Filling those lazy days
by ryan
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
For anyone who needs some inspiration for what to do during the break between field trips and Summer camp. I suggest breaking out your “lost” ID cards and heading down the the Asian Art Museum for a really cool exhibition on the god of Manga, Tezuka. While I previously knew nothing about the Japanese comic book phenomenon, the visiting collection of storyboards, cover art, and comic strips provided a few hours of bargain entertainment.
The Manga exhibition goes through September 9th, so there’s plenty of time to head down to the civic center and check out the stuff. It’s also interesting to see how they converted a whole room of the museum into a “typical manga-obsessed teenager’s bedroom” inviting visitors to peruse the extensive collection of comic books on comfy bean bag chairs. On July 7th there will be a huge event called “Blast Off” with talks, demonstrations , and apparently Dance Dance Revolution. Plus they have a blog all about the exhibition. All of these are nice examples of a more traditional museum branching out and becoming a more interactive experience. Plus the comics are pretty insane.
I went to this exhibit a couple of weeks ago when it opened!!! I loved it. The comics are incredible — did you notice how the medium of certain prints were “facsmile”?! Which means that those pieces of incredible art, were FAXED! Crazy!
Tezuka Osamu’s comics were a little before my time (more my mom and dad’s time), but I grew up watching “Hi no Tori” – (Firebird? Phoenix? What’s the translation?) I remember it being very beautiful and disturbing. All his works deal with heavy issues of what it means to be alive, what it means to be dead, and what it means to simply be, to live, to exist.
Don’t be fooled by the cartoon-like facade of animation and manga – this guy is deep.
When I told my mom about this exhibit, she got really excited — apparently, Tezuka Osamu hails from the Hyogo prefecture – which is where yours truly was brought up. (wootwoot, represent!) Apparently, there is a huge museum there dedicated to him and his manga and artwork. I know what I’m doing next time I go home!
Field trip anyone?
I went too, and was blown away. As I kid I grew up watching anime on TV, and although I never read a proper manga, many of those were adaptations of Tezuka mangas, or inspired by him, like The Rose of Versailles. I would definitely go back, as I didn’t see everything. My friend Nicole Harvey, frequent contributor to the aforementioned blog, put together the fake Japanese teenager manga room, maybe I should look into getting us a special treatment field trip… I’m thinking we should try out their setup for the DDR competition!
awww, hey there, this is jenn from the asian art museum. thanks so much for this kind and thoughtful blog about the show. made my day. thanks!