Abstract

Art and art
Japanese critic, former vice director and chief curator of InterCommunication Centre (ICC), Keiji Nakamura, lamented the degeneration of the term ‘bi-jyu-tsu’ which consist of two Chinese characters ‘beauty’ and ‘skill’ at the millennium in his essay on media art. He sighed with great regret that we could not help using the term ‘ah-to’ which means ‘art’ in Japanese Katakana character, generally used for direct use of a foreign language, instead of the term ‘bi-jyu-tsu’. What he felt shame for was, however, not the obsoleteness of a certain terminology, but the fact that there is no more clear difference between ‘bi-jyu-tsu’ and ‘non-bi-jyu-tsu’, a piece of artwork as a creative interpretation of the reality and the reality itself, which was very crucial for his generation born in the early 20th century. The result is a blind equalization of all factors in a society, including politics and the need to depend on another terminology to reflect a very uncomfortable change in the nature of art.

• Jung-Yeon Ma Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo National University of the Arts, Japan

Full text (PDF)  p. 926-931