows in all LV’s stores worldwide showing VM displays created by Kusama of course (think red and white polka dotted eels writhing under the sea). It’s in the diary…

The limited-edition cover by Kusama is available to Wallpaper subscribers and on newsstands in Japan.



Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern: press preview



Yayoi Kusama is an artist I don’t know much about other than seeing and liking pictures of her dot artworks. After establishing herself as an artist in New York in the 60s, she has spent the last three decades living in a psychiatric institution in Japan and she has collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a collection to be launched in July. (more…)