What artists Japanese like The other day, I went to an exhibition of William Turner. It was really crowded .in the museum and l had to wait in a long queue to enter the venue. By the time I came in front of the pictures, I already got exhausted. Many Japanese who are interested in art like Turner. In fact, there is a certain taste and trend upon what artists Japanese like. For example, they like Vermeer, Monet (and other impressionists), J.E. Millais, Munch, Gustav Klimt and etc. As far as I’m concerned, there are at least 3 reasons why Japanese love such artists. First, their pictures are comparatively easy to understand because they don’t represent myths or biblical texts. If we try to appreciate religious paintings, it would be good for us to own some knowledge about stories written in Bible. In contrast, landscape paintings by impressionists doesn’t necessarily demand such background information to beholders. Next, these artists have a canonical work. In the case of Vermeer, it is Girl with a Pearl Earring, and as for Klimt, it is The Kiss. These images are simple, strong and easy to remember, and they can be seen often in media such as newspaper, TV and the Internet. The final reason I think of is that Japanese museum has a large collection of some of the artists I mentioned above. There are many works of art drawn by impressionists in Japan. Therefore, people living in Japan has a plenty of opportunities to enjoy them. I’m sure that these artist are also popular in the world, but I wonder what artists or masterpieces are especially well-known in other countries.

I got scholarships Last Friday, I got a news that I passed the examination of qualification and got a scholarship, which I had applied on April. I was very surprised at the news because this scholarship from a personal foundation was offered to only 10 students throughout this country. I didn’t expect that I could pass the exam. I was so lucky, and top of that, yesterday my teacher told me that I could obtain another scholarship from my university because my master’s thesis that was turned in six months ago was evaluated highly. This is my first time to acquire such reward. I will study harder as much as I obtained a great deal of support.

About an ancient sculpture made by Myron I saw a beautiful sculpture representing a young athlete naked torso in a museum. It was over life size, modelled with well-balanced muscles. Myron, a sculptor who were active in Greece in the ancient age created an original sculpture, but the version now we can see is a copy made in Rome like most other ancient sculptures as well. The torso stands in contrapposto. He raises his right hand high with his left hand lowering and projecting forward slightly. Harmonizing with this movement of his hands, his right leg extends straight while his left leg is relaxed. The body showed a tension as well as a relaxation. In addition to this pose, the way in which the sculptor dealt with its material make it realistic like an actual human. The surface of the body looks very soft as if it were real human skin even though its material is a hard marble. The light and shadow which were casted on its surface was so beautiful that I could not leave the sculpture for a while.

A note on a romantic painter, Otto Runge I will write about what I do now for a class at university next week. I do a bit of research on Otto Runge who was a painter of Romanticism in Germany. He was born in 1777 at Wolgast and started to practice painting at the age of 21. From a lot of dessins and studies, we can see that he trained very earnestly in the Academy of Kopenhagen, then in Dresden where there were many copies of ancient sculptures and paintings in the rennaisance and baroque style. By imitating these models, the painter tried hard to realize the perfect expression of human body. As you know, artists of classicism were eager to acquire the beauty, which had once achieved in sculptures in ancient Greece. This ancient beauty was ideal for artists in the renaissance and neo-classicism era, that is, in the 15th century and from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century. Therefore, until the latter half of the 19th century, most of the academies have taught students how to obtain ideal expressions of human body. To put it concrete, teachers told students to copy gypsums of ancient sculptures. Runge was also one of such students. However, unlike other classical painters, Runge’s essential interest was shared with romantic authors and poets such as Tiek, Novalis and Brentano. All of them were Runge’s friends and they sometimes exchanged their letters to explore their thinking, and Runge read their friends’ work intensely as well. To summarize, his visual resources were classical obtained by copies of ancient sculptures while his theoretical resources were romantic cultivated by poetry and novels at that time. This contradiction between visual and theoretical resources made his painting eccentric and outstanding among other painters in Romanticism. For example, “Morning”, which is considered as one of his masterpieces, is like a painting of surrealism, which is, in fact, the movement occurred nearly 100 years after his death. Although I understand that this painting is the result of his struggle to get a new artistic expression, I find it weird and uncanny. To be frank, I don’t like it. So it is almost intolerable to prepare a presentation for 35 minutes only about this painting.

Impression of Detroit become human Nowadays a video game called “Detroit: become human” is a hot topic among game players. After its release in Japan, I have enjoyed watching play videos of Japanese translate version. At the very beginning, I have not bought and played this game, I don’t have any right to be a critic, but as I watched someone’s play video, I got to have an urge to sum up my thinking about this game. “Detroit” has a contingent narrative, which changes in countless ways depending on the choice of its players. Players move three android characters, each of whom have a role as a police officer, a revolutionary and one ordinary person. As it gets closer to the ending, the stories of three characters influences each other and finally mixes together though they seemed to be wholly separated at first. It is impossible to describe this game as the one absolute narrative because it becomes completely different according to each player’s intention. These days, the majority of video games, to a greater or lesser extent, try to be flexible to players’ way of thinking, and especially in this game, the most things players should do is to make a decision among some choices again and again at any trivial situation. In other words, it appears that players can organize and control the whole game. Considering the aspect of video games as a medium which convey some ideology to receivers, it is this too-flexible system that I concern about. Most people never want a desperate ending at a first play. However, at a second play, players should feel like revealing other stories which could not be seen yet. To appreciate the game fully and satisfy their own curiosity, they might choose alternative options even though they lead to a bad end. As players trace the stories over and over, they automatically get to forget their sense of guilty they felt at the first time. What matters here is the creators’ intention, rather than that of players. They must have predicted that players start to be careless to choose any options and absorb into unveiling all stories the game offer. What I am apprehensive about is that its repeating system premised by creators lead players to be insensitive to moral decisions even though its story draws clearly on some actual past events related to class conflicts and racism. I wrote an apprehensive feature of the playing system but personally I like this game because the policeman’s part is attractive. If I can organize my thoughts, I want to write it some other time.