San Francisco museums center Japanese art for fall

Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and Zen masterpieces make Bay Area destination for Japanese art lovers.

Takashi Murakami’s flower NFT paintings are seen at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco ahead of his first solo show in the Bay Area.

Photo: Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle

“Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People — Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego”is the first of three exhibitions opening in the Bay Area this fall featuring acclaimed Japanese artists and art of great significance in Japanese culture.

In October “Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love” will explore the 94-year-old artist and international celebrity dubbed the “princess of polka dots”。展览将有多个镜像”Infinity Rooms” by Kusama, including her latest work, “Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love” and her 2013 installation “Love Is Calling.”

Yayoi Kusama, “Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love,” 2023, installed in the exhibition “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers,” at David Zwirner, New York.

Photo: © Yayoi Kusama

This is the artist’s first solo show in Northern California. The exhibition will be overseen by assistant curator of media arts Tanya Zimbardo. Like Murakami, Kusama has explored commercial collaborations in addition to fine art, including a partnership with Louis Vuitton.

Come November, the Asian Art Museum will debut “The Heart of Zen,” featuring “Persimmons” and “Chestnuts,” two 13th century paintings by Chinese monk Muqi that are seen as highly influential in Japanese painting and have rarely left the Daitokuji Ryokoin Zen temple in Kyoto since the 16th century. In medieval and early modern Japan, Muqi came to define Chinese-style painting (kara-e) and was regarded so highly that the term “priest’s style” (oshō-yō) was coined to describe his masterful mode of brushwork.

“Chestnuts” by Muqi is part of “The Heart of Zen” exhibition coming to the Asian Art Museum on Nov. 17.

Photo: Asian Art Museum

“The Heart of Zen,” the Asian Art Museum’s senior curator of Japanese art Laura Allen noted, was conceived when Ryokoin temple abbot Kobori Geppo visited the Asian Art Museum in 2017. To protect the paintings from overexposure to light, “Persimmons” and “Chestnuts” will be presented individually for only three weeks each. There will be one weekend where both are on display.

Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu called autumn an unprecedented moment for Japanese art in San Francisco.

“The Bay Area has always had a close cultural relationship with Japan,” said Xu. “From incredible painters who redefined how we look at nature, like Chiura Obata in Yosemite, to the Beats studying Zen in the 1950s, to the foods we eat every day, and now to global icons like Murakami, who’s thinking hard about the complexities of the digital age.”

Reach Tony Bravo: tbravo@sfchronicle.com

Yayoi Kusama, “Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love,” 2023, installed in the exhibition “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers,” at David Zwirner, New York.

Photo: © Yayoi Kusama
More Information

“弥生草间弥生:无限的爱”:Multimedia. 1-8 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Monday. Oct. 14-Sept. 7, 2024. $19-$25. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., S.F. 415-357-4000.www.sfmoma.org

“The Heart of Zen”:Paintings. 1-8 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Monday. Nov. 17-Dec. 31. “Persimmons” will be on view Nov. 17-Dec. 10. “Chestnuts” will be on view Dec. 8-31. $20 general. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., S.F. 415-581-3500.www.asianart.org

  • Tony Bravo
    Tony BravoTony Bravo is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Arts and Culture writer. Bravo joined The Chronicle staff in 2015 as a reporter for the former Style section, where he covered New York Fashion Week for the Hearst newspapers and served as the section’s editorial stylist, in addition to writing the relationship column “Connectivity.” He primarily covers visual arts and the LGBTQ community as well as specializing in stories about the intersections between arts, culture and lifestyle. His column appears in print every Monday in Datebook. Bravo is also an adjunct instructor at the City College of San Francisco Fashion Department and is the fourth generation of his family born in San Francisco, where he lives with his husband.