Recent Acquisitions
Since opening in 1977 as a national museum specializing in contemporary art, the National Museum of Art, Osaka has attempt to assemble a collection of both foreign and Japanese, post-World War II art works. As of late 2004, the entire collection totaled some 5,160 items. In the Collection 4 exhibition, we concentrate on works that the museum has acquired since 2001, including new items that have entered the collection over the last year.

1. Art and Life
Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing on into the continuing on into the 60s, "anti-art" emerged as a means of asserting an artist's independence from preexisting artistic concepts. In 1991, the museum presented an exhibition on works of this type titled "Japanese Anti-Art: Now and Then." Shinohara Ushio's "Boxing Painting," a work which the museum acquired this year, was produced for the exhibition. In this exhibition, we also look back at other avant-garde works of the time, including that of Arakawa Shusaku, who made use of words and diagrams, and Kusama Yayoi, who took her personal obsessions and turned them into art.

2. Western Contemporary Art
In this part of the exhibition, we introduce Western contemporary art since the 1990s by artists who arrived at their own unique style of expression by way of everyday objects or readymade images. We hope that you will enjoy works such as Rechel Whisteread's ice pillow, Simon Patterson's map of the London Underground, and Tony Cragg's dice sculpture, which make use of wide variety of materials.

3-4. Contemporary Japanese Painting and Sculpture
In the section, we feature Japanese paintings and sculptures from the 1980s to the present. Between 1987 and 2003, the museum held a series of solo exhibitions titled "Recent Works," which showcased the work of artists between the ages of 30 and 50. These medium-sized exhibitions includes a mixture of recent and new work, and offered visitors an opportunity to come into contact with current trends in art. The museum acquired quite a few works which were shown in these exhibitions, including Aoki Noe's "Untitled," Higashijima Tsuyoshi's "FF-012," Kobayashi Takanobu's "Forest," and a series of works by Yanobe Kenji. Many of these have effectively come to represent one aspect of contemporary Japanese art of the 80s.

5. Western Modern Art
The 20th century was a period filled with experiments and creative innovations that rewrote art history. Cézanne began as a 19th-century impressionist and opened the door to cubism. And Picasso and Kandinsky, forerunners of contemporary art, developed a new style - abstract painting. In this section, we introduce famous works of Western modern art, from Cézanne to Max Ernst, one of the most important surrealist painters.