was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called instal ...

and

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. He had a personal and artistic partnership with the writer and artist

Madeline Gins Madeline Helen Arakawa Gins (November 7, 1941 – January 8, 2014) was an American artist, architect, and poet. Early life and education Gins was born in New York City, November 7, 1941, and raised on Long Island, in the village of Island Park. ...

that spanned more than four decades in which they collaborated on a diverse range of visual mediums, including:

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniq ...

experimental filmmaking Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, and architectural & landscape design. Throughout his life, Arakawa frequently infused his works with philosophical ideas that considered art's intrinsic functions, human perceptions of the physical world, and the language of signs, symbols, and visual meanings. These thematic elements were based on the writings and theories authored by key figures in Science, Philosophy, and Art History:

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

, and

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

. Beginning in the 1960s, Arakawa's work attracted positive responses from the Western art world and led to his representation at numerous esteemed galleries and museums: the Dwan Gallery,

Gagosian Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in Par ...

, The National Museum of Modern Art,

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, David Barnett Gallery,

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 F ...

, and the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...

. Arakawa and Gins founded The Reversible Destiny Foundation in which they designed architectural sites that were aimed toward the longevity of human life expectancy. Moreover, they established the Architectural Body Research Foundation in 1987 as a non-profit research group that stimulated multidisciplinary studies with renowned biologists, neuroscientists, quantum physicists, and medical doctors on the nature of life and death. Arakawa usually referred to himself by his surname only, which eventually came to be more commonly practiced by him during his career in the United States and Europe.The Guardian, Shusaku Arakawa obituary
/ref>

Early life

Shusaku Arakawa was born in

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...

on July 6, 1936. His family ran an

udon Udon ( or ) is a thick noodle made from wheat flour, used in Japanese cuisine. It is a comfort food for many Japanese people. There are a variety of ways it is prepared and served. Its simplest form is in a hot soup as with a mild broth called ...

shop. Arakawa spoke of himself as an "eternal outsider" and "abstractionist of the future", and was interested in a variety of disciplines including art, mathematics, and medicine. The convergence of his interests in multiple, seemingly disparate subjects originated during childhood. One of Arakawa's neighbors was a doctor who offered the young Arakawa professional advice on proper training for a career in medicine. According to Arakawa, the doctor's wife, an artist, advised him to "draw" which led him to refine his skills in both drawing and painting. Arakawa briefly attended

Musashino Art University or is a private university in Kodaira, Western Tokyo, founded in 1962 with roots going back to 1929. It is known as one of the leading art universities in Japan. History In October 1929, was founded. In December 1948, it became , and in ...

to study art.

Early career (1950s – 1960s)

Arakawa's early works were first displayed in the infamous

Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition The , affectionately nicknamed "Yomiuri Anpan," was a famously permissive, unjuried, free-to-exhibit art exhibition held annually in Tokyo, Japan from 1949 to 1963. Sponsored by the ''Yomiuri Shimbun'' newspaper, the exhibition was held at the To ...

in 1958, a watershed event for postwar Japanese avant-garde art that departed from the strictness of traditional Japanese art exhibitions in favor of a looser structure with an absence of awards and a deciding jury. During this exhibition, Arakawa produced a socio-political installation that criticized the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; coffin-like boxes contained lumps of cement with fur and hair attached to recall the violence inflicted upon Japanese citizens by the American military.Rawlings, Ashley (2010). Shusaku Arakawa (1936 - 2010). ArtAsiaPacific, (69), Jul/Aug. Retrieved January 18, 2021, from http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/69/ShusakuArakawa19362010 The utilization of '' objets -'' everyday, consumer products transformed into assemblages - permitted Arakawa to convey meaning through items not traditionally associated with the

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...

s. In 1960, at the height of the massive Anpo protests against the

U.S.-Japan Security Treaty The , more commonly known as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in English and as the or just in Japanese, is a treaty that permits the presence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, and commits the two nations to defend each other if one or th ...

, Arakawa became involved with the avant-garde art collective

Neo-Dada Organizers , often shortened to , was a short-lived but influential Japanese Neo-Dadaist art collective formed by Masunobu Yoshimura in 1960. Composed of a small group of young, up-and-coming artists who met periodically at Yoshimura's "White House" atelier i ...

, along with

Genpei Akasegawa was a pseudonym of Japanese artist , born March 27, 1937 – October 26, 2014 in Yokohama. He used another pseudonym, , for literary works. A member of the influential artist groups Neo-Dada Organizers and Hi-Red Center, Akasegawa went on to ma ...

Ushio Shinohara Ushio Shinohara (篠原有司男, ''Shinohara Ushio'', born January 17, 1932), nicknamed “Gyū-chan”, is a Japanese contemporary painter, sculptor, and performance artist based in New York City. Best known for his vigorously painted, large- ...

Shō Kazakura Sho, Shō or SHO may refer to: Music * ''Shō'' (instrument) (笙), a Japanese wind instrument * ''Kane'' (instrument) (鉦), a Japanese percussion instrument * Sho?, a Dubai rock band People * Shō (given name), including ''Sho'' * Shō (surn ...

, Kinpei Masuzawa, and group founder Masanobu Yoshimura. The group engaged in a series of bizarre "events" and "happenings" that blended visual and performance art, which the art critic Yoshiaki Tōno labeled “anti-art” (''han-geijutsu'') and the critic Hariu Ichirō deemed “savagely meaningless.” One of Arakawa's stunts as a member of Neo-Dada was a work titled ''Site Made by the Viewer'' performed at

Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice, in 1889. ...

, in which Arakawa invited 400 spectators to an auditorium but refused to allow them inside. When Yoshimura and five other attendees, at Arakawa's urging, climbed a ladder that led up to the auditorium's balcony, Arakawa removed the ladder, trapping them on the balcony for over one hour while he silently crouched in the darkness. Arakawa explained he did not create an artwork but "manipulated" his audience by turning them into "actors." However, Arakawa was eventually expelled from the Neo-Dada Organizers collective because he was deemed "too much of an aesthete," and for chaotically disrupting group events.

Paintings and Printmaking (1960s - 2010)

Arakawa arrived in New York in 1961 with fourteen dollars in his pocket and a telephone number for

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

, whom he phoned from the airport and with whom he eventually formed a close friendship. Inspired by Duchamp's conceptual approach to artistic production, he began to integrate diagrams within his paintings as philosophical propositions to compel viewers to question the representation of forms and to assess how the diagrams affected one's perception. He referred to them as "diagrams of the mind." Arakawa's diagrammatic paintings often included text intermixed with charts, arrows, and scales. Moreover, an eclectic range of cultural and historical figures informed Arakawa's artistic engagement with philosophy, including:

, and

. Thematically, these works are enmeshed with theoretical ideas grounded in

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

semiotics Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

, and

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

. In terms of meaning, these works were endowed with complex messages that interrogated the precise nature of art’s function and how art is meant to be perceived. ''Hard or Soft No. 3'' (1969) is a painting in which numbers, letters, arrows, and lines are sparsely positioned from one another among large expanses of white negative space, and the following text frames the bottom tier of the work: “These arrows indicate almost nothing/Re-arrange the numbers anyway you like.” Paintings like ''Hard or Soft No. 3'' were meant to stimulate critical thinking among viewers to discern how language can be constructed from basic visual elements (line, shape, color, form, etc.). During ''The Mechanism of Meaning'' exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1997, art critic

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

described Arakawa's paintings and prints as "a bridge between Dada and Fluxus and the soon-to-be-Conceptual Art" and added that they operate as "philosophical or linguistic puzzles" that are open to countless interpretations and visual readings. Moreover, art historians, critics, and curators note that the diagrammatic, blueprint-like appearances of Arakawa's paintings and prints foreshadow his and Gins's later architectural projects. The versatility of Arakawa’s printmaking abilities is evident in the range of printing techniques he pursued:

silkscreen Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

, embossing,

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

, and

aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used h ...

Film (1960s - 1970s)

Arakawa's partnership with Gins led to their creation of films in the late-1960s and early-1970s that further expounded upon the philosophical ideas Arakawa explored in his paintings and prints. Although it comprised a short segment of his career, his involvement in experimental filmmaking was another avenue through which he could question and alter viewers' understanding of perception, evident in his philosophically-laden ''Why Not: A Serenade of Eschatological Ecology'' (1969). ''For Example'' (1971) features a young homeless boy who wanders the streets of New York City in a drunken stupor while a male narrator recites a text. The film's documentary-style camerawork was intended to visualize and articulate the theories espoused in Arakawa and Gins's long-term architectural project ''The Mechanism of Meaning,'' which specifically aims to "deconstruct meaning and construct non-meaning".

The Mechanism of Meaning (1960s – 1980s)

Beginning in 1963, he collaborated with fellow artist, architect, and poet

on the research project ''The Mechanism of Meaning,'' which was completed by 1973. This research project and its subsequent architectural projects - both built and unbuilt ones - formed the basis of the 1997 ''Arakawa + Gins: Reversible Destiny'' exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo (the accompanying book of the same title remains the most comprehensive collection of their work, and it incorporates the whole of the Arakawa/Gins book, ''The Mechanism of Meaning''). The panels appear as a constellation of views concerning the nature of meaning that may be characterized as "holistic" or as entailments of a holistic view concerning meaning. To date, two editions of ''The Mechanism of Meaning'' have been made and many of the panels fuse collaged elements. In the years since Arakawa's and Gins's deaths, there has been a legal dispute regarding ownership of ''The Mechanism of Meaning'' between the Architectural Body Research Foundation and the Reversible Destiny Foundation.

Reversible Destiny Foundation (1980s – 2010)

Arakawa and Madeline Gins co-founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation in 2010, an organization dedicated to the use of architecture to extend the human lifespan. They have co-authored books, including ''Reversible Destiny'', which is the catalogue of their Guggenheim exhibition, ''Architectural Body'' (University of Alabama Press, 2002) and ''Making Dying Illegal'' (New York: Roof Books, 2006), and have designed and built residences and parks, including the Reversible Destiny Lofts-Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller), Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa), and the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro. Designed in 1995, "The Site of Reversible Destiny - Yoro Park" was conceived as an "experience park" to reorient and transform visitors' understanding of their bodily relationship to the physical world. Flat, planar surface were removed entirely from the park, and instead Arakawa and Gins placed great emphasis on hilly, bulging surfaces that complicated how one walked around the park; spectators were encouraged to interact with the site as if they were toddlers learning to walk for the first time. Bioslceave House (Lifespan Extending Villa) (2000–2008) in East Hampton, New York encapsulates the philosophies Arakawa and Gins shared toward human mortality. The house's form is characterized by its asymmetrical, undulating appearance whose interior and exterior walls are each painted in over four dozen shades of vibrant hues. Ceilings and entranceways extend across varying directions and heights, either along straightened or curved edges. Similarly, windows and light switches are strewn along the walls at inconsistent heights. The floors are designed from hardened soil with rounded bumps atop their surfaces that slope at both slight and steep inclines; freestanding poles are included in multiple rooms to assist occupants to maintain their physical balance. Arakawa and Gins firmly believed it was integral for domestic environments to be constructed in layouts that rendered residents with a sense of instability and discomfort. They argued physical passivity and comfort allows the human body to deteriorate and the solution to reverse one's mortality is to reside in a home that encourages continual bodily movement and reorientation, which is evident in the Bioscleave House's lack of smooth floors and high/low placement of windows. "The Reversible Destiny Lofts - Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller)" were completed in Tokyo's western suburbs in 2005. Similar to Bioscleave, the lofts employed the philosophy of " procedural architecture" whereby the human body is kept in a continual state of physical interaction with their surrounding environment to prevent age-related decline. In terms of formal arrangement, each of the lofts are assembled together in cubical, spherical, and tubular shapes that each contain spatially disparate layouts for their respective residences. While Bioscleave was more focused on residential functions, the Mitaka Lofts are regularly utilized in a multipurpose fashion: residences, educational facilities, and cultural centers. Sections of the site are often leased for short and long-term usage, and it has even been a featured site on the popular vacation rental platform

airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

Later life

Arakawa and Gins "lost their life savings" in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme.

Death

Arakawa died on May 19, 2010, after a week of hospitalization. Gins would not state the cause of death. "This mortality thing is bad news," she stated. She planned to redouble efforts to prove "aging can be outlawed."

Reception

Internationally renowned 20th Century philosophers studied the metaphysical underpinnings behind Arakawa's artworks and valued his synthesis of philosophical theories into a visual medium. The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard praised Arakawa's work for its ability to "makes us think through the eyes", and the German philosopher

Hans-Georg Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 ''magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics. Life Family an ...

commended Arakawa for his transformation of "the usual constancies of orientation into a strange, enticing game - a game of continually thinking out." Gadamer included a quote by the German poet

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsi, U ...

to further underscore his comments: "There are songs to sing beyond the human." The writer

Charles Bernstein Charles Bernstein may refer to: * Charles Bernstein (composer) (born 1943), American composer of film and television scores * Charles Bernstein (poet) Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary sc ...

and artist

Susan Bee Susan Bee (born January 14, 1952) is an American painter, editor, and book artist, who lives in New York City. In 2015, "Photograms and Altered Photos from the 1970s" were exhibited at Southfirst Gallery in Brooklyn. She had one solo show at Acco ...

observe, "Arakawa deals with the visual field as discourse, modal systems that constitute the world rather than being constituted by it." The art critic and philosopher

Arthur Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosophi ...

found Arakawa to be "a genuinely advanced artist" whose accolades he equated to Gins's literary prowess. For his part, Arakawa declared: "Painting is only an exercise, never more than that."

Architectural works by Arakawa and Gins

*"Ubiquitous Site, Nagi's Ryoanji, Architectural Body (

Nagi, Okayama is a town located in Katsuta District, Okayama Prefecture, Japan. As of October 2016, the town has an estimated population of 5,861 and a density of 84 persons per km². The total area is 69.54 km². Geography Climate Nagi has a humid subt ...

, 1994 / Nagi Museum Of Contemporary Art) *"The Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro (

Yōrō, Gifu is a town located in Yōrō District, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 29,309 in 10,356 households and a population density of 405 persons per km2. The total area of the town was . Geography Yōrō is located i ...

, 1995) *"Reversible Destiny Office," in "The Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro" (

, 1997) *"Shidami Resource Recycling Model House (

, 2005) *"The Reversible Destiny Lofts - Mitaka" (In Memory of Helen Keller) ( Mitaka,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

2005) *"Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa) ( Northwest Harbor, East Hampton,

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

, NY, 2008) *"Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator (NY, 2013: /

Dover Street Market Dover Street Market is a multi-brand retailer originally located on Dover Street, in Mayfair, London. It has stores in New York City, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing and Los Angeles. Dover Street Market was created by Rei Kawakubo of Japanese fashion ...

New York,

Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons (also known as CDG) is a Japanese fashion label based in Paris that was created and led by Rei Kawakubo. Its French flagship store is located in Paris. This label owns a world-wide store chain featuring various lines of prod ...

)

Books by Arakawa and Gins

*''Word Rain (Or a Discursive Introduction to the Philosophical Investigations of G,R,E,T,A, G,A,R,B,O, It Says)'' (Gins, 1969) *''The Mechanism of Meaning'' (Arakawa & Gins, 1971) *''Intend'' (Gins, 1973) *''What the President Will Say and Do!!'' (Gins, 1984) *''To Not to Die'' (Gins, 1987) *''Architecture: Sites of Reversible Destiny'' (Arakawa & Gins, 1994) *''Hellen Keller or Arakawa'' (Gins, 1994) *''Reversible Destiny'' (Arakawa & Gins, 1997) *''Architectural Body'' (Arakawa & Gins, 2002) *''Making Dying Illegal'' (Arakawa & Gins, 2006) *''For Example (A Critique of Never)'' (Arakawa, 1974)

Filmography

* ''Why Not: A Serenade of Eschatological Ecology'' (1969) *
For Example (A Critique of Never)
' (1971)

Exhibitions

Since the 1950s, Arakawa's artworks have been displayed in over four hundred exhibitions in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Select Solo Exhibitions * 1965: ''Peintures de Arakawa'' - Galerie Aujourd'hui,

Palais des Beaux-Arts The Centre for Fine Arts (french: Palais des Beaux-Arts, nl, Paleis voor Schone Kunsten) is a multi-purpose cultural venue in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as BOZAR (a homophone of ''Beaux-arts'') in French or PSK in Dutch. The b ...

, Brussels, Belgium * 1966: ''Arakawa -'' Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands * 1970: ''Shusaku Arakawa, Japanese Pavillion'' - XXXV

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, Italy * 1974: ''Arakawa: Recent Prints'' -

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the ...

, New York, USA * 1979: ''Arakawa Prints'' -

Williams College Museum of Art The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a college-affiliated art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located on the campus of Williams College, and is close to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Clark Ar ...

, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA * 1979: ''Arakawa: The Mechanism of Meaning'' - The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan * 1982: ''Arakawa, Matrix 72'' -

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School lands ...

, Hartford, Connecticut, USA * 1986: ''Arakawa: Paintings to Read'' - The Contemporary Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan * 1994: ''Arakawa: Drawings 1961 - 74'' -

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art The was one of the oldest contemporary art museums in Japan. The museum was in the Kita-Shinagawa district, in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo. The building was originally built as a private mansion designed by Jin Watanabe in 1938 for the grandfa ...

, Tokyo, Japan * 2006: ''Shusaku Arakawa: Print Works'' - Gifu Collection of Modern Arts, Gifu, Japan * 2010: ''Funeral Bioengineering to Not to Die - Early Works by Arakawa Shusaku'' - The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan Select Group Exhibitions * 1958: ''Tenth Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition'' -

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum The is an art museum in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of Japan's many museums which are supported by a prefectural government. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"Museums"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', pp. 671-673. The current structure, designed by Kunio M ...

, Tokyo, Japan * 1959: ''Eleventh Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition -'' Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan * 1960: ''Twelfth Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition -'' Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan * 1961: ''Thirteenth Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition -'' Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan * 1967: ''Drawing: Recent Acquisitions'' - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA * 1967: ''Pictures to Be Read, Poetry to Be Seen'' -

Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to: Africa * Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi Asia East Asia * Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...

, Chicago, Illinois, USA * 1968: ''Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture'' - Museum of Art Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA * 1968: ''Documenta IV'' - Kassel, Germany *1970: ''Language IV'' - Dwan Gallery, New York, New York, USA * 1976: ''The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants of America 1876 - 1976'' -

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, Washington, D.C., USA * 1976: ''Thirty Years of American Printmaking'' -

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, New York, USA * 1977: ''Documenta VI'' - Kassel, Germany * 1983: ''Twentieth Century Acquisitions'' - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA * 2009: ''The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 - 1989'' -

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

, New York, USA * 2019: ''American Masters 1940 - 1980'' -

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra, Australia Select Arakawa and Gins Exhibitions * 1990: ''Building Sensoriums 1973 - 1990'' - Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, USA * 1997: ''Reversible Destiny - Arakawa/Gins'' - Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA * 2004: ''Arakawa + Gins: Architecture Against Death'' -

Nagoya University of Arts is a private university in Kitanagoya, Aichi is a city in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 86,068 in 36,904 households, and a population density of . The total area of the city is . Kitanagoya is a member of ...

, Art & Design Center, Nagoya, Japan * 2010: ''Arakawa + Gins: Reversible Destiny Projects'' -

Kyoto Institute of Technology Kyoto Institute of Technology (京都工芸繊維大学, Kyōto Kōgei Sen'i Daigaku) in Kyoto, Japan is a Japanese national university established in 1949. The Institute's history extends back to two schools, Kyoto Craft High School (established i ...

Museum and Archives, Kyoto, Japan * 2018: ''Arakawa and Madeline Gins: Eternal Gradient'' - Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery,

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, New York Retrospectives * 2019: ''Arakawa: Diagrams for the Imagination'' -

, New York, USA

Awards and Recognition

Arakawa served as a representative of Japan in the XXXV

(1970), and was a participant in the German-based contemporary art exhibitions Documenta IV (1968) and Documenta VI (1977). Additionally, Arakawa was the recipient of multiple awards and honors: * 1986:

Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...

, French Government * 1987 - 1988:

John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

* 1988 - 1989: Belgian Critics' Prize * 1997: College Art Association's Artist Award for Exhibition of the Year/Distinguished Body of Work, Presentation or Performance Award * 1998: Highest award in the Rainbow Town Urban Design Competition * 2003: Shijo Housho - Medal with Purple Ribbon * 2003: Nihon Gendai Shinko Sho - Award for Innovation in Japanese Contemporary Art from Japan Arts Foundation * 2010: JPN Kyokujitsu-sho 4Class BAR

The Order of the Rising Sun The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese government, created on 10 April 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight ...

- Gold Rays with Rosette * 2021:

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

celebrated his 85th birthday with a

Google Doodle A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running an ...

Collections

In addition to private and corporate collections, many of Arakawa's artworks are permanently housed in prestigious museums around the world, including:

, New York;

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo;

, Paris; Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Karuizawa, Japan.Arakawa. (April 12, 2018). Gagosian. Retrieved January 13, 2021, from https://gagosian.com/artists/arakawa/

References

External links

Arakawa and Madeline Gins Tokyo Office
*

at the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arakawa, Shusaku 1936 births 2010 deaths Japanese architects Japanese contemporary artists Japanese printmakers Japanese conceptual artists University of Tokyo alumni People from Nagoya Japanese emigrants to the United States Neo-Dada Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th class

Early life

Early career (1950s – 1960s)

Paintings and Printmaking (1960s - 2010)

Film (1960s - 1970s)

The Mechanism of Meaning (1960s – 1980s)

Reversible Destiny Foundation (1980s – 2010)

Later life

Death

Reception

Architectural works by Arakawa and Gins

Books by Arakawa and Gins

Filmography

Exhibitions

Awards and Recognition

Collections

See also

References

External links