The top itinerary item of my recent trip to Japan was to attend Alphonse Mucha’s exhibition held at the National Art Center in Roppongi, Tokyo. Mucha is one of my fav artist/painters of all times ( besides J.W Waterhouse ) and while I’ve actually attended two of his exhibitions in Tokyo before, this one was unique as the works on display are Mucha’s magnum opus, the spectacular Slav Epic; and they have never once left the Czech Republic…until now.

We had expectations of a huge turn out at the exhibition, but were totally unprepared for what we saw when we arrived at the museum – a massive crowd and line that snaked all around the building. The last time I was in such a long line was years back during Takehiko Inoue’s LAST MANGA exhibition in Ueno.

This is actually one of the things I love about Japan ( not the long lines ); but the huge support and appreciation for the arts. In the end, it took us about an hour before we finally entered the exhibition.

Photography was allowed only in the last section of the exhibition, and as you can see by the scale of the paintings how impressive they are. The sizes are comparable to some of the biggest paintings I saw in the Louvre, like Gericault’s Raft Of The Medusa.

You’ll think that Mucha would sacrifice detail at the expense of size in these paintings, but look at this small section of one the paintings ( image above ) and you’ll be mistaken; the rendering is still incredibly detailed.

I had to purchase the catalogue for the exhibition of course (image above). This is also available for purchase on Amazon Japan; I’ll post a review of the book at a later time.

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