Japanese Avant-Garde

Masami Akita (Merzbow)
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

The contents of the Top 100 2017 so far: avant-garde, punk rock, and ethnopoetics, areas that overlap one another on occasion. The history of the Japanese avant-garde is as important as their French, American, and other western nations is. Recently I've written about Tashiro Mayuzumi and soon I will paint a picture depicting Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, probs a portrait of Kawabata Makoto, the lead guitarist of the psychedelic jam band. Pictured here is Masumi Akita better known under his stage name Merzbow (from Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau). Merzbow is a one person noise band from Tokyo, an extreme one too. Merzbow is considered the most important artist in noise.