Night View of a Ginza Store
1884 · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo
Gaslight in the windows of a new brick storefront on an empty Tokyo street. Yasuji died at twenty-five and got there before Hopper.
★ 4.7
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
The Port of Saint-Tropez
1902 · National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Signac moved to Saint-Tropez and pulled the rest of the Neo-Impressionists south. Seurat's tight dots have loosened into bigger, brighter tiles.
★ 5.6
Night Scene in the Yoshiwara
1850 · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo
Oi was Hokusai's daughter and studio collaborator, and her handling of lantern light against darkness beats anything else in the ukiyo-e of her time.
★ 5.7
Cypress Trees
1590 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
One ancient cypress sprawls across the screen against solid gold, painted by the man who decorated the castles of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.
★ 8.0
Wind God and Thunder God (Fujin Raijin-zu)
1630 · Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto
The two gods hurtle in from opposite edges and Sotatsu leaves the whole middle empty, so the bare gold reads as sky.
★ 8.2
Haboku (Splashed-Ink) Landscape
1495 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
A mountain, a wineshop flag and a boatman conjured from a few wet blots. Sesshu made it as a parting gift for a departing pupil.
★ 8.2
Red and White Plum Blossoms
1715 · MOA Museum of Art, Atami
A stylized river runs down the gold between two plum trees, one young and white, the other old and red, leaning toward each other.
★ 8.8
Pine Trees (Shorin-zu byobu)
1595 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
A few pines loom and dissolve on two screens where the bare paper does the work of mist. Japan's finest ink painting, by most accounts.
★ 9.1