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Characteristics of shitsurai

The history of modern museums begins with the Louvre, which was conceived to safegard art objects within national borders as well as to display the spoils of Napoleon's Egyptian conquest to the public in a pageant of pomp and glory.

While ostensibly a means of edification, museums also served to stockpile cultural properties under the aegis of the wealthy and powerful. Thus, throughout the 19th to 20th centuries, art was deeply complicit in strategies of social competition.

This trend is epitomized in the buying and selling of art objects as blue chip vanity investments for the super rich. Mass media and galleries bought into this war trophy scheme, mistakenly taking artworks at auction value only to further escalate prices.

Likewise, media present museum and gallery attendance figures as proof of greatness, which in turn helps to garner corporate sponsorship and state funding. As with finance or real estate or fashion brands, the art scene takes after win-or-lose big business and marketing models where bids and counterbids dictate worth.

On into the 21st century, will artistic expression continue to ape such mercenary values? Or will we wisen up to the vaccuity of it all and try to create a slightly more sincere arena for creative expression?

Shitsurai brooks no place for exalting displayed works on the basis of authority or fatuous acclaim, though neither does it afford a venue for star artists in photography or painting or crafts who ride the crest of the genre of the moment.

The principal player in shitsurai is not the artwork on display, but rather the space and time within the building. Time and space make for depth and breadth, and can carry our consciousness far, far away. And in so doing, it can make us aware how very narrow and limited our mundane daily life values really are.

While there is no set scheme for realizing such an expansive sense of time and space, free expression notwithstanding, particular circumstances do call for consideration and appropriate preparations. Care must be given to arranging artworks so as to make a harmonious whole without becoming formulaic or uniform. Distinct elements should interact so as to render a vibrant overall experience. The aim is simply to embue a richer depth to time and space, the better to engage and delight.

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