One of the best things I love about Tokyo is the abundance of great art exhibitions – there’s always something worth catching, especially in summer. Mucha’s Slav Epic exhibition was at the top of my list, but I wasn’t going to miss Pieter Bruegel’s Tower Of Babel ( plus a couple of Hieronymus Bosch ) if it was in town either.

The exhibition was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno, home to several fantastic museums, all within walking distance from the Ueno JR station.

(above) Entrance to the exhibition, with a huge reproduction of the painting that looks awesome.

As a tie-up exhibit to the main event, the museum also invited Akira manga artist Otomo Katsuhiro to work on an inspired piece titled “Inside Babel”, which showcases the imagined, interior facade of the Tower. Otomo-san traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Netherlands ( permanent home to the Tower Of Babel painting ) to learn more about the art work before embarking on his tribute piece. He was assisted by collage artist Kawamura Kosuke.

(above & below) The base drawing and (detail) by Otomo-san.

The completed pieces, one with illuminated interiors to see the details and one with normal rendering.

(above) A prop up display of the Tower to compare the height of the Tower ( if constructed to scale ) against the Tokyo Tower.

A detailed write-up on Otomo’s work on the tribute piece can be found in this issue of the Japanese art magazine Geijutsu Shincho.

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